International Brotherhood of Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters ( IBT , German as "International Brotherhood of carters"), only briefly mentioned the "Teamsters", the trade union of transport workers and the largest single union of the United States ( Washington, DC ) and is also since 1992 Canada ( Laval ) operates as "Teamsters Canada".
The IBT , formerly known as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America (as of 2004) has around 1.4 million contributing members and 400,000 retirees , making it one of the largest individual unions in the world.
Initially, the “Teamsters” were just a union for truck drivers, but expanded to become a general transport workers' union and now extend into the food industry. You are thus z. B. also the responsible union at the logistics giant UPS .
The union is now part of the Change to win union group , after it left the former AFL-CIO umbrella organization in 2005 with a number of other unions .
history
Founding years
The roots of the “Teamsters” go back to the colonial times when the drivers of the horse-drawn teams were still unorganized. Her life was tough and the job was unsafe.
The engine didn't change that. On the contrary: By 1900, the typical Teamster worked 12-18 hours a day, seven days a week and made about $ 2 a day. He was not only expected to transport the load, but also B. also pay for the transport damage.
In 1901, a few disappointed and angry drivers formed the "Team Drivers International Union" (TDIU), which quickly grew to 1,700 members. A strike in San Francisco resembled a general strike in later days and was victorious. Nevertheless, members split off again in the following years and founded u. a. the "Teamsters National Union" (TNU). A point of contention was in particular whether a teamster was allowed to employ employees himself.
Samuel Gompers , president of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), worked against this division and organized a meeting of all groups in the August 1903 Niagara Falls ( New York ).
The assembly came to an agreement and Cornelius Shea from the “TDIU” became the first president of the new “International Brotherhood of Teamsters” (IBT).
The new union made difficult progress at first, because health and safety laws did not yet exist, while the company side could always refer to various anti- cartel laws. A labor dispute was to be taken literally at that time. The Teamsters' 1905 strike at the Montgomery Ward Company lasted over 100 days, cost $ 1,000,000 and killing 21 people. In addition, the "Teamsters" were defeated in this strike, as they had nothing to counter the savvy and unscrupulous tactics of the entrepreneurial side.
Work has been done to remedy these weaknesses. In 1907, the young and more dynamic Daniel J. Tobin from "Local 25" from Boston was chosen as the new president.
Stagnation 1907-1929
Daniel "Dan" J. Tobin had the longest tenure of any Teamster presidency. The weakness in all trade unions at that time was a tendency in the respective branches (“local”) not to look beyond their own horizon. The Teamsters did not initially use their national presence either and the national connection remained weak; especially after the said disastrous outcome of the 1905 strike.
Tobin tried to change this, but failed. In particular, he did not succeed in asserting himself against the United Brewery Workers , the "beer drivers", in order to put the Teamsters on a broader basis. The dispute over employee representation was lost in 1913 because the umbrella organization “AFL” did not participate.
He also tried to stop deviant "locals" if they seemed too radical to him. In general, American unions were strictly “ anti-communist ”. Even then, this attitude was far removed from more subtle European distinctions. American trade unions at that time were also expressly not industrial unions , but rather equated in character with a guild that distinguished itself as a wage cartel from outsiders.
Due to this demarcation from simple workers on the one hand and his own fragmentation on the other hand, Tobin could not develop a successful strategy and therefore failed in the further development of the union because he did not succeed in achieving any form of monopoly for the union.
Great Depression and Prohibition
Membership was boosted by the Great Depression that followed Black Friday in 1929. In 1933 the "Brewers", who had successfully fought back in 1913, joined the Teamsters because they wanted to avoid their impending dissolution, which was due to Prohibition .
In particular, Jimmy Hoffa , a young agent in "Local 299" (Detroit), managed to win over the truck drivers as members. Hoffa's character was a “doer” who only spent a third of his time in the office. As z. For example, if a “Teamster” group wanted to switch to a competing union, Hoffa prevented this with brute force.
Both Teamsters and Organized Crime in the United States took off from prohibition. Since people always met each other during the illegal and legal transport of alcohol, an expansion of the connections between the two groups was obvious.
From the point of view of the gangsters from New York , whose members had also been hired on the union side in the labor disputes, it was the opportunity to gain influence on the transport sector. This gave the gangsters access to logistical solutions to handle their smuggling with less risk and more economically. Later, even entire cargo loads disappeared, such as B. Vincent Mangano had successfully practiced in the port of New York City. A “central” collaboration was not necessary for this; Members of the Teamsters gave the tips to the mobsters , who then ensured - in addition to the individual rewards - that only organized union members were employed. This “collaboration” was then taken up by Jimmy Hoffa and applied in a centralized manner.
