In the last few weeks on LBO-Talk, someone made a comment, in passing, that suggested that Hoffa had not been such a bad leader of the Teamsters. I disagreed, but it didn't seem like it was more than a general impression on the part of the person or an issue of enough importance to pursue. In the last few days, however, another poster has sent to a number of left listservs a "report" on the Teamsters' recent Convention, which purports to demonstrate that the Teamsters under Hoffa are the most democratic and most successful of all American unions. Before this "report" becomes a basis for the verification of vague impressions, it is necessary to take a deeper look at what is going on here.
The report forwarded on the Teamsters was written by Greg Tarpinian of the Labor Research Association, a group which has been a primary front group of the Communist Party with regard to its labor movement work. It continues a pro-Hoffa perspective that the LRA and the CPUSA has held since prior to the election of Hoffa.
Why would the CPUSA take a position so contrary to the rank-and-file movement in the Teamsters Union? The answer is appallingly simple. The founders and leaders of Teamsters for a Democratic Union are, for the most part, Trotskyists, affiliated with the journal _Labor Notes_ and the organization Solidarity. Their Trotskyist roots go back decades to the original International Socialists group in the US. The CPUSA would rather team up with Hoffa Jr. then with a rank-and-file group led by Trotskyists.
Now, I do want to make it clear that there are criticisms one can make of how TDU has conducted the struggle within the Teamsters, and on other occasions, I have made them here on LBO-Talk. But it is one thing to criticize from a position of solidarity with the efforts to democratize and cleanup the Teamsters; an entirely different thing to join with those who oppose democratization and clean unionism.
There is no question but that Hoffa Jr. has been forced to make some major concessions on issues of union democracy, as the considerably more accurate report by David Moberg in _In These Times_ indicates. [http://www.inthesetimes.com/web2518/moberg2518.html] No doubt, too, TDU rhetoric about the imminent collapse of the Teamsters under Hoffa Jr. is hyperbolic. But there also is no question that every corrupt Teamsters' official and every organized crime element within the union supported Hoffa Jr. in the last election, and will do so again. There is no question that, whatever their faults, the future of union democracy and clean unionism in the Teamsters lies, for the immediately foreseeable future, with the TDU. It is rank opportunism of the worst sort that LRA and the CPUSA has teamed up with Hoffa Jr.
Leo Casey United Federation of Teachers 260 Park Avenue South New York, New York 10010-7272 (212-598-6869)
Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never has, and it never will. If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet deprecate agitation are men who want crops without plowing the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its waters. -- Frederick Douglass -- -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <../attachments/20010711/b16d0884/attachment.htm>