The following excerpt is from the appendix to Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs, entitled “How the Teamsters Union organized independent truckers in the 1930s.” In it, Dobbs describes how the class-struggle leadership of the Minnesota Teamsters worked to win owner-operators to the labor movement, and in the process differentiate them from fleet owners and other exploiting layers in the trucking industry. The article was first published in the Militant in response to the February 1974 strike by owner-operators in the United States. Teamster Politics is the third of a four-volume series by Dobbs, a leader of the Minnesota Teamsters during the 1934 strikes, the campaign to organize over-the-road drivers, and other Teamster-led battles in the Midwest throughout the 1930s. Dobbs was also a leader of the Socialist Workers Party. Subheadings are by the Militant. Copyright © 1975 by Pathfinder Press, reprinted by permission.
 

Comparable trends developed within private industry. Firms having their own ?eets of trucks often kept a surplus of rigs on hand by hiring independent owner-operators, who usually found themselves payless—despite the time put in—when they were not actually hauling something. Fluctuations in business volume were thus compensated for at the expense of the owner-operators and to the profit of the ?eet owners. Broker setups appeared in the form of companies that relied entirely on individual truck owners to move goods. In such cases virtually the entire overhead cost of trucking operations was shoved on to the owner-operators, thereby impairing their capacity to earn a living. These and other practices of a comparable nature held sway in coal and ice delivery, construction hauling, motor freight, and elsewhere in transportation.

Immediate profit-taking along these lines was not the only object the capitalists had in mind. Advantage was sought from ambitions that developed among independent owner-operators to expand their holdings and go into business for themselves. Illusions were fostered that such prospects were open to all individual owners, so as to trick them into identifying themselves with the problems of management. To the extent that the scheme worked, divisions were sown between owner-operators and the drivers of company fleets. Unionization of the industry was thereby impeded; the laws of the open-shop jungle could better prevail; and the trucking bosses were able to wax fatter in all respects.

These dangers to both categories of drivers were further accentuated by misleadership within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Little attention, if any, was paid to the problems of the owner-operators. Although sporadic efforts were made to organize ?eet drivers, IBT policy was so ill-conceived and so poorly executed that not much headway could be made in that sphere either. As a result, the union remained weak, at best, and in several important respects it was quite impotent.  
 
Class-struggle policy
Such were the prevailing conditions throughout the trucking industry when Trotskyists in Minneapolis began to win leadership influence within the IBT during the second half of the 1930s. In shaping our overall class-struggle policy, close attention to the independent owner-operator question was included. We began by taking full account of the realities of the existing situation. Drivers owning their own trucks had become a factor of major dimensions within the industry. To consolidate the union power, they had to be brought into an alliance with the ?eet drivers. Before that could be done, however, a course had to be developed that would serve the owner-operators’ interests.

Careful examination of all the factors involved convinced us that those owning one truck, who did their own driving, should be approached by the union as fellow workers. Proceeding accordingly, we set out to organize as many of these individuals as possible. They were then extended the democratic right to shape the demands that were made upon their employers, the leasing companies. On that basis the union as a whole followed through by backing them in struggles to improve their take-home pay.

The validity of that policy was confirmed by its results. In the major struggles of that period against the trucking employers generally, the union’s owner-operator members served loyally. They volunteered their trucks to transport pickets and shared in the picketing. A significant number of our casualties in battles with the cops were from among this category of workers. After the union had been consolidated, they continued to play a constructive role. Like other members of the organization, they looked upon those of their own kind who took an antilabor stance as finks and dealt with them accordingly.

Our course had checkmated the divisive schemes of the bosses. In Minneapolis the truck drivers and allied workers had emerged as a power, and the union was able to march forward in advancing the interests of all its members.

