The stepped up "anticorruption" campaign against the Teamsters officialdom and other trade union tops is a blatant response by the employing class to the recent strike by 185,000 Teamsters at UPS. The new elections were ordered just days after the strikers' victory against the parcel giant.

With this action, the rulers aim to intimidate workers who would try to fight for better wages, benefits, and working conditions. The move escalates the boss class's ability to poke into any union's affairs, decide who should be union leaders, and sap the unity and fighting strength of the labor movement.

It's important to remember how such government intervention has been used against the labor movement before. In the late 1930s, as the Washington was preparing for entry into World War II, 18 union militants of Teamsters Local 544 in Minneapolis and leaders of the Socialist Workers Party were railroaded to prison on federal charges of sedition. The socialists in that local had waged a campaign to organize trade union opposition to President Franklin Roosevelt's preparations for the use of workers as imperialist cannon fodder.

In addition, the government cooked up "embezzlement" charges against several of the local officials to try to get them ousted.

The bosses and big-business media are carrying out a major propaganda campaign to present themselves fighting against corruption within the union movement. Working people should not give one inch on this question. The internal affairs of a union belong to the members of that union. Working people should demand an immediate halt to the government investigation of the Teamsters, the reinstatement of the union's elected president, and an end to all government interference in union affairs.  
 
 
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