The strikers are in for a hard fight. The Overnite bosses have turned to the courts in their effort to derail the strike. During the first week of November, a judge in Fulton County, Georgia, issued a 30-day temporary restraining order against the union, listing a series of restrictions against the strikers. This includes getting within 50 feet of company trucks and shouting "obscenities."

Striker Richard Merritt pointed out that the purpose of the restraining order is to "tie our hands," with the company hoping for a future injunction limiting the number of pickets, "in order to break our morale and cut down our visibility on the picket line."

Here and at struck terminals across the country, the solidarity of truck drivers and other unionists who are making this strike their own is key to keeping up the picket line and boosting strikers' spirits.

Bill Batson, a city driver at Yellow Freight in St. Louis, told the Militant he had walked the picket line at Overnite three times in the first two weeks of the strike. Batson, who was on strike at Yellow Freight in 1994, pointed out, "We won in 1994 because of solidarity. Yellow and other companies wanted to force us to accept conditions like those that Overnite has—including part-time workers on the docks, working on call for years."

The Teamsters walkout at Overnite began October 24 in Memphis, Tennessee, and the union reports that more than 2,000 workers are now on strike at 140 worksites. Although the company claims its business is only off 7 percent, a Teamsters press release cites company figures that indicate a 30 percent drop in Overnite's deliveries since the start of the strike. The trucking company has closed five of its barns: in Little Rock, Arkansas; Milwaukee; New Orleans; Laredo, Texas; and Rockford, Illinois.

Overnite, a subsidiary of rail giant Union Pacific, is the sixth-largest trucking company in the country. Workers have been waging an organizing campaign there for years. A majority of workers have voted to join the Teamsters at terminals representing 45 percent of the workforce of 8,200 drivers and loading dock workers.

Overnite bosses have bitterly resisted workers efforts to win union contracts, and have waged unsuccessful campaigns to decertify the union at 12 terminals. The company is currently trying to get a decertification vote called at the Grand Rapids, Michigan, service center.  
 

Solidarity on the picket line

In Atlanta, the main Overnite terminal is located among a cluster of warehouses and trucking companies, a short distance south of Confederate and Custer Avenues. There is a constant blaring of truck horns in solidarity with the strikers, from cars, pickups, and the freight trucks headed up the hill toward the Kroger warehouse or arriving at the ABF Holland terminal next door to Overnite.

The strength of the strike rests first of all in the resolve of the strikers to win this battle. Key to their determination is strikers' confidence that they are backed up by the many other workers who come to spend hours on the picket line. Joe, a trucker at ABF in New York who preferred to give his first name only, said, "This strike is monumental. If we win, then we can go after other companies like CCX, Old Dominion, and other nonunion companies." This 30-year veteran of the trucking industry walks the picket at Overnite's Deer Park, New York, terminal on Long Island. Joe said he tries to "teach these young guys I work with who haven't walked picket lines the importance of this strike and coming out here and giving their $5 per week to the strike fund. Right now my terminal is giving at the rate of 80 percent." There is a campaign for Teamster freight drivers to give $5 per week to the fight, picketers report.

Strikers and their supporters are also organizing to picket Overnite trucks as they make deliveries, spreading the word about their fight despite the virtual news blackout in the big-business press. Participants in these roving pickets report that union drivers from other companies often refuse to make their deliveries while there are picketers protesting the scab trucks (see article below).  
 

Government probes against Teamsters

On July 5, 1999, the Teamsters went on strike at six Overnite terminals to call attention to their fight, in Memphis, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and three terminals in the Atlanta area. After the one-week walkout the company charged the union with violence, and members of the U.S. Senate seized the time to intervene in union affairs.

In September Michael Enzi, Chuck Hagel, and Tim Hutchinson, members of the Senate Subcommittee on Employment, Safety and Training, sent a letter to Teamsters president James P. Hoffa, charging the union with a "pattern of violence" during the July strike. Overnite and its parent, Union Pacific, had lobbied for this letter, which accuses the union of carrying out potentially illegal acts in its organizing drive at Overnite. According to Traffic World, the senators called upon Hoffa to provide a detailed plan to rid the Teamsters of "mob control" and "to purge itself from criminal acts."

As part of avoiding racketeering charges in 1989, Teamsters officials signed a consent decree allowing the government to oversee the union's affairs. The government intervened in the union shortly after the successful Teamster strike against UPS in 1997 to remove the union president, Ronald Carey, from office.

Atlanta striker Frank Williams was one of many who reported that the company's anti-union campaign now included calling strikers at their homes, trying to sweet talk them into coming back to work — but he doesn't see many going back in.

With 26 years at Overnite, Williams recalled the different forms of company abuse that helped convince workers that they needed to fight and that they needed a union. He pointed to the fact that "there used to be three women drivers, but none are left because the company ran them off… But we're going to be here until Overnite does what it needs to do."

Mike Italie is a member of the Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees. Harvey McArthur in Chicago and Elena Tate in New York contributed to this article.  
 
 
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