The Rise and Fate of a Movement

Steve Downs

Teamster Rank and File
Power, Bureaucracy and Rebellion at Work
By Samuel R. Friedman
First edition: Columbia University Press, 1982. New edition: Routledge, 2026, 314 pages, $61.99 paperback.

DID YOU KNOW that in the 1950s and 1960s, members of Local 208 of the Teamsters union in Los Angeles won substantial power on the job, and in their union, by organizing a movement of rank and file truck drivers independent of the union’s officers and structures?

I didn’t know either. After reading Teamster Rank and File by Samuel R. Friedman, now I do. In Teamster Rank and File (TRAF), Friedman tells the remarkable story of how working Teamsters successfully organized for more power and better conditions at work, and for more democracy in their union.

This is a new edition of a book originally published in 1982, based on field work Friedman did in the late 1970s. To the best of my knowledge, there aren’t any changes to the original chapters, no revision of arguments or conclusions. This reissue includes, however, a new introduction and some appendices where Friedman reprints articles he has written about how socialism might actually function.

(TRAF was reviewed by Nelson Lichtenstein in ATC 4-5, September-December 1986, An internationally known authority on AIDS and global health issues, poet and activist in solidarity with Ukraine, Samuel Friedman has published a number of articles in Against the Current, including “Attacks on Public Health: What and Why” in our November-December 2025 issue, ATC 239 —ed.)

The fact that the Local 208 rank and file movement took place in a union that was widely viewed as corrupt and gangster-ridden, where sweetheart deals with the employers were common, and whose top officers were the targets of investigations by both Congress and the U.S. Dept. of Justice, makes it even more inspiring.

Friedman roots this movement firmly in the structure, and structural changes, of the Teamsters and the trucking industry. In the 1950s, the members of Local 208 were local delivery drivers in LA. working in an industry where small companies predominated. As a result, competition among employers was high, and so each company wanted to avoid strikes or other disruptions that might cause them to lose business to competitors.

The Teamsters union was undemocratic and hierarchical, but the locals had a large degree of autonomy in dealing with local employers. In a national union that was highly factionalized, the members of Local 208, who were in a regional Joint Council that was anti-Hoffa, supported Hoffa to protect their autonomy.(1)

A key tactic the Local 208 activists used to build and exercise their power on the job was the 24-hour strike. At the time, their contract contained a limited right to strike for 24 hours over grievances. They used this right to disrupt, or threaten to disrupt, the business of individual carriers.

The strikes drew more drivers into the struggle, providing a school for how to wage effective strikes and organize wildcats. And, when they resulted in better conditions on the job, they demonstrated the power of organizing and fighting on the job to resolve problems, rather than leaving it to local officers to try to fix things through grievances or at the bargaining table.

Friedman describes how, while Local 208 drivers were building organization and power on the job, the industry and the national Teamsters union were changing in ways that undermined the conditions that had enabled Local 208 to do so.

Jimmy Hoffa pushed to centralize bargaining and move it away from local and regional agreements. In creating the National Master Freight Agreement (NMFA), he forced the industry to reorganize, resulting in the consolidation of many companies into larger units better able to endure the short, sharp strikes that Local 208 had come to specialize in.

At the same time, the NMFA led to greater centralization inside the Teamsters. Locals lost control over bargaining as more and more companies fell under the national agreement. This greatly weakened the ability of a single, strong local to gain better conditions for its members.

The success of the NMFA in consolidating both the freight contracts and the national union, was one factor that led to deregulation of the trucking industry in the late-1970s.

In the context of the rise in gas and diesel prices following the October, 1973 war in the Middle East, manufacturers who relied on trucking to ship their products pushed for deregulation to force the cost of shipping down. Deregulation led to the fracturing of the NMFA, the shuttering of many unionized carriers, the erosion of the IBT’s bargaining power, and the rise of a substantial non-union sector in the trucking industry.