These experiences became an important asset when we launched an organizing drive in the over-the-road industry in 1938. There we found an even more complicated situation concerning independent owner-operators. Firms holding carrier rights issued by the government employed many of these independents, paying them flat rates by the mile, ton, or trip for rig and driver. It was truly a cut-throat setup. Diverse methods were used to heap inordinate trucking costs upon the owner-operators, thereby shaving down their earnings as drivers. At the same time, devious patterns were woven to confuse the true nature of the employer-worker relationship and turn the individuals involved in an antiunion direction.

Propaganda attacks were launched—especially by legal tricksters claiming to speak for the owner-operators—which were calculated to discredit the IBT campaign. One such blast came from David I. Lipman, who purported to head a “Truck Owners and Operators Association.” Through an article in the December 1939 issue of the Transport Driver, a publication circulated among owner-operators, he sharply criticized Teamster Local 710 of Chicago. He charged the union with “lack of regard for the truckmen’s interests” and claimed that the IBT had no right to represent his clients.

John T. O’Brien, then head of Local 710, asked me to prepare a statement for the local in reply to Lipman. I did so and sent the draft to him on January 3, 1940. It contained an extensive account of the owner-driver situation in over-the-road trucking. Concerning the confused patterns of employer-employee relations in the industry, the statement said:

“The individual owner-operator is by the very nature of his position a composite in one degree or another of the two distinct factors in the over-the-road motor freight industry—the owners of trucks and the drivers. There is a more or less clearly defined category of individual owner-operators, and there are other categories called by that name but who are in reality something entirely different.

“There is the individual who owns one truck which he himself drives. Ordinarily he operates under lease in the exclusive service of one operating company. He represents the owner-operator type of driving service in its purest form and deserves the fullest measure of consideration for his special problems.

“It must also be recognized that even in this group there is a tendency to operate free-lance on a catch-as-catch-can basis. These individuals who operate in this manner are commonly referred to as gypsies, skimmers, wildcatters, etc., and are found hauling for one company today, another tomorrow, and the next day trying to drum up business as a one-man company. They are a serious problem to the industry.  
 
Owner-driver-employer
“Even the most clearly de?ned type of owner-operator has a general tendency toward expansion, and the individual frequently becomes the owner of additional units of equipment. During this gradual process of accumulation he will first acquire one or two more pieces of equipment and will employ men to drive these while he continues as a driver of one of his units. As he continues to accumulate units he hires more and more men. This process transforms him into a combination owner-driver-employer.

“Finally he acquires enough equipment and hires enough men so that he must devote all or nearly all of his personal time to the problems of the management of his operations. He then is no longer in any sense a driver and is transformed into the status of an owner of trucks and an employer of men who does business with an operating company as a small ?eet owner who hauls by subcontract under a lease system. Yet he continues to pose as an individual owner-operator and is erroneously posed as such by many others. We thus arrive at the ridiculous circumstance whereby, assuming such an individual to be the employer of ten men, which is not uncommon, the group is referred to as eleven individual owner-operators instead of being identified as an employer and ten employees, which is the true state of affairs.

“Occasionally a small ?eet owner succeeds in acquiring the necessary operating certificates and permits and enough direct accounts to enable him to abandon his service under lease to an established operating company and to launch his own company. This action, which represents the realization in fact of the secret ambition of every ‘gypsy’ individual owner-operator, brings into the full light of day the true nature of the employer-employee relationship between the small ?eet owner and the men who drive his trucks.

“It now becomes clear how many operating companies have cleverly devised a scheme whereby they obtain driving service at substandard wages. The drivers are held in a state of continuous confusion by the ever-changing employment and equipment ownership relations between the drivers and small ?eet owner on the one hand and between the small ?eet owner and the operating company on the other. The operating company evades all responsibility for employment relations with the drivers by hiring through the small ?eet owner, who in turn far too frequently pays for driving service at varying substandard wage rates by a wide variety of methods.”

