The History of Teamster Organizing

Introduction

        Organized labor is badly in need of a re-introduction to the American public. In most cases, it is not a part of the curriculum of American History that our children receive. Before college, during high school and elementary school, the custom is for textbooks to portray labor unions as nothing more than a hindrance to a properly working free market system. If a child does not grow up in a union household or town with heavy union membership, the typical introduction students receive to a balanced examination of labor history first comes during business or economics class in college. Many of those lucky students graduate from college with only a partial understanding of the economy derived from a purely pro-business perspective. In essence, we all learn to respect the morals of successful business people, not every day working people. Education is only a fraction of the consistent and subtle stream of anti-union propaganda constantly on display in America. Television, movies, and yes, music too. These powerful sources of influence often help to eschew the actual causes of worsening economic reality facing American families. In place of the culprit is the tradition of scapegoating groups of workers who have combined into unions.

            Even the casual listener should annoyed by contradictory media themes that belittle their intelligence and proclaim “unions are too strong” and “unions are too weak”. By the time most Americans reach working age we have already been meticulously inoculated with classic anti-union catch phrases that echo “unions are for lazy workers”, “unions were good in the past but we don’t need them anymore”, and “all unions are corrupt and run by thugs”. These often repeated mantras are not only misconceptions, but the product of a long running campaign of influence against labor and its allies by some in the elite and wealthy power structure. Critics often neglect to mention the vital part unions play in empowering workers and democratizing the workplace. Now even some of the most strident anti-union journalists have been forced to recant: http://nyti.ms/1aQGHTs

        We are expected to ignore the consistent sacrifices and givebacks members give to allow struggling businesses to survive in bad times and forget the contributions to the success that they achieve in good times. If you did not receive a formal education on labor, you are not alone. If you are not a part of a union family or in a union yourself, chances are much of what you are about to read will be new to you. A large sector of contemporary scholarship has neglected to accurately document the major battles being waged for and against workers’ rights. As a result simple facts about labor history have become uncommon knowledge.

        Despite these handicaps, the labor movement has struggled to organizing to maintain and increase workers’ economic standing even with private and public union membership at all-time lows. Only with a strong understanding of what labor unions mean to American economic interests one can attain a clear vision of the checks and balances a strong trade union movement provides. A nation without such a movement means there will continue to be a powerful unrestricted elite class with no force to countervail its push for political and economic dominance. Without a thorough education on the history of struggles by working men and women in search of freedom from exploitation, our society is left without key tools of interpretation. Tools that are badly needed to understand oppression internationally and in our own backyard. 

        In the absence of clear understanding by empowered workers, the media can morph a group of middle class teachers and bus drivers forced by circumstance to strike, into an inconvenience for parents and danger to children. A sanitation workers’ strike can be warped into a public safety issue, and public workers can be branded as an unneeded expense and symptom of a dysfunctional bureaucratic government.  Despite these distortions, with a proper education on labor’s role in the creation of the American middle class average citizens will be empowered to easily refute lies, reverse American economic decline, and take a leading role in a revival of the global Labor Movement. If history is any indication, Teamster represented workers will be leading the charge. Keep reading and find out how we got to where we are today, as we plan take control of our future.