Meanwhile, Dave Beck organized the drivers on the west coast . For this he used the "locals" from Seattle , Portland and San Francisco. Here, too, he was very successful in recruiting truck drivers in order to use them to get to the hitherto independent freight forwarders who transported most of the agricultural products.
Tobin had nothing to counter these successes and his influence waned. 1952 Tobin was replaced by Dave Beck as President (and Jimmy Hoffa as Vice President ), who influenced the base.
Criminal connections
Hoffa's good relationship with Cosa Nostra came about by chance: his former girlfriend Sylvia Pigano , with whom he had lived for four years, married a little mafioso and eventually became the girlfriend of Frank Coppola .
This good contact was important for Hoffa because the mobsters had always sided with the companies. The brawls in New York - e.g. B. the so-called " Labor Slugger Wars " are legendary to this day. In 1937 Hoffa was able to convince Frank Coppola and thus the mafia to stay out of the labor disputes. Hoffa and the “Teamsters” won their strike and the union gained around 4,000 new members as a result of this success.
In order to become president of the "IBT", Hoffa accepted a number of so-called "paper locals". These were branches of the union controlled by the mafia. This was done by Johnny Dioguardi , a member of the Lucchese family from New York. In addition, in other “locals” various “thugs” or other members of the mafia exercised the actual control or were housed in so-called “no-show jobs”; d. that is, they were on the branch's payroll, but were never present in person in any way or doing union work.
In addition, z. B. Anthony "The Ducks" Corallo , boss of the Lucchese family , in the "local 239" in New York City account for employees who only existed on paper. In this way, around $ 69,000 a month was siphoned from the union coffers.
James Squillante , who was one of the killers of Albert Anastasia , was known as the "king of the garbage collection racket" (English: King of the waste management crime). The infiltration of the garbage collectors by the Mafia in New York City ran parallel to the development of the Teamsters union as a whole - to which the garbage collectors belonged - and began as early as 1955 when the garbage collectors organized themselves through the union's "Local 813", which started the 1960s was then ruled by James Failla of the Gambino family .
Of course, the criminal activities within the union (“ labor racketeering ”) did not go unnoticed and the “ McClellan Committee” began to investigate corruption in the unions, especially among the Teamsters. Dave Beck had to vacate the presidential chair. The Teamsters were excluded from the "AFL" because of the corruption allegations. The way for Jimmy Hoffa was clear and he was named President in Miami Beach in 1957 .
Under Hoffa, the cooperation with the Mafia intensified. When she had to leave Cuba in 1959 after the Cuban Revolution , she set up shop in Florida and helped the Teamster to set up the "Local 320" in Miami . Hoffa had sent Rolland McMaster to Florida to do the job with Dave Yaras and Barney Baker . Yaras was a follower of Sam Giancana , who in turn had been an Al Capone thug .
"McMaster was the personified connection between Hoffa and Meyer Lansky , Santo Trafficante , the Dorfman family, the syndicate in Chicago and the Genovese family in New Jersey and New York"
Under Hoffa, a mafia-like leadership style was established that did not stop at contract killing. Frank Sheeran performed special tasks of this kind for Hoffa, who supposedly worked as a driver in a Teamsters branch.
The "golden 1960s"
Hoffa's greatest achievement was the “National Master Freight Agreement” of 1964, which incorporated all union members nationwide in a uniform agreement. In order to ensure this, Hoffa pushed the expansion of the Teamsters not only horizontally (in terms of area), but also diagonally and vertically, following the production chain. Because of the expulsion in 1957, Hoffa no longer had to take any account of the “AFL”; As a reaction to the Teamster expansion, this founded some of its own branch divisions in order to at least be able to counter Hoffa's activities.
With targeted strikes or tough action against "price breakers" Hoffa consolidated this new monopoly position of the Teamsters. He also dominated the "conferences", the regional gatherings of the assigned "locals", which had once been set up with the help of Dave Beck, among others.
The Central States Pension Fund (CSPF) was also established in 1960 , with funds from 25 states for their union members as a pension investment. In view of these successes, these years are considered the “Golden Age” of the Teamsters. By 1976 the number of members increased from about 1.5 to 2 million.
However, due to the presence of the mobsters in the “locals”, this fund was widely open as a means of financing kickbacks and bribery . In principle, fund manager Roy Lee Williams was under the direct control of Nick Civella of Kansas City, Missouri ; The managing director was a friend of Hoffa's: Allen Dorfman , whose stepfather Paul Dorfman was a close ally of Hoffa. Until the mid-1970s, the construction of numerous casinos in Las Vegas was financed by means of straw men ; such as B. Allen Glick ; were under the control of the Cosa Nostra . Hoffa, who personally benefited from these events, could or did not want to stop this escalation of the criminal involvement. In addition, he himself was also increasingly under legal pressure.
