More On The Teamster Election (Post 2)

Richard Mellor

Afscme Local 444, retired

GED/HEO
3-29-22

I added this video of the debate between the two candidates for the Teamster presidency from September 2021 to my previous commentary on the Teamster election but this contribution is long enough that I have decided to post a follow up and include the video of the debate here but the reader might want to read the first part. I am 22 minutes in to the video so far and have to say something. Like politics in US society as a whole, these union leaders are united on one thing, Identity Politics.  And the center of that that is “diversity”. They boast about how diverse their executive boards are. This obsession with identity politics is what dominates politics in general in US society and emanates from academia and the petit bourgeois elements as a means of obscuring the class question and talking about class issues and what they will actually fight for. Apparently, there is no working class in the US, we are all middle class barring the rich and the poor.

 

Steve Vairma, candidate of the Hoffa Teamster Power slate says in answer to a question about organizing Amazon which both think is crucial, that what they would do different to the failed organizing drive at Amazon last year is that it’s important when organizing Amazon to have diversity and organizers that “…look like the people you are organizing.”  Obrien didn’t say anything really contradicting him because diversity, gender, color, race, religious views, etc. is the crucial issue remember. Obrien did add that what is different between him and his opponent is that the Teamsters needs to “negotiate strong contracts” with people they already represent. Not “concessionary contracts” he says because “why would people want to join” a union like that?” The scene on the news of tired negotiators, disheveled, sleepy eyed coming out of marathon negotiations at 2 am is crucial to convincing workers that their power is having the right talker, the right lawyer speaking for them. I have been through three grueling sets of contract negotiations and I can assure you that our rights, benefits and material well-being is not won at the negotiating table, but they can be given away there.

 

As I say, I was 22 minutes in to the video and that’s enough for now, but I will return after I’ve had a few words with St. Jude the Patron Saint of lost causes.

 

As I mention in the original posting, at the slightest inkling of a shift to the left (normally just electioneering) in the ranks of the right wing -bureaucracy at the helm of organized labor, some self-professed leftists and left organizations become overwhelmed with joy as they grasp for the slightest branch in the swamp in which this bureaucracy dwells.

 

Teamsters For a Democratic Union and Labor Notes, perhaps the most well known have both endorsed O’Brien and the “reform” slate as far as I can tell. I am not sure what TDU is but a fighting, militant rank and file opposition in the Teamsters’ union it is not. And while it is one thing to recommend to members that if these are the two choices, one might be a slight improvement than the other, it is also imperative to warn the membership to be cautious and point out why it’s just as likely things will stay the same without pressure from below and that building a genuine fighting rank and file opposition from the shop floor around a series of demands reflecting what workers need, and a strategy for winning them, is what is needed.

 

I was astounded to read this from DSA today:

“Decades of rank-and-file reform organizing by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU), including members of DSA, paid off last week when the militant O'Brien-Zuckerman Teamsters United Slate took charge of the 1.3 million-member Teamsters union. The historic election is the beginning of a new chapter for Teamsters who work at every choke point in the logistics supply chain: trucking, rail, airline, ports, warehousing, and more. In organizing meetings across the country, TDU members and other rank-and file activists are making plans to build on the momentum from the election and seize the opportunities ahead of us.”

 

I have to say, the Democratic Socialists of America leadership that has selected leading figures from academia, Labor Notes/TDU, former officials of the AFL-CIO and trade union bureaucracy and former left group gurus, to lead its trade union work, continues the role of cheerleaders and helping hands to the very same leadership that has brought organized labor to where we are today.  

 

One recent challenge to that entrenched leadership arose where none of us would have predicted in a million years and that is the teachers/educators  strikes and protests of 2018-19 that took place in West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Arizona and other states, mostly Republican strongholds with right to work legislation. In my view, the reason this occurred was that the trade union bureaucracy in these states was weak or non-existent and they were overwhelmingly rank and file led.  Had this movement arisen in states where the Democrats held sway, the union bureaucracy would have been able to crush them.

 

If you do a search on this blog under the teachers, education, strikes or public education labels you will find a lot of information on these developments as well as the massive teacher battles in Puerto Rico. The organizations swooning over the defeat of the Hoffa regime had the opportunity, given their resources to intervene in those teachers strikes, link the movement together and expand it.

In Kentucky in particular, a huge opportunity was lost as teachers, parents and allies fought hard against a right-wing pro-Trump state government. At one point the teachers’ union leadership called a press conference attended by leaders of Afscme, the Teamsters and SEIU and attacked the most militant forces in that battle. The teachers’ union leadership also failed to link the battle for their livelihoods and pensions with the communities of color, particularly in Louisville, and their efforts to stave off a gang ordinance that gave the police more power over the right to stop and frisk the youth in these communities. This weakened the teacher’s efforts as well by abandoning a potentially powerful ally.

 

On receiving the statement from DSA I thought it was a satirical piece but alas. It’s real.