Word: teamster
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...union has been so often investigated and exposed as the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America. As far back as the 1950s, it was dissected by the Senate McClellan committee-which later branded it a "hoodlum empire"-and thrown out of the AFL-CIO as a pariah unfit to live in the house of labor. Since then, it has been the target of endless grand-jury investigations and many exposes of Teamster-Mafia deals, and some of its officers have been jailed; James R. Hoffa ran the union from a cell in Lewisburg federal penitentiary between...
Long Reach. Mass unemployment is causing many Teamster locals to lose dues-paying members, but overall the union is still growing. It is the nation's largest (2.2 million members), richest and most aggressive labor organization, with a stop-or-go hold over deliveries of everything from automobiles to bread. Over-the-road, long-distance truck drivers are still the well-paid Teamster elite (average salary: $20,000), but the union has also largely fulfilled its boast to organize "everything aboveground on wheels." It represents drivers of almost every imaginable vehicle from ice cream trucks to hearses...
...Teamsters today are almost literally everywhere. They include brewers in Memphis, drawbridge operators in New York City, pipeline workers in Alaska, telephone answering-service employees in Boston. In Chicago, Teamster locals take up two full columns in the Yellow Pages of the telephone directory; they represent armored-car drivers, newspaper deliverers, gas-station employees, airline stewardesses and meat packers. The city's Local 727 goes by the somewhat unbelievable official name of "The Auto Livery, Chauffeurs, Embalmers, Funeral Directors, Apprentice Ambulance Drivers and Helpers, Taxi Cab Drivers, Miscellaneous Garage Employees, Car Washers, Greasers, Polishers and Wash Rack Attendants Local...
...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...