1970 — National Trucking Wildcat Strike

In certain respects, the high point of TRAF is the national trucking wildcat strike in 1970. Friedman describes how the strike started and spread, and its effects on the bargaining table. He also discusses its particular characteristics in LA, where the employers, the union and the drivers all had considerable experience with wildcat strikes.

One consequence of the strike in LA was coordination between the employers and the regional IBT officers in the firing of some 500 drivers. These firings were a big part of why the wildcat was seen as a loss in LA, even while seen as a win by drivers in most of the country.

After the wildcat, Local 208 was put into trusteeship by IBT President Fitzsimmons (picked by Jimmy Hoffa as a placeholder while he was in prison). Friedman tells how the union activists worked to maintain their organization in the barns and on the docks and to resist the trustee’s deals with the companies as they tried to mitigate the effects of the trusteeship.

When the trusteeship ended and elections were held after almost two years, the trustee’s slate was soundly defeated and the activists regained control of the local. But the conditions under which the new officers worked were different from the 1960s, and so was their strategy.

The new officers, in Friedman’s view, were concerned that militant action on the job would lead to a trusteeship being imposed again. The 24-hour strike clause was eliminated in the 1970 contract. This removed a powerful tool that militants had used for building power at the job. The new Local 208 officers shifted from a strategy focused on building power at the job to a more legalistic one of greater reliance on the established grievance machinery.

“Apolitical Localism”

At various points in the book, Friedman raises what he sees as Local 208’s biggest strategic weakness — “apolitical localism.” What he meant by “apolitical” was generally less clear than “localism,” i.e, the choice to focus on organizing in their barns and in their local, and not to try to spread their workplace militancy to other locals or regions.

To him, this left them in a weak position to deal with the challenges and threats that could not be resolved on the job. In this paragraph from the chapter on the wildcat strike, Friedman highlights and fine tunes his criticism of Local 208’s localism:

“It is very hard to win a battle if one does not understand who one’s enemy is, or what are his chief characteristics. I was quite surprised at the strikers’ limited conceptions about their enemies. They saw the problem in terms of individual employers aided by ‘whores’ in high Teamster offices. In my opinion, this is wrong. Rather than individual trucking companies, their enemy is every company and industry in the country. Rather than individual Teamster officers, their enemy was the entire Teamster officialdom. Therefore, the strategies they relied on — the search for friendly Teamster Vice-Presidents and the attempts to pit the trucking companies against each other — were totally unsuited for the battle they were involved in. The situation required them, instead, to form an alliance with rank-and-file Teamsters, and indeed with other workers as well, wherever possible, and to shut down the whole country until they got their jobs back (and perhaps won other demands as well). Only when they moved in this direction, by shutting down the Bay Area and allying with radical students, did they crack their opponents’ stand on amnesty.” (158)

This is a clear statement of the challenges the strikers faced and the inadequacy of the strategies they pursued.

TDC and the Rise of TDU

Not long after the 1970 wildcat and partly because of it, Teamsters for a Decent Contract was formed, and then Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). Here was a clear answer to Local 208’s localism — and potentially, to the apolitical character of their organizing.

Friedman devotes a chapter to the rise of TDU and its potential to mount an effective challenge to the Teamster bureaucracy. He also flags what he sees as potential weaknesses or missteps in the years ahead. (Remember, TRAF was originally published in 1982.)(2)

He does not leave his discussion of TDU at a recognition that it has “solved” the problem of Local 208’s localism. He also discusses some of the challenges TDU already faced by the early 1980s and issues a caution on the possible “bureaucratization” of TDU.

Friedman argues that “electoralism” — the view that the key to changing the IBT lies in electing better officers — actually undermines the ability of Teamsters to remake their union along more militant and democratic lines. He points out the enormous pressures on reform-minded officers who are not supported by an activist base, organized to fight on their own behalf, to accommodate to the union’s ruling bureaucracy if they want to win grievances, protect jobs, get sanction for strikes, etc.

He gives the examples of “officers … elected on TDU slates in Flint, Boston, Oklahoma City and St. Louis, only to drop out of TDU and make their peace with the bureaucracy.” (219) He likens this to the experience in Local 208 once the reformers returned to office post-trusteeship.

