Striking teamsters defend their picket line from anti-union police on the streets of Minneapolis, June 1934
— From the Minneapolis Historical Society (Public Domain).
“There was a war in Minneapolis:
-Farrell Dobbs, Teamster Rebellion (1972)
a conflict of poverty against wealth,
of labor against capital.”
by Jacob Bilsky
Western MA
On May 16th, 1934, Teamster Local 574 struck to win union recognition, job security, better work hours, and good wages for transportation workers across Minneapolis, Minnesota. Under the leadership of revolutionary socialists and militant union reformers, the strike shut down the city, overcoming government repression, and made Minneapolis a union town. In 1972, Farrell Dobbs, a socialist leader in the strike, wrote Teamster Rebellion, an account of the strike that demonstrates how the labor movement can win big even in times of crisis.
Revolutionary Roots
In the 1930s, Minneapolis was a center for transporting grain and farm equipment throughout the Great Plains and Great Lakes regions. During the cold winters, laborers in Minneapolis’ coal yards ensured residents could heat their homes. Workers in these coal yards were rarely organized. At the few union workplaces, union bureaucrats divided workers by craft (for example, representing truck drivers but not loaders) and collaborated with the bosses to keep wages down.
Members of the Communist League of America – the U.S. supporters of the revolutionary socialist Leon Trotsky – saw an opportunity to organize workers in the coal industry, regardless of their craft, into Teamsters Local 574. The socialist politics of union activists and strike leaders like Carl Skoglund and the brothers Ray, Grant, and Miles Dunne informed their approach to organizing every worker in the trucking industry into the same union, a practice called industrial unionism.
They launched a brief strike in the winter of 1933 to win union recognition for coal workers across the city. Bureaucratic union leaders prevented the winter strike from reaching its full potential by accepting an early, sub-par settlement from the companies. But calls from socialists to continue the fight inspired rank-and-file workers to take back their union from the bureaucrats.
The Working Class Takes Control
Local 574 organized a general strike in May of 1934, which spread beyond just the coal yard workers. The Teamsters invited truckers and warehouse workers across the city to join the union. The local set up a Women’s Auxiliary to involve the Teamsters’ families in coordinated strike support, like running the strike office, commissary, and hospital. The Teamsters allied with unemployed workers and the Farmers’ Holiday Association, an organization of small farmers opposed to exploitative loans and low crop prices. Together they formed a united front of workers and farmers hurt by capitalist policies, fighting to prevent scab deliveries and to strengthen the strike.
The industrial action became a general strike by drawing on the support of other unions and the broader working class. The strike shut down most stores and markets. The transportation of goods through capitalist employers ceased in the city. Instead, the Teamsters made an agreement l with farmers to transport produce to sympathetic grocers, ensuring the residents of Minneapolis could eat and that farmers could make a living. The union set up and maintained its own strike headquarters, which included a hospital, cafeteria, and garage for repairing vehicles they used for “flying pickets.”
The employers opposing Local 574 negotiated jointly through the Citizens’ Alliance, an organization of capitalists around the city that opposed unions, small farmers, and unemployment relief. The Citizens’ Alliance used police, deputized businessmen, and scab drivers to try and break the strike.
The union adopted militant tactics to protect against strikebreakers. When police attacked picket lines to escort scab deliveries, the strikers physically defended themselves. Workers donated their personal cars to form flying pickets, allowing the union to reinforce pickets and block scab deliveries at a moment’s notice.
The union nearly reached an agreement with the Citizens’ Alliance on May 25th but continued the strike when the employers stopped short of recognizing warehouse workers as part of the union. The rank-and-file Teamsters and revolutionary socialists committed to continuing the strike until all workers across the transportation industry had union rights and a good contract.
On July 20th, known afterward as Bloody Friday, police opened fire on strikers for trying to block a scab delivery. They murdered two strikers and injured at least 67 more. Six days later, the supposedly pro-worker Farmer-Labor Governor Floyd Olsen betrayed the workers by declaring Martial Law and deploying the National Guard to escort scab deliveries.
Nevertheless, the strike stood strong until August 21st, when the companies conceded to the union’s main demands. The Teamsters won union recognition for both truckers and loading dock/warehouse workers (covering about 61% of the city’s general trucking industry), reinstatement and amnesty for striking workers, and increased wages–including a higher minimum pay scale.
Lessons of the Strike
The 1934 Minneapolis General Strike shaped the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. It gave socialists in the union a base to organize long-haul truck drivers and take the fight to the capitalist class for better wages, hours, and working conditions across North America. The strike, along with the Toledo Autolite Strike and West Coast Longshoremen’s Strike in the same year, paved the way to found the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as a bastion of industrial unionism, which, for a time, represented an alternative to the bureaucratic, craft-based approach of the American Federation of Labor. Although the revolutionaries in the Teamsters later faced targeted attacks by the state, pro-business union bureaucrats, and even the mafia, their militant legacy lives on.
As UPS Teamsters prepare to strike this August, workers can learn from the 1934 strike. For Teamsters today to win a strong contract, it is up to the rank and file to build a militant strike and demand their leadership negotiate an agreement that makes real improvements in wages, benefits, and better working conditions. The entire working class must unite to support the Teamsters. The Independent Socialist Group is working toward this goal by organizing local solidarity committees and helping organize railroad workers to refuse to handle UPS freight. Like the 1934 strike, a decisive victory at UPS today could galvanize the entire labor movement.
Read more:
Railroad Workers United Calls For Solidarity Action with UPS Teamsters
Lessons from the 1997 UPS Teamsters Strike
Independent Socialist Group 