Robert F. Kennedy had expected Hoffa to be convicted in 1957 and declared the Teamsters to be a major enemy of the state. When he became American attorney general in 1961, he organized a second trial against Hoffa in March 1962, which initially failed because Hoffa had bribed the jury. However, this bribery became public and Hoffa was only able to evade conviction for another three years by using legal tricks. He was eventually sentenced to thirteen years in prison, which he served in 1967. His union then named him "President for Life".
Frank Fitzsimmons , who also came from Hoffa “Local 299”, was installed as the “governor” for Hoffa .
On December 23, 1971, Hoffa was released on parole by the new US President Richard Nixon . The condition of this deal was that Hoffa gave up his presidency and did not seek it again for another ten years. However, Hoffa began to collect votes for a reappointment shortly after his release.
But the bosses of the Cosa Nostra had apparently got used to the weak model president Fitzsimmons in the almost three years of his absence and did not want the dominant Hoffa as president again. Jimmy Hoffa disappeared from the parking lot of the Machus Red Fox restaurant in Bloomfield Hills north of Detroit on July 30, 1975 ; his body has not yet been found.
The decline
Weak presidents
Jimmy Hoffa had admitted the American mafia into the union, and it had supported him for the presidency, but Hoffa always acted on an equal footing with the mobsters and is - in the broader sense of this term - himself today. In a final argument about this fact with Anthony Provenzano , which led to the rupture between the two, he even hit him with a bottle on the head.
Even his successor, Frank Fitzsimmons, had been appointed by Hoffa. In her absence while in custody, the Cosa Nostra had a free hand with the Teamsters. The three subsequent presidents, Roy Williams, Jackie Presser and William J. McCarthy, had been installed by the mobsters.
The membership peaked at around 2 million in 1976, but that was still a result of Jimmy Hoffa's work.
When an illegal cash courier from Las Vegas was caught at Kansas City Airport with two US $ 40,000 packages on February 14, 1979, a series of successful house searches began . The complex of Las Vegas, Mafia casinos and Teamsters pension funds was blown. Fitzsimmons retired in 1981, avoiding legal condemnation of his " blank check " policy. Roy Williams, one of the trustees of the abused Central States Pension Fund, succeeded him.
This presidency was short-lived, as Roy Williams was involved in the bribery scheme against Senator Howard Cannon of Nevada , so he had to leave office in 1983 and was convicted in 1985. In 1986 Joseph Aiuppa , Jackie Cerone , Joseph Lombardo , Angelo LaPietra , Milton J. Rockman, and Carl DeLuna were convicted of levying $ 2 million in cash from Las Vegas casinos.
deregulation
Cannon was chairman of the " Senate Commerce Committee ", which was currently dealing with the deregulation of the transport industry and thus would have broken the monopoly of the Teamsters, which then happened.
Although the senator did not respond to the bribery, it meant the end of his political career . The bill was not stopped.
Jackie Presser tried by introducing a second tariff, i.e. In other words, so-called “relief riders” (temporary or support riders) could be used at a discount of 35 percent to maintain supra-regional cohesion. But a new group within the Teamsters, the “ Teamsters for a Democratic Union ”, started a campaign against the “relief rider” regulation and was able to bring it down again with 94,086 to 13,082 votes.
Jackie Presser's only presentable success was his re-entry into the AFL-CIO, which had been united since 1955. The Teamsters were excluded from the AFL in 1957.
The deregulation law had a major impact on the union. The monopoly was broken, transport prices collapsed, as unorganized drivers now also had broad access to the market . 30 percent of the members of the “Freight Division” of the Teamsters became unemployed . Almost 200 transport companies that were previously unionized had to go out of business in the first few years after its introduction.
Changes
In essence, the resistance within the Teamsters increased through the establishment of the "Teamsters for a Democratic Union". She was particularly interested in changing the electoral process within the union. The president was previously elected by the delegates from the individual “locals”. Due to the infiltration of individual branches and the existence of “paper locals”, the mafia controlled a large part of the votes for a presidential election.
In 1984 the FBI was able to record a conversation between Roy Williams, Jackie Presser and the mafiosi Anthony Salerno ("Fat Tony") and John Trolone ("Peanuts"); Jackie Presser himself was an FBI informant.
William J. McCarthy said in this conversation that he needed the decision of a Mafia boss before he could advance further in the Teamsters. Although the New York Times reported on the conversation in 1988, McCarthy became President of the Teamsters in 1989. This was not a good starting point to exonerate the union from existing allegations of the union between the Mafia and the union.
In view of this first documented “finding of the president” by the Mafia, a court in 1991 ordered the election of the president of the transport workers' union by its members. In this election by 1.6 million members, McCarthy lost to Ron Carey , who had presented himself as a reform candidate.
Modern times
Teamstergate
A successful strike took place under Ron Carey against the management of the logistics giant UPS, but there were certainly circles in the union who resented this success and would rather see him replaced by a more 'submissive' president.