With reference to the scope of Teamster jurisdiction in dealing with this situation, the answer to Lipman asserted:

“A man who owns the truck which he drives is merely an employee who is required to furnish his own tools as a condition of employment. He has a full legal right to be represented by a labor organization. The IBT will not relinquish this right, nor will it permit the issue to be confused by parading in alleged individual owner-operators who are in reality something entirely different. The true nature of these masqueraders has already been carefully de?ned above… .

“Those who are genuinely interested in the problems of the men who drive motor freight trucks across the highways will recognize that the IBT is approaching the problems of the individual owner-operators with the same serious consideration that it gives to the problems of the employed drivers [drivers employed on company-owned ?eets]. The proper place for the individual owner-operator to get effective results is in the ranks of the IBT, shoulder to shoulder with the employed drivers.”

An area committee, composed of representatives from key local unions, had been set up to lead the Teamsters’ over-the-road campaign, to which Lipman and his kind were opposed. In dealing with the owner-operator question the committee had a clearly formulated perspective from the outset. The aim was to require leasing companies to pay individual owner-operators the cost of operating their equipment, plus its replacement value, plus the union scale as drivers.

It will be noted that the union was concerned only with the cost of operating the equipment, not with helping to secure any pro?t from the operation. If we had supported any notion of earning a pro?t on the vehicle itself, impetus would have been given to the petty-bourgeois aspirations inherent in the ownership of trucking equipment. Our aim was the opposite. We approached the equipment as expensive tools the individual owner-operators had been required to provide in order to get jobs as drivers. This served our objective, which was to make the leasing companies pay for the use of those tools, as though they were the owners. That would reduce their advantage down to having the owner-drivers buy the equipment initially, and there wouldn’t be much percentage for the operating companies in such an arrangement. To the extent that we could succeed in that course, the trend toward an increase in the use of owner-operated rigs could be reversed; and a healthier situation could be established, with trucking firms again using their own ?eets, operated by drivers paid on a regular wage basis.  
 
Fleet drivers win gains
In striving toward that goal we were aided by gains registered in securing higher wages and better conditions for ?eet drivers. Those accomplishments were noted by the owner-operators, many of whom began to realize that they, too, would be better off as ?eet drivers. As matters stood, however, they needed immediate help to secure the cost of operation of their equipment. In the rebuttal of Lipman’s allegations, union policy on this matter was described as follows:

“Payment for equipment service has been computed in a wide variety of forms, consistently to the benefit of the operating company and to the detriment of the owner-operator.

“Whatever the declared rate may have been, an elaborate system of deductions made the real earnings something considerably less. Almost all of the hazards of the road, including cargo damage and equipment layovers, not to mention personal layover expense, were transferred by the operating company onto the shoulders of the owner-operator. Fake charges for ‘spotting,’ ‘backup,’ ‘inspection,’ etc., further reduced his income until the owner-operator received very little actual compensation in the form of earnings which could be taken home to meet the household expenses.

“The IBT has again in this case sought to attack the problem at the root. Equipment service must now be paid for the full mileage operated, and there can be no deductions by the operating company for any reason whatsoever. A statement of legitimate charges may be presented to the owner-operator. However, if they are not legitimate he protests in advance of payment and is no longer in the position of trying to get money refunded which was improperly withheld from his pay.

“The operating company is now required to provide insurance, certificates, permits, travel orders, out-of-state vehicle tax, bridge tolls, etc., and to pay any legal charges involved if these are not properly provided. The owner-operator has been freed from the gouging methods of those companies which made compulsory the purchase of gasoline, oil, tires, repairs, etc., through a company agency, with an unearned pro?t extracted by the company at the expense of a further reduction in the owner-operator’s earnings.”

Apart from the cost of equipment operation, the union required that individual owner-drivers enjoy the same wages and conditions as all other drivers. These earnings had to be paid separately from money received for rental of equipment. This made it harder for the leasing companies to cheat the individual owner-operators. A passage in the reply to Lipman outlined the union’s approach:

“The International Brotherhood of Teamsters has sought through the new Area Over-the-Road Contract to correct this condition by placing employment responsibility where it rightfully belongs—on the shoulders of the operating company, which is now held responsible for the driver’s wages, social security tax, compensation insurance, etc., regardless of whether he is employed by the operating company or through a small ?eet owner.

