One thing I have not seen is a good report of how the TDU has been doing in elections at the local level in the last couple of years. TDU was making serious inroads in a number of locals just before and after the Carey election debacle, but I haven't heard much in the last year or two. That is probably the best clue as to whether Leedham has a chance in hell of dislodging Hoffa.
Nathan Newman nathan at newman.org http://www.nathannewman.org
----- Original Message -----
From: LeoCasey at aol.com
To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com ; pen-l at galaxy.csuchico.edu
Sent: Wednesday, July 11, 2001 4:50 PM
Subject: Teamsters, Hoffa Jr. and Rank Opportunism On The Left
I know that this e-mail will create some controversy, but I think that it is
a political issue that needs a full airing.
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 --
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