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Lean
Years: Teamsters and the Depression
The catastrophic stock market crash
of 1929 triggered a chain of misery and despair in
America. As banks collapsed, the unemployment rate
jumped from three\ percent to 25 percent. The Depression
hit Teamster locals hard. By 1933, Teamsters membership
rolls hit a Depression-era low of 75,000.
In Response, the union redoubled its
efforts to organize the far-flung and fast-growing
over-the-road trucking industry. Under the leadership
of Minnesota's Farrell Dobb's, the Teamsters used
a "leap-frogging" organizing approach. The keystone
of this approach was the control of truck terminals,
from which truckers could be organized to press for
area-wide bargaining and uniform wages and working
conditions. In two years, Teamster membership jumped
to 146,000.
Teamsters also embraced President Franklin
D. Roosevelt. FDR expressed a deep concern for the
plight of the "forgotten man" and introduced and
won a passage of a series of legislative initiatives
designed to pull the country out ofthe Depression.
In these efforts, Roosevelt relied on the leaders
of organized labor, especially Teamsters General
President Dan Tobin, to make his case.
The National Recovery Administration
(NRA) was the crux of Roosevelt's legislative plan.
It established minimum wages and maximum hours of
labor for each industry. Hours were reduced to spread
employment over workers. FDR also won passage of
the National labor Relations Act. It also provided
protection against management interference or intimidation
aimed at union activity.
World
War II
Teamsters were an integral part of America's
ultimate victory in the Second World War, both by their
contributions on the battlefield and on the home front.
In 1942, President Roosevelt asked Teamsters
General President Dan Tobin to travel to Great Britain
and report back on how British unions were helping
to win the war. On his return, Tobin urged the American
labor movement to emulate the British approach of suspending
all labor discord in the face of the Axis' threat to
world freedom. Roosevelt appointed Tobin to the National
War Labor Board, which had wartime jurisdiction to
arbitrate any labor disputes in which all the normal
collective bargaining measures had been exhausted.
A National Conference of Teamsters was
formed to assist in the economic and military emergencies
facing the U.S. The conference actively promoted war
bonds and organized drives to collect scrap metal and
rubber to be used in military supplies. In 1943, Victory
Plaza was dedicated at the entrance to the Chicago
City Hall in tribute to these Teamsters efforts. Chicago
Joint Council 25 was responsible in that year for the
sale of $6.5 million in war bonds. Nationwide, other
Teamsters locals, councils and conferences followed
suit.
Teamsters served on the front, too. By
1942, 125,000 teamsters were in the military. The Allied
thrusts that led to the defeat of the German Army would
not have been possible without the Teamsters who drove
speeding trucks full of troops to the front.
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