“Not least in importance in the general problem is the driver who is given a paper title to the truck by the operating company, usually on a deferred payment plan, and is then paid as an individual owner-operator, not as a legitimate business relationship, but as a subterfuge to escape the payment of the union wage scale.

“Thus we find that while there are men who drive as actual individual owner-operators and who have a real employment problem, there are other categories incorrectly referred to as owner-operators who vary, in different shades, from the truck driver who is being cheated out of his just compensation by the subterfuge of a fake truck sale, to the individual who is in reality a small ?eet owner and an employer. If we intend to be logical we must begin by recognizing that the ?rst problem for the individual owner-operator is to identify the malpractices committed in his name by the operating companies and then join hands with the employed drivers for their mutual protection.”

As can be seen from this sketch of the earlier situation, progress was being made in shaping a viable policy toward independent owner-operators in over-the-road trucking. But the process was suddenly cut short when the Trotskyists were witch-hunted out of the IBT and its leadership in 1941.  
 
Teamster bureaucracy
Since then the Teamster bureaucracy has reversed the trends we had set into motion. Democratic procedures used by the union’s area committee in the pre-1941 period have been replaced by dictatorial methods in the present-day IBT conferences. More concern is shown for the wishes of the employers than is manifested toward the needs of the workers. The problems of the ?eet drivers are neglected in many respects. At the same time, there has been an increasingly pronounced growth of independent owner-operators; and the union officialdom has little inclination and even less ability to cope with the situation.

As a result, the owner-operators are ceasing to look upon the IBT as the organization through which they can undertake to alleviate the difficulties now confronting them. Those who remain members of the union are tending to organize themselves into factions, which act independently of the Teamster bureaucrats and, to an increasing extent, in cooperation with nonunion groups of owner-operators. Formations of this kind are springing up in various parts of the country. Cut loose as they are from trade-union in?uence, factors that cause individual owner-operators to dream of becoming small ?eet owners assume greater weight in the shaping of their policies. The negative aspects of that outlook impair the interests of all over-the-road drivers at a time when the union has become enfeebled because of bureaucratic misleadership.

Under those circumstances it becomes possible for the big trucking firms to mount a major attack on the IBT by maneuvering to intensify the hostility of owner-operators toward the organization. To the extent that they succeed in promoting such antiunion bias, every worker behind the wheel of a truck—owner-operators and ?eet drivers alike—will be the ultimate victims. Only the bosses will be the gainers.

This danger can be averted through a shift in union policy toward application under modern conditions of the basic course that was being shaped prior to 1941. That would block the bosses from splitting the owner-drivers away from the organized labor movement. Instead, the catch-all category of independent owner-operators could be separated into its component parts. Individual owner-operators could be brought back into effective alliance with the drivers of company ?eets. Small ?eet owners, who masquerade under the designation “owner-operators,” could be sorted out and placed in the employer category where they belong. Class lines within the industry would again become much clearer, and the workers would be in a better position to fight collectively in defense of their mutual interests.

There is an objective potential for such a turn in union policy that is manifested in diverse, confused form within the present opposition to the Teamster bureaucrats. What the situation now requires is the shaping of a course of action in support of the workers’ just demands, aimed in the ?rst instance at the bosses and their government. Within that framework, steps can be taken to oust the IBT bureaucrats from office, establish democratic procedures within the union, and make it a fitting instrument to serve the workers’ cause.

Achievement of those ends requires an oppositional formation at all levels of the IBT based on a class-struggle program and capable of using class-struggle methods. Every militant worker and especially the socialists among them should be on the alert for realistic openings to help get such a movement started.
 
 
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