Friedman doesn’t argue against trying to win office. He does, however, stress the need for organizing on the job, and for finding a balance between electoral campaigns and fighting the employer on the job that is weighted toward the latter.

After citing Ken Paff, TDU’s National Organizer at the time, that “election campaigns spark Teamsters to get involved in barn struggles,” Friedman writes, “My discussions of the pitfalls of electoralism are not meant to deny this, but aim to show that electoral activity alone will not do the job. Both winning office and a movement of wildcat strikes and other direct action are needed.” (219)

Absolutely right. But was anyone in TDU arguing that electoral activity alone could do the job?

In a section called “Preventing the Bureaucratization of TDU,” pointing to the “social and political forces that push toward accommodation and bureaucratization” (216), Friedman discusses what might lead to the bureaucratization of TDU. Writing before the federally ordered consent decree and the direct election of the IBT’s top officers, Friedman warns about electoralism, arguing that officials elected with the backing of TDU and remaining within TDU will bring with them “conservatizing forces … such as no longer working on the job, pressures from the legal system and the International against direct action, and the grievance process.

Friedman’s concern was that these could lead to TDU becoming a “loyal opposition” to the bureaucracy within the IBT. At the time, Friedman could not even imagine that TDU could form a relationship with International Presidents such as Ron Carey or Sean O’Brien, so did not speculate about the effect this might have on the group.

Looking Back

In a terrific Introduction to the new edition, Friedman reflects on the strategy that led to the formation of TDU; he considers the changes in the IBT and the trucking industry in the half century since he did the field work for the book. And he concludes that his concerns about the possible bureaucratization of TDU were justified.

He argues that TDU has gotten the balance between shop floor action and running (and winning) elections wrong. This has resulted in a shift toward electoralism as a strategy for change, leading to TDU becoming “a loyal opposition” as it made alliances with “honest activist” Teamster officers after concluding that it could not win a national election on its own.(3)

It seems to me that TDU did become more electorally oriented as the general level of workplace struggle declined and the IBT membership in freight was decimated. And TDU became something of a junior partner in the national leadership during the Carey and O’Brien administrations.

To understand this and to form a judgment, I think it’s useful to engage in some of the “counterfactual reasoning” that Friedman employs at points in the book. (16)

If TDU had focused on shop floor fights and organizing wildcats in the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s, would it have survived? Given the fate of every other attempt from the 1970s to build rank and file caucuses, I doubt it.

Does it matter? I find Freidman’s comments about the consequences of TDU’s possible demise too rose-colored. Writing In the early 1980s, he argued:

“At the worst, TDU could collapse. If the employers become too dominant, they can fire militants or close down activist barns. Other activists might be intimidated, or simply see TDU as ineffective and thus drop out. Even then, TDU would leave behind an enormously significant heritage. The thousands of workers who have built TDU, and learned how to organize and how to lead struggles in the process, would still be around. Some might be forced to leave the union and even the industries in which the Teamsters have jurisdictions (they might become leaders of struggles in other industries) but a core would remain to lead an increased struggle when this becomes possible. Indeed, a national network of activists in freight, carhauling, and other Teamster industries would continue. Then, even in the worst of cases, the rank-and-file movement would come out of these hard times better organized than it was in 1975.” (225)

Is it all the same if TDU had collapsed 20 or 30 years ago, or survived to shape the Consent Decree in the 1990s and lead fights against bosses in the 2020s? Is there a benefit to having TDU on the scene – even if one assumes it has become bureaucratized?

Again, since this is counterfactual reasoning, we can’t know for sure. But I think that Friedman (who at the time couldn’t know that the downturn in struggle at the workplace would last for decades) under estimates the demoralization, the intimidation, and the consequences for future struggle that the collapse of TDU would have entailed.

Just consider the effects of the firing of 500 workers in LA following the 1970 wildcat and extrapolate those effects across multiple cities and years.

