Carey victory in Teamster election reveals anger of American workers
1992Hal Mercer 1992-01Read it in the scan (PDF at ETOL), page 1 →
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In the most important election facing working people in the United States for decades, the reform movement in the 1.56million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) has just won a resounding victory.
In the first-ever direct election of the union president and General Executive Board (GEB), the dissident Ron Carey slate, backed by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), soundly beat two slates fielded by divided old-guard officials.
The Wall Street Journal of Dec. 12 noted that "many trucking and other employers, whose workers belong to the Teamsters, are worried that if Mr. Carey is elected, he will be an uncertain quantity, unwilling or unable to control increasingly rebellious troops." The victory of the Carey slate is in fact a body blow to the Teamster bureaucracy and to business unionism.
The final count gave Carey 48.5 percent (188,883 valid votes) and the old-guard candidates, R.V. Durham and Walter Shea, about 33 percent and 18 percent respectively. The entire 16-member Carey slate was elected, leaving the incumbent leaders only three seats on the GEB that were uncontested by the Carey forces.
This is significant for all working people. The development of the rank and file's ability to fight back has always been blocked by the union bureaucracy. Its role has been to demobilize, demoralize, and corrupt the union membership. Hardly anywhere was this more so than in the IBT, which has seen a precipitous decline in (continued on page 3, in “[ACTioN Staff: Alex Chis, Paul Colvin, Gerry Foley…]”) 1 Carew S le ECE ELECT chate