Word: teamster
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...such organizing success for so scandal-scarred a union? One reason, certainly, is the Teamsters' reputation for representing their members well. Some critics charge that the union some times neglects to press grievances for its members, and about a dozen retired Teamsters have filed lawsuits contending that the union brass in some areas illegally denied them pensions. But on the whole, the Teamsters do deliver the contract goods-and not only for truckers. Policemen in Vernon, Calif, had been getting 5% annual raises before they joined Teamster Local 911; this year the local won them a 16.5% boost...
Goon Squads. In addition, the Teamsters in their organizing campaigns can call on muscle. Sometimes it is physical. The union has never lost the aura of violence. During the struggle between the Teamsters and Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers of America in California, Teamster goon squads wielding baseball bats and chains have waded into U.F.W.A. workers, and in 1973 a U.F.W.A. picket was killed by shots from a passing...
More often these days, though, the muscle is economic pressure exercised quietly by lawyers and skilled negotiators, and backed by the Teamsters' awesome power to shut down almost any company by cutting off truck deliveries. When faced by a recalcitrant manufacturer in the Los Angeles area, and increasingly elsewhere in the nation, the union subjects him to TEAM (for Teamster Economic Action Mobilization). Its essence: a quiet warning to retailers that if they continue selling the manufacturer's product, Teamster pickets will appear in front of the stores, carrying signs urging shoppers not to buy it. The method...
Organizing success and a mass membership bring political power. Some 93% of the candidates endorsed by the Teamsters won in last fall's California state elections. Teamster President Frank E. Fitzsimmons, who succeeded Hoffa when Hoffa gave up union office several months before being released from prison, was close to President Nixon. Indeed, Nixon showed preference for the Teamsters, who supported him for re-election in 1972. Hoffa charged that the condition of his parole barring him from resuming union activity until 1980 was the result of a deal between the White House and the Fitzsimmons leadership...
Success also brings money-and money attracts the Mafia. Employers pump barrels of money into some 240 Teamster pension funds round the country. The funds' assets now total perhaps $4 billion; the Western Conference of Teamsters alone has a pension fund of $1.4 billion, fed by employers of 475,000 Teamsters in 13 Western states who contribute between $6 and $26 per member per week...