What is TDU?

[TheMilitantTeamster]

[TheMilitantTeamster]

“Like other unions, the number of Teamsters members and the wages of truckers and warehouse workers plummeted. In 1979, there were 1,975,000 dues-paying members of the Teamsters. By 1983, this has fallen to 1,616,000. The IBT went from representing 60 percent of truck drivers before deregulation, to only 25 percent in 2000. Between 1977 and 1987, drivers’ real mileage pay rates declined by 44 percent. Workers compensated by working longer hours, compelled to endanger their own safety. Nonetheless, real annual earnings fell by 30 percent between 1977 and 1995. By the late 1990s, real wages in the industry were no better than they had been in the 1950s. These trends have continued. Truckers and delivery drivers today haul more and are paid less than in the 1970s in real terms. Their crucial importance to the economy, which would grind to a halt without them, is rewarded with constantly increasing exploitation.”

[TheMilitantTeamster]

“The TDU was only one of several efforts in the 1970s that, coming in response to the massive rank-and-file upsurge of the decade, aimed to funnel worker anger behind allegedly “progressive” bureaucrats. These tendencies coalesced around a publication called Labor Notes, founded by IS members Kim Moody, Jane Slaughter and Jim West in 1979. The various union reform groups included Miners for Democracy in the United Mine Workers of America, Steelworkers Fightback in the United Steelworkers, and, somewhat later, the New Directions movement in the United Auto Workers. The involvement of the IS and other middle class groupings varied in each union. It was strongest inside the Teamsters.[7]

The TDU won a certain following among the rank and file, claiming perhaps 8,000 worker-members at its peak. At times, TDU members showed physical courage. In one case, Pete Camarata (1946–2014), a Detroit warehouse worker, was beaten nearly to death after criticizing union President Frank Fitzsimmons at the Teamsters national convention in Las Vegas in 1976. In 1983, a group created specifically to intimidate union dissidents, the Brotherhood of Loyal Americans and Strong Teamsters (BLAST), attacked a TDU meeting in Cleveland, taking over the podium, ripping down banners and running TDU members out of the building. According to government records, the BLAST attackers in Cleveland included “the presidents of two Teamsters locals, a local vice president, two secretary-treasurers, three union trustees, one organizer and at least 10 business agents for the international union.”[8]

The problem was not lack of courage among individuals like Camarata, a worker brought up through Jimmy Hoffa’s old Detroit Local 299. The problem was the perspective of the IS, which dominated the Teamster reform movement. The orientation of the TDU is now, and has always been, to the bureaucracy, never the working class—all the rhetoric about rank-and-file power notwithstanding.

The IS operated from the perspective that workers were hopelessly backward, and that the most that could be achieved would be to pressure allegedly progressive sections of the union bureaucracy to the left, so that “space” for its members might one day be created. Until that time, IS members in the TDU would keep their political ideas to themselves. This political impressionism was formed out of the belief that American workers could never be won to a socialist perspective.”

[TheMilitantTeamster]

“In any case, whatever ideas IS activists may have had about raising class consciousness were quickly discarded. As La Botz explains:

Within the TDU, the IS soon abandoned virtually all efforts at socialist propaganda and gave up attempts to recruit new members to socialism… The IS leaders in TDU therefore lowered their expectations and focused on maintaining TDU as a militant pole of attraction within the IBT… The result was a certain shift in TDU activity, from a focus on workers’ struggles against the employer at the local level to an emphasis on national contract campaigns, organizing within the union around democratic issues, and elections for local office…

Toward its long-term goal of making space for itself within the Teamsters, the TDU created a national newspaper, hired Paff as a full-time organizer, and procured a Washington D.C. national office. Through such means, “TDU members were elected local leaders in a variety of unions, from Denver to Atlanta.”[11]

Behind the TDU’s deceitfulness was not a fear of supposedly right-wing workers, but of alienating sections of the anticommunist trade union bureaucracy, with whom the TDU hoped to collaborate. Even in the 1970s, in the midst of the last great strike wave in US history, the IS equated the anticommunism of the union bureaucrats—which was rooted in the defense of their privileged positions within the capitalist system—with that of the workers, who, whatever their political confusion, were objectively being driven into a struggle against the profit system and the two corporate-controlled parties that defended it.”

[EmptyGlassJEM]

What is tdu today ?
nothing more than the social media department