Teamster Power

by Farrell Dobbs

The second of four books on the 1930s strikes, organizing drives, and political campaigns that transformed the Teamsters union in Minnesota and much of the Midwest into a fighting industrial union movement. Written by a leader of the communist movement in the U.S. and organizer of the Teamsters union during the rise of the CIO. Indispensable tools for advancing revolutionary politics, organization, and effective trade unionism. Teamster Power describes the growth and consolidation of the Teamsters union in Minneapolis and its class-struggle leadership, and the 11-state over-the-road organizing campaign that brought union power for the first time to much of the Midwest. Two 12-page photo sections and other photos, map, index Also available Spanish

Genres: Labor, Politics, History

Paperback

First published December 1, 1973

Reviews

[Jack · Rating 5 out of 5]

The modern union movement has a lot to learn from the Trotskyists operating within and alongside the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, beginning with local 574 (later 544), when it comes to rebuilding unions. They turned the Teamsters into one of the largest unions in the US, from 80,000 members in 1933 to 500,000 by the late thirties. And, they did it through dogged class struggle, member-led unionism, and revolutionary politics and tactics to bring the working class forward as a whole.

Farrell Dobbs, a US Trotskyist, was central to this project, which gives him considerable knowledge of the events that took place. His style of writing is also very engaging, detailed but not bogged down, and overall easy to read and informative. This is an important read for modern socialists and trade unionists to apply some of the generalisations of their union project to the organising efforts of today.

[Grant · Rating 5 out of 5]

An absolute classic work. Farrell Dobbs shows through this explanation of the history of Teamster Local 544 and their over the road campaign an method for union militants to use to contend with both their capitalist exploiters and their often unhelpful and complacent union bureaucrats. An absolute must read for any radical organizing in their union today.

Buy it used to avoid supporting the shameful corpse of the modern SWP

[Marc Lichtman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second volume of the 4-part Teamster series. It was intended to cover Dobbs' assignment by the Teamsters to what turned out to be an 11 state campaign to organize over-the-road drivers into the Teamsters. This campaign was based in Omaha, NE and Sioux City, IA, as well, of course as Minneapolis, MN. Naturally all kinds of issues keep popping up that aren't directly connected with the 11-state campaign but weren't covered in Teamster Rebellion.

Dobbs had originally counted on this being a trilogy, but when it came time to start on the third, he discovered that there were too many questions that he hadn't covered in the other two. One of these was forced into the book by events in the class struggle--the battle of owner-operators for decent wages and conditions.

There is some overlap between the second and third volumes (Teamster Politics (Teamster Series) by Farrell Dobbs, and some overlap between all of them, but it couldn't be avoided. And better to mention things twice than to leave them out of the narrative. The final book in the series is Teamster Bureaucracy.