How Teamsters organized owner-drivers in '30s
The protests in Europe led by truckers, farmers, and fishermen against skyrocketing fuel prices have sparked debate on the role of drivers who own their trucks. Political forces opposed to the protests have tried to undercut widespread working-class support to the protesters by dismissing the owner-operators as "bosses." Class-conscious workers approach independent truckers as fellow toilers and seek to win them as allies of the working class.
The following excerpts are from the appendix to Teamster Politics by Farrell Dobbs, entitled "How the Teamsters Union organized independent truckers in the 1930s." 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.
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BY FARRELL DOBBS
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 fleet 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.
Common cause with employed drivers
In 1938, when the Minnesota Teamsters launched a campaign to organize over-the-road drivers, Dobbs wrote a reply to a leader of a "Truck Owners and Operations Association," who had criticized the Teamsters initiative. In the following excerpts of the appendix to Teamster Politics, Dobbs quotes extensively from that reply, analyzing the different class forces that go under the name "owner-operator" and describing the agreements the union wrested from employers.]
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"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....
"Even the most clearly defined 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 fleet owner who hauls by subcontract under a lease system. Yet he continues to pose as an individual owner-operator and is erroneously poses as such by many others....
"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....
"The proper place for the individual owner-operator to get effective results is in the ranks of the IBT [International Brotherhood of Teamsters], shoulder to shoulder with the employed drivers."
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