Today’s Questions

The question of TDU’s bureaucratization is especially pressing now because of their endorsement of Sean O’Brien for IBT president. The new introduction was written before TDU’s decision, but I think it’s safe to say that Friedman would be critical of it.

The arguments for and against, and the vision of TDU that they imply, are beyond the scope of this review. Against the Current expects to have discussion of these issues soon. But the discussion over TDU’s support for O’Brien does relate back to Friedman’s criticisms of Local 208s “apolitical localism.”

As I’ve mentioned, for Friedman the existence of TDU solved the problem of localism. But he remains critical of TDU’s apolitical character.

In addition to the support for O’Brien and the organization’s failure to hold trainings on “how to organize and win political strikes,” he cites the efforts by the leadership of TDU to prevent discussion of the impending invasion of Iraq in 2002 and Israel’s war on Gaza and the occupation of Palestine in 2023.

Interestingly, Friedman acknowledges that these actions “are not unreasonable from the perspective of TDU’s long-term survival or its conception of itself as a union reform organization.” Still, he argues, “they would not be appropriate for an organization that saw itself as a rank-and-file movement organization or as part of a movement toward socialism.” (24)

While I think the distinctions Friedman draws between those types of organizations are too hard and fast — for example, there can be rank and file union reform organizations as well as bureaucratic ones — they are worth discussing, but beyond the scope of this review. Instead, I want to briefly touch on Friedman’s definition of politics.

A Concept of “Politics”

It’s not unusual to use a person’s or a group’s position on one issue or another to make an assessment about their politics. Friedman does this in the intro to the new edition. Did TDU train people in conducting political strikes? What did they have to say about the invasion of Iraq or the war in Gaza? But he had a more expansive approach in TRAF.

Beginning on page 250, he wrote:

“Local 208 activists never developed ‘politics.’ What I mean here is this: the workplace and the situation of a local union are very isolated. People see them as private matters, perhaps fighting for issues for the people involved but not ‘big issues’ that shape the whole society. Relatedly, the actors at the workplace and in the union are seen only as individuals, rather than as representatives of large social groupings like ‘capitalists’ or ‘union bureaucracy.’ ‘Politics’ means modes of thinking that break out of these narrow conceptions….

“Thus, for a Marxist, politics becomes a question of turning this potential solidarity into a real and active cooperation among the working-class against the employing class and against a governmental structure that supports this class.

“Thus, in conclusion, politics involves thoughtful approaches to situations, strategies, and issues, as well as outreach, alliances, and activism aimed at breaking everyday routine and drawing new people into the struggle.”

This definition of politics focuses on method and goals, rather than adopted positions. Thus, TDU’s support for O’Brien or against discussing the war in Gaza tell us little about whether or not TDU itself is apolitical. For that, we have to look at whether it has generally sought to turn “potential solidarity into real and active cooperation among the working-class the employing class…”

Using that definition provided by Friedman, it is not clear that TDU has become as apolitical as Friedman concludes that it has.

Teamster Rank and File is an engaging, valuable and useful book. This second edition should be widely read among worker-activists looking to transform their unions, their workplaces, and the society in which they live. I wish those of us in Transport Workers Union Local 100 who were organizing with those goals in mind between 1985 and 2005 had known about and read the first edition.

Notes

1. I found Friedman’s discussion of Jimmy Hoffa’s role in the IBT, how he played off the rank and file against regional leaders and built his reputation as a fighter for the members while lining the pockets of the top IBT officers especially enlightening. Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and pension fund fraud and sent to prison in 1967.
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2. In examining the growth of TDU, Friedman has a brief section on “The Social Context of Rank and File Organization.” Here he has an even briefer consideration of why TDU succeeded while a similar effort in the UAW at the same time, the Good Contract Committee, did not. This question of why rank and file organization takes hold in some situations and not in others is fascinating and important. Friedman offers some valuable thoughts on the subject.
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3. Friedman says this shift happened after the leadership saw the role Jerry Tucker, a regional director in the UAW, played in trying to make the UAW more militant and open to the influence of the rank and file. (19)
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July-August 2026, ATC 243