change in his thinking about the Teamsters bureaucracy. He intends fight to democratise the union.
In November, Carey said, At the 1992 inauguration I offered an olive branch to tac oliciais. at aran t work. I was wrong and I was naive. At the next inauguration, I'll be carrying a two-by-four".
Early in Carey's first term it was clear that he didn't want so-called political considerations to disrupt the orderly functioning of America's largest private sector union, now at 1.4 million members.
Then his opponents successfully defeated Carey's proposal to create a large strike fund by raising dues, publicly attacked him during na. tional freight negotiations and scabbed on the UPS strike. Carey ernor after Bloody Friday found that Police took direct action and fired to kill...Physical safety of the police wa: at no time endangered...No weapons were in the possession of the picket in the trucks".
These strikes resulted in a tre.
mendous victory for the labour movement. Together with the then took a historic step to strip the bureaucracy's leadership of $15 million in bloated salaries, pensions and perks.
Even so. Carey kept on or appointed many of the old guard's in the apparatus. Despite this, many of Carey's appointees straddled the fence during the fierce July convenaisappcarca into sac woodwork during the bruising election campaign, or openly attacked him. One Carey appointee even Carey has encouraged the ranks drives. But he weakened his own program by leaving much of the campaign to the local union officialdom, who have a vested interest in not mobilising members.
An important next step would be the creation of an internal Teaman organising drive by the fascist Silver Shirts as well as working for independent political action in the Parmer Labor Party and neping thi unemployed movement battle against the repression meted out by Roosevelt as the US prepared to enter the Second World War.
The war was to bring a decline in radicalism as the snug alliance of the union officials with Roosevelt lead to Organisations Act, they never expected that someone like Ron Carey could win the resulting elections, overseen by federal agents. They thought a more pliable representative of the old guard would win. Even then, the powers-that-be were not overly worried. They asleadership would bosses like other cials. They soon realised they had got more than they had bargained for. Not only did the new Teamster leadership remain determined to clean up corruption in the union, but it stuck to its militant reputation.
RICO and other seemingly benign legislation, and the bosscontrolled government behind it, are a real threat that Carey and other progressive forces in the unions must be prepared to confront. There's no way around it short of capitulation.
Ron Carey has shown by his record that he strives to serve his mem. bers and understands that bosses give workers only what they're SO O CaRe He has pledged to find a way to mobilise the ranks in every local union for an effective fight in their class interests and against all oppo. nents, inside and outside the union.
ate battle.
"Our exemplary fight in Minneapolis contributed to the fundamental education of the workers. Before it was over we had forced the demagogue Roosevelt to openly display his antilabor visage, thus exposing the capitalst government's true role in the class struggle. Similarty, the clash with Tobin laid bare the