Laying the Groundwork Before You Run
Your mother might have been right about that old “try-and-try-until-you-succeed” saw. That is certainly the case for the victory of Teamsters (IBT) reformers at Local 743 in Chicago.
Late last October, the New Leadership Slate swept to victory over the incumbents. It was the fourth election in over a decade’s time in which Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU)-affiliated reformers had tried to oust the old guard in the 12,000-member local.
Reformers pulled together the victorious slate after Local 743 officers were indicted by federal prosecutors last September (see Labor Notes October 2007).
Since first launching opposition efforts more than a decade and a half ago, dissidents in the local have been fired, beaten up, and forced to watch as previous officer election victories were tossed out. But supporters of the reformers don’t focus on making this a simple morality tale about keeping your chin up until you win. Instead, they talk about how building durable rank-and-file organization and leading workplace fights years before an election can pay off in the end.
ORGANIZATION THAT LASTS
Running for office, ironically enough, is not where budding reformers should start when running for office. Longtime reform group TDU counsels in its popular booklet Running for Local Union Office to look at elections as one moment in a long campaign to push bottom-up change in a union.
Defeats typically far outweigh victories for opposition activists. Success often hinges on growing a wide range of activist-leaders and keeping that organized core active for several years.
Richard Berg, the newly elected president of Local 743, started his long trip in the local in 1988 as a freshly hired janitor at the University of Chicago hospital.
If You are Going to Try this at Home…
Winning office—and staying true to your principles and goals—is a difficult task in an era overshadowed by the declining strength of unions.
While both creating long-term organization and leading from the shopfloor are vital elements in a successful electoral drive, there are many other vital lessons to be remembered: starting early, creating a slate, developing a platform, planning ahead, and more.
For a longer treatment of these lessons, see TDU’s Running for Local Union Office pamphlet and Chapter 18, Reform Caucuses and Running For Office, in A Troublemaker’s Handbook 2.
“We tried to get the fighters together first,” Berg said. “A core of people at the local were inspired by [reform Teamster president] Ron Carey’s win in 1991. We began trying to organize against a union leadership we saw as collaborating with the boss and deeply involved with corruption.”
That initial core in the early 1990s was tiny, eight to 15 active participants, mostly from the university hospitals. But the fledgling group laid a foundation for long-term organization in those early years. Through careful outreach efforts they looked for leaders in isolated shopfloor fights and tried to bring them into the group.
They also plugged into national networks such as TDU, the Association for Union Democracy, and Labor Notes to both help bolster morale and to build an external base of support. Equally as important they looked to help train larger and larger groups of caucus members in the range of organizing skills they would need.
BUILDING OUTWARDS
A major challenge for any reform campaign in a large-sized local is gaining enough strength in enough of the local’s many worksites, units, and shifts that your group becomes truly representative of the union’s rank and file. Local 743 nimbly vaulted this particular hurdle.
Local 743’s reformers now face the hard test of actually having to lead from office. The outside critics are now firmly on the inside and members are expecting them to make good on their reform platform.
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With upwards of 38,000 members until the 1980s, Local 743 was for years the largest local in the Teamsters. Though it has shrunk rapidly over the last decade, the local has retained a sprawling legacy. It covers more than 100 contracts spanning many small shops in a range of industries from nursing homes to light manufacturing plants to clerical staff in the IBT’s own Central States Pension Fund.
The reformers in their early years took the step of exploring their union. They collected information on the contracts, work conditions, and workers. They attended meetings, visited work sites, and got involved in individual grievances to develop a grounded sense of how the union was supposed to function—and how it was really functioning.
The approach helped gird them for other obstacles. Not only was the local spread out among a bewildering array of shops, but it also had a broad range of ethnic groups who spoke a number of languages. They recruited into their caucus fluent speakers who could create flyers and newsletters and speak in workers’ languages.
The reformers found that reaching out to workers took years of effort. Continuing corruption and decline in the union helped to push along their message.
Bob Simpson, Local 743’s president at the time, was removed in 1995 from office for corruption by the Carey-run International. During the trusteeship the small reformer caucus spread quickly. Three years later, the reformers decided to put up a slate of their own in local elections. The New Leadership Slate was forged out of this organizing. Though they lost the election hands down, it gave them a much higher level of visibility.
LEAD FROM THE WORKPLACE
The new visibility in turn helped them not only to reach out to more members; it also put them increasingly into the role as the “go-to” people when rank and filers needed to wage a fight, according to Berg.
Many opportunities arose. When retail giant Montgomery Ward shut its doors in 2001 after a prolonged financial crisis, Local 743’s biggest warehouse unit closed. Local leaders made no move to negotiate severance for workers, who turned to reformer activists to help them.
They organized large rallies and picketed the local’s offices after local leaders refused their demand to bring the International in to help pressure a settlement with the retailer.
The caucus also took a leading role in a 2004 fight at Silver Capital, a small mirror and frame manufacturer in Bedford Park, a suburb of Chicago. The company had announced that it would be closing the plant and offered 150 workers little to no severance. Local leaders again made no move to oppose the closure plan.
Reform activists with ties to workers in the shop did, however. They set up pickets and shut the factory down.
While neither fight produced immediate gains for workers, it helped them build for a third, more-successful workplace-closure fight at Fredrick Cooper’s lamp factory on the northwest side of Chicago in 2005. Tony Caldera, a worker at the plant and an early caucus supporter, helped battle for severance pay.
The workers tapped support from community organizers who brokered leverage from sympathetic city aldermen. Ultimately they raised the temperature enough to win hundreds of thousands of dollars in severance pay.
HARD TEST
Local 743’s reformers now face the hard test of actually having to lead from office. New Leadership Slate officers took office in January. Outside critics like Berg and Caldera are now firmly on the inside and members are expecting them to make good on their reform platform.
“In the short run, we need to clean up the local’s finances and sever all ties to the mob,” said Berg. “In the long run, we need to involve the members and go beyond the normal routine of collective bargaining behind closed doors. We’re committed to one-on-one member organizing.”
When asked how he expected their long journey to transform their union with the added pressure of local office, with a quick laugh he added: “Check back in with us in a few years to see how we are doing with that.”