Feb. 1, 1992
Conference
trade unions? July 18-19 Manchester Polytechnic Students Speakers include Arthur Scargill, Tony Benn MP Details: Carolyn Sikorski, 53a Geere Road, London E15 No. 15 den leadership of the massive US Teamsters union has been a defeated in elections Teamsters for a Democratic slate backed Union(TDU).
The reform slate was led by Ron Carey who won the Union President's position. The Carey against 129,538 and 71,227 for slate won 188,883 votes. two slates led by top union bureaucrats; there was a 28 per cent turnout.
Bill Urman of Minneapolis, newly-elected vice-president said: The rank and file want honest people running this union, and all the things that go with that; better representation, more responsive leadership, and contracts which aren't sellouts:
Notorious The Teamsters have been notorious since the war for being a corrupt, mafia-ridden union, delivering sweetheart deals to the bosses and organising scabbing operations most notonous Teamster actions was the systematic scabbing on the 1970s strikes of Latino agricultural workers in California. The Teamsters provided scab labour to keep the farms going. and assiste the police brutalising immigrant workers on the picket lines.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union is a 15-year old caucus, whose monthly joumal Cortoy Dispatch is distributed to 60,000 workers.
The Carey slate did best in the South and West, where the IDU has stronge local branches.
of eamsters voted in the Southern Conference (region) and TDU won around 54 per cent of the vote. in Teamster branches in Knoxville, Nashville and Memphis the TDU-backed slate won by 2-1.
Landslide
A similar icturi was epeated in the Western Cor ference, which the Carey slate weeping in the the picture was more mixed with many big branches linked to organised crime voting heavily against the reformers.
The reformers victory comes as a result of revulsion against both the mob links of the leadership and the large number of 'giveback' deals involving ac ceptance of wage cutting and loss of holidays.
No less than 171 full time officials each earned more than SIm a year under the old regime, through holding multiut the president's salary by 22 per cent and to end multpie posts.
As a result of these things union membership has fallen from 2,215,000 to 1,450,000. Teamster bosses have been acing government lawsuit: forced by government investigators.
There should be no illusions of the TDU. that the victory backed slate will make the class struggle trade union. The vote to oust the old bosses was poncks But the encouraging thing about the election victory was that it was led by a rank-and-file campaign and not by a group of dissident bureaucrats.
For the first time there is a woman, Diana Kilmury from British Colombia, on the executive. But the prospects for keeping the union out of the hands of the mobster bureaucrats in future depend on the ability of IDU to strengthen its rank-and-file organisation.
The new model Teamsters acetough challenges in the cur rent US recession. However the possibitiv is there for the in a series of industrial unions.
THE TORY press has already launched its pre-election blitz against Labour, obediently repeating the Central Office briefings that Labour is the party of high taxes. With the economy in endless recession, with unemployment rocketing, and after thirteen years of Tory government, Labour ought to be able to make an effecConservative ARE THE RICH ARE GETTING RICHER AND THE POOR GETTING POORER LIVE national infrastructure. no re-nationalisation of public utilities to ease the burden of escalating fuel, power and water bills; no promises of substantial investment in publicly-provided housing; and not a hint of major public investment in industry and the Extra taxes on the rich will be minimal. Anyone with the least intelligence is bound to ask whether Labour will actually makes things
as much a vote to clean up the union as to pursue militant
Teamster revolution to spill over into a resurgent fightback