Teamster Bureaucracy [Hardcover]

Farrell Dobbs (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0913460524 | ISBN-13: 978-0913460528 | Publication Date: June 1977 | Edition: 1st

The last of four books on the 1930s strikes, organizing drives, and political campaigns that transformed the Teamsters union in Minnesota and much of the Midwest into a fighting industrial union movement. Written by a leader of the communist movement in the U.S. and organizer of the Teamsters union during the rise of the CIO. Indispensable tools for advancing revolutionary politics, organization, and effective trade unionism. Teamster Bureaucracy tells how the rank-and-file Teamsters leadership organized to oppose World War II, racism, and government efforts -- backed by the international officialdom of the AFL, the CIO, and the Teamsters -- to gag class-struggle-minded workers.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Pathfinder Pr; 1st edition (June 1977)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0913460524
• ISBN-13: 978-0913460528
• Shipping Information: View shipping rates and policies
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #10,393,460 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5 stars This book should be in every worker's library, October 7, 2002

By 

Harvey (Chicago, IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teamster Bureaucracy (Hardcover)

This is the fourth in the fascinating series of books on working class struggles in the 1930s, centering on the strikes and organizing by drivers and warehouse workers in the Midwestern states. Farrell Dobbs was a young worker in the Minneapolis coal yards who quickly became a leader of these strikes and organizing campaigns, as well as a member and then leader of the Socialist Workers Party.
The first three volumes (Teamster Rebellion, Teamster Power, Teamster Politics-- don't miss them!) take up the important strikes in Minneapolis in 1934, the subsequent over-the-road organizing campaign throughout the upper Midwest, and the vital and complex political challenges militant workers took on in confronting the employers, their government, cops and finks, and reactionary, class-collaborationist trade union officials.
Teamster Bureaucracy draws some of the broadest lessons for working class fighters from those years of struggle. Facing the intense political pressure of the opening years of WWII, the Stalin-Hitler pact, frame-ups by the FBI, the drive by Teamsters international president Daniel Tobin (aiding and aided by the Roosevelt administration) to crack down on militant local unions -- this book is full or rich experiences we can learn from today. It should be in every workers library!

5.0 out of 5 stars how a fighting union was housbroken, September 29, 2002

By 

Martin Boyers (Pittsburgh, PA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teamster Bureaucracy (Paperback)

The major industrial unions rose from almost nothing to massive powerful organizations in the mid to late 1930s. They were social movements in the broadest sense. They led powerful strike mobilizations, galvanizing the hopes of not merely their own members, but other workers, the unemployed, family farmers, and others. By the 1950s, U.S. union structures had become a prop of capitalism, both domestically and internationally, ruled by officialdom as corrupt and disloyal to workers as can be found on any corporate board. How did the fighting unions become their opposite? Farrell Dobbs, a Minneapolis Teamster and leader of the famed 1934 Minneapolis general strike, and later of the Socialist Workers Party, describes how the militancy of his union was confronted, and smashed, in the prelude and opening of World War II. He also explains the lessons to be learned by today?s militant workers.

5.0 out of 5 stars Workers fighting War,Bureaucrats Roosevelt fighting workers, September 28, 2002

By 

Tony Thomas (SUNNY ISLES BEACH, FL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Teamster Bureaucracy (Paperback)

With a war drive on in the US today, we need the lessons of the battles in this book by the militant teamstesr of the Midwest, especially Minneapolis in 1940 and 1941, fighting against Roosevelt's war drive, and its clamp down on union rights. Dobbs was the general organizer, a man who helped turn the Teamsters into an industrial union,together with other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and the Minneapolis teamsters. They built a militant movement that included not just union members, but farmers, the unemployed and many other working people. Dobbs and the militant teamsters and the Socialist Workers party refused to give up with the Teamsters bureaucracy and the Roosevelt administration tried to jail and persecute them and drive them out of the union. This is about that fight. Particularly poignant is Dobb's depiction of his last conversation with Teamster's boss Tobin. Tobin dangled a secure position as an IBT international leader before Dobbs, a working man with young daughters. The path of resistance could and did lead Dobbs to prison. Yet, he explains why he chose to fight and continue to fight the rest of his life, long after Tobin had been forgotten. We need this book to fight the war that is coming!

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