Teamsters Democratic

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Fighting for Better Working Conditions. Wives of Local 429 McLean members protesting management's harassment of dockworkers.

CHICAGO-"Save Our Contract, Rebuild Our Union" was the theme of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) convention held here Oct. 13-15. Over 450 teamsters gathered to listen to speakers and attend workshops on organizing the fight for a better contract, union democracy, and a stronger union.

While speakers and participants painted a sober picture of the situation facing teamsters today, they also lauded the recent successes of TDU in loosening president Jackie Presser's iron grip on the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). These mark a turning point for the largest rank-and-file movement in the unions today.

TDU was organized over nine years ago to address the crying need for democracy in the union. Today it has over 8000 members and is growing. It is organized, as its Rank-and-File Bill of Rights says, to fight for the direct election of international officers, business agents, and stewards; for a majority vote to ratify a contract instead of the 2/3 majority now required; for a five-day 40-hour week; for decent contracts and pensions; and for equal pay for equal work, equality among teamsters, and an end to discrimination.

Teamsters under attack

'Teamsters, like other workers, are on the defensive against employer attacks. The last few years have seen a decline in employment-100,000 teamsters in trucking and warehousing are out of work. Teamster membership, 2.2 million a few years ago, now stands at 1.9 million. The goal of the trucking companies is to ultimately break up the National Master Freight Agreement (NMFA), the national agreement between the Teamsters and the Trucking Management Incorporated (TMI-the employers' association).

In 1982, concessions were exacted from the union with little resistance by the international leadership. Wage freezes were instituted and cost-of-living adjustments were virtually eliminated. Many companies, using threats of competition from other truckers, other branches of the same company, and the railroads, succeeded in winning further local concessions.

In some local areas, such as Pennsylvania, relief riders established two-tier wage scales and permitted the expansion of the use of nonunion workers. This last provision allowed companies to LEA 14)

Ryder-PIE, Consolidated Freight, and Yellow. Thus it represents only the largest and most profitable companiesRoadway made $99 million in profits last year; Consolidated Freight made $56 million.

By all indications, the TMI wants a UPS-type agreement. In exchange for a one-time cash bonus, they seek to establish a national two-tier wage scale, expand the use of nonunion workers, and change what they call "unproductive" work rules. In addition, many small companies, talking poor, are for opting out of the national agreement altogether, hoping to cut an even better side deal. Only 29 companies-down from 125 for the last contract-have agreed to be represented by the TMI. And it seems likely that the international union will go along with this dismemberment.

TDU is mounting an aggressive campaign to mobilize the membership to defend the national agreement. It has been getting out information in contract bulletins, encouraging teamsters to go to their union meetings to discuss the contract, and distributing Convoy Disother work places-to the sectors that are generally lower paid and where minorities and women work in large numbers. Without this approach, they said, TDU will not be able to reach its goals.

Brainstorming locals

In the workshops and in the discussion on the floor, members at the convention talked about the work local chapters had done and the fights in which they had been involved. Several workshops dealt with such practical questions as the role of stewards; safety and health issues; and how to build TDU chapters, participate in union meetings, and run for union office. Others discussed labor history, redbaiting, and discrimination against minorities and women.

A member from California described TDU efforts at National Preserves to defend cannery workers against the management and "La Migra, the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). After one teamster was fired as nery Workers Committee mobilized support for the workers in the union and in the community to oppose this victimization, asserting that the cannery had neither the right nor the obligation to let the INS into the plant. The workers forced the INS to back off and, as a result of the struggle, a San Jose chapter of TDU was formed.

In New York TDU has been fighting a freight company's use of doublebreasting to discriminate against Latino teamsters. Spear Trucking set up a dummy company to avoid giving union rights and wages to some of its workers. TDU took up the cause of four teamsters, campaigning to make the case known and winning favorable decisions from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). The case was a clear-cut example of a company's racist practices—unopposed by the union officials-being used to undermine the A labor party The need for a labor party was raised, as it traditionally has been in TDU. Some speakers argued that the issues facing working people-from deregulation and unemployment to U.S. intervention in Central America-cannot be answered solely by contract fights.

It is well known in the Teamsters union that Presser endorsed Reagan's re-election to escape a court indictment. Some locals, including Local 743, the largest Teamster local, and their officers opposed this and supported Mondale. Unfortunately, TDU has been unable to intervene in this ferment to offer a way to organize labor in its own interest on the political level, separate from the bosses' parties.

On another front, between 200 and 400 teamsters organized by the international union picketed the convention in the name of B.L.A.S.T.—Presser's own goon squad. They picketed with signs claiming, among other slanders, that TDU was antiunion. They were unable, however, to disrupt the proceedings, as they had done at the previous TDU convention.

The TDU convention offered participants and observers an encouraging picture of the potential of rank-and-file workers. The long and patient efforts to organize a rank-and-file movement are clearly showing results.