Vol. 76/No. 2      January 16, 2012

Below is an excerpt from Teamster Rebellion by Farrell Dobbs, one of Pathfinder’s Books of the Month for January. In the 1930s Dobbs was a central leader of labor battles in the Midwest. He later served as national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party. The excerpt describes how the second of three strikes by Teamsters in Minneapolis in 1934 was organized. Ray Dunne and Carl Skoglund were leaders of the Communist League of America, a predecessor of the SWP. The Citizens Alliance was the main bosses’ outfit. Copyright © 1972 by Pathfinder Press. Reprinted by permission.

BY FARRELL DOBBS  
Picket dispatching was assigned to Ray Dunne and me. This was Ray’s first official function in Local 574, although he had headed the Communist League fraction in the union from the start of the organizing drive in coal. Previously he had been handicapped by loss of his coal job which stripped him of a formal basis for union membership. Now, however, he was able to step forward as a volunteer supporter of the strike, along with hundreds of other individual workers. Many in the strike committee were aware of his impressive trade-union credentials, and he was given an important assignment accordingly.

Working beside Ray, as had been the case earlier with Carl Skoglund, impressed upon me the experience and education one gains through membership in a revolutionary socialist party. He knew a lot about conducting a strike, and like Carl, he taught me a lot about the team concept in leadership.

Ray was a superb combat leader with a clear sense of purpose, backed up by strong willpower and the ability to keep a cool head in critical situations. He not only taught by the example he set, never shirking either hazardous or minor tasks; he also gave others leeway for initiative, seeking only to safeguard against serious blunders. His criticisms were presented constructively with the aim of helping others to learn. Never a dabbler at anything he did, Ray tried to find some role for everyone who wanted to help….

As dispatchers, Ray and I were in charge of all picketing assignments and it was our responsibility to direct tactical operations. We had a special staff at our disposal to handle the telephones and operate a shortwave radio used to monitor police calls. Teenage volunteers with motorcycles were organized into an efficient courier service. Scooting around the city under strict orders to stay out of the fighting, they served as the eyes and ears of the picket dispatchers and as a swift means of contact with picket captains.

So many cars and individually owned trucks were volunteered that we had more than enough to achieve the high degree of mobility required in the strike. Trucks were used to transport stationary picket details and their relief shifts to truck terminals, the market area, wholesale houses, and other places where trucks normally operated. Picket crews also kept a vigil at points where the main highways crossed the city limits.

Cruising squads in autos were assigned, district by district, to sweep through the streets on the lookout for scab trucking operations. A captain was designated for each of these squads and for each detachment of stationary pickets. At all times a reserve force with the necessary transportation was kept on hand at the strike headquarters. In situations where large forces were involved, a field commander was appointed and a command post set up to coordinate activities and keep in touch with the headquarters.

Special cruising squads with handpicked crews were constantly at the disposal of the picket dispatchers. They were captained by qualified leaders who carried credentials authorizing them to supersede all other authority in the field. These squads were used for special assignments on their own, and they were sent into tense situations to marshal the union forces and lead the fight.

Assembling the mass forces for such extensive picketing proved to be no problem at all. As soon as the strike was called, new members poured into Local 574 from all sections of the trucking industry. In no time at all the union almost doubled its mid-April strength, reaching a figure of nearly 6,000. The union’s approach to the unemployed workers brought spectacular results. Hundreds upon hundreds of jobless poured into the strike headquarters, volunteering their services; and they fought like tigers in the battles that followed.

Unorganized workers from other industries came forward. Together with women and men from other unions, they came to the strike headquarters at the end of their day’s work, ready to help in whatever way they could. Deep in the night they would finally stretch out wherever they found a place to get a little sleep before returning to their jobs. A significant number of college students pitched in to help the union. All in all, pickets were on hand by the thousands.

A majority of the city’s population proved sympathetic to the strike and soon a spontaneous intelligence service was in operation. People telephoned reports of scab activities, and other information was mailed in anonymously, often with the postage having been paid by some unknowing employer. Typists, even personal secretaries, slipped in an extra carbon to make a copy for the union when a boss dictated something they felt the strikers should know about. Material arrived that had obviously been salvaged from wastebaskets, some of it coming from the offices of the Citizens Alliance itself….

While all this was going on, talk about joining Local 574 spread rapidly among fleet drivers at the Yellow Cab Company. When the employer got wind of it he tried to set up a company union and the drivers reacted angrily. On the second day of Local 574’s walkout they sent a delegation to the strike committee asking that they be allowed to take a hand in the fight being waged by the truck drivers and other workers.

Despite the existence of a miniscule local union of individual cab owners and their relief drivers, the strike committee agreed to sign up the Yellow Cab drivers. Cruising squads were sent out to notify all taxi drivers of a meeting at strike headquarters that night. Upon coming together they voted to go on strike, and within hours not a cab was to be found in operation.

As this episode graphically demonstrated, Local 574 had become a power to be reckoned with…. Nothing moved on wheels without the union’s permission.  
 
 
Front page (for this issue) | Home | Text-version home