Nevertheless Carey succeeded in asserting himself against James P. Hoffa , the son of Jimmy Hoffa, for a second term. However, it did lead to financial imperfections that became known as Teamstergate .
The name "Teamstergate" was created by the Republican Randy valet when u. a. a money transfer was discovered between Bill Clinton's 1996 election campaign and the election campaign of Ron Carey seeking re-election as union president. It was about a sum of 885,000 US dollars, which had apparently flowed from the union into the campaign fund of the Clinton Gore team. In addition, money is said to have been used for his own election campaign. In any case, the re-election of Ron Carey was canceled by a court and in a new election from which he was excluded, as expected, James Hoffa, who took office on March 19, 1999, prevailed.
Allegations of using union money were also raised by James P. Hoffa, but these were apparently classified as less relevant. Ron Carey had always protested that he was ignorant of the proceedings and was acquitted on October 12, 2001. In view of the overall circumstances, the suspicion of a targeted campaign against Carey cannot be completely ruled out.
Change to win
The most famous action so far by the current President James P. Hoffa, who has also been called "Jim" on the union's homepage since spring 2006, is to leave the previous umbrella organization. The Teamsters union is now part of the “Change to win” union group, after they left the “ AFL-CIO ” together with some other unions in 2005 and this established a new umbrella organization.
organization
President
| Term of office | President of the IBT | Born | death | annotation |
| 1903-1907 | Shea, Cornelius | |||
| 1907-1952 | Tobin, Daniel J. | 1875 | 1955 | |
| 1952-1957 | Beck, Dave | 1894 | 1993 | |
| 1957-1973 | Hoffa, Jimmy | 1913 | 1975 | disappeared without a trace |
| 1973-1981 | Fitzsimmons, Frank | 1907 | 1981 | |
| 1981 | Mock, George | Interim president | ||
| 1981-1983 | Williams, Roy Lee | 1915 | 1989 | |
| 1983-1988 | Presser, Jackie | 1926 | 1988 | |
| 1988 | Mathis, Weldin | Interim president | ||
| 1989-1991 | McCarthy, William J. | 1919 | 1998 | |
| 1991-1999 | Carey, Ron | 1936 | 2008 | First president by election of all members |
| since 1999 | Hoffa, James P. | 1941 | Son of Jimmy Hoffa; re-elected until 2021 |
Membership development
- 1933: 75,000
- 1935: 146,000
- 1949: 1,000,000
- 1957: 1,500,000
- 1976: 2,000,000
- 1987:> 1,000,000
- 2003: 1,700,000
- 2004: 1,400,000
- 2008: 1,400,000
Sub-organizations
The Teamsters organize their members in the following branches with the following sub-departments:
- Airline Division: Airlines
- Bakery and Laundry Conference: Bakeries and Laundries
- Brewery and Soft Drink Conference: Breweries and beverage bottlers
- Building Material and Construction Trade Division: Building material and building material trade
- Carhaul Division: Car Transport
- Dairy: dairies and dairy farming
- Express Division: Courier Express Parcel Services (CEP)
- Food Processing Division: Food Production
- Freight Division: Freight Forwarding and Transportation
- Industrial Trade Division: Industrial Goods
- Motion Picture and Theatrical Trade Division: Suppliers to the cinema and theater industry
- Newspaper, Magazine and Electronic Media Worker: newspaper and media industry
- Package Division (formerly: Parcel and Small Package Division): Post and parcel service
- Parking Division: Parking garage management
- Passenger Transportation: close to people - and long-distance transport
- Port Division: port companies
- Public Services (Trade) Division: Public Service
- Rail Conference: Railway Companies
- Solid Waste and Recycling Division: Garbage collection and recycling businesses
- Tankhaul Division: Tanker driver
- Trade Show and Convention Centers Division: Exhibition and Event Industry
- Warehouse Division: Warehousing
Teamsters in the movie
- 1931: Tom Keene, King of the Steppes (Freighters of Destiny)
- 1975: Street of Violence (White Line Fever) , directed by Jonathan Kaplan
- 1978: FIST - A man goes his way (FIST)
- 1992: Jimmy Hoffa (Hoffa)
- 1992: Teamster Boss - The Jackie Presser Story (TV production)
- 1995: Casino , directed by Martin Scorsese
- 2002: American Standoff
- 2019: The Irishman
literature
- James B. Jacobs: Mobsters, Unions, and Feds: The Mafia and the American Labor Movement . New York 2006. University Press. ISBN 0-8147-4273-4 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ James Jacobs: Mobsters, unions, and feds: the Mafia and the American labor movement , New York University Press, 2006
- ↑ Teamsters for LaRouche by Dennis King (English)
- ^ "Blood Threat" , time.com, February 3, 1986