|
Lean
Years: Teamsters and the Depression
The catastrophic stock market crash of 1929 triggered
a chain of misery and despair in America. As banks collapsed, the
unemployment rate jumped from three\ percent to 25 percent. The
Depression hit Teamster locals hard. By 1933, Teamsters membership
rolls hit a Depression-era low of 75,000.
In Response, the union redoubled its efforts to organize
the far-flung and fast-growing over-the-road trucking industry.
Under the leadership of Minnesota's Farrell Dobb's, the Teamsters
used a "leap-frogging" organizing approach. The keystone of this
approach was the control of truck terminals, from which truckers
could be organized to press for area-wide bargaining and uniform
wages and working conditions. In two years, Teamster membership
jumped to 146,000.
Teamsters also embraced President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
FDR expressed a deep concern for the plight of the "forgotten man"
and introduced and won a passage of a series of legislative initiatives
designed to pull the country out ofthe Depression. In these efforts,
Roosevelt relied on the leaders of organized labor, especially Teamsters
General President Dan Tobin, to make his case.
The National Recovery Administration (NRA) was the
crux of Roosevelt's legislative plan. It established minimum wages
and maximum hours of labor for each industry. Hours were reduced
to spread employment over workers. FDR also won passage of the National
labor Relations Act. It also provided protection against management
interference or intimidation aimed at union activity.
World War II
Teamsters were an integral part of America's ultimate
victory in the Second World War, both by their contributions on
the battlefield and on the home front.
In 1942, President Roosevelt asked Teamsters General
President Dan Tobin to travel to Great Britain and report back on
how British unions were helping to win the war. On his return, Tobin
urged the American labor movement to emulate the British approach
of suspending all labor discord in the face of the Axis' threat
to world freedom. Roosevelt appointed Tobin to the National War
Labor Board, which had wartime jurisdiction to arbitrate any labor
disputes in which all the normal collective bargaining measures
had been exhausted.
A National Conference of Teamsters was formed to assist
in the economic and military emergencies facing the U.S. The conference
actively promoted war bonds and organized drives to collect scrap
metal and rubber to be used in military supplies. In 1943, Victory
Plaza was dedicated at the entrance to the Chicago City Hall in
tribute to these Teamsters efforts. Chicago Joint Council 25 was
responsible in that year for the sale of $6.5 million in war bonds.
Nationwide, other Teamsters locals, councils and conferences followed
suit.
Teamsters served on the front, too. By 1942, 125,000
teamsters were in the military. The Allied thrusts that led to the
defeat of the German Army would not have been possible without the
Teamsters who drove speeding trucks full of troops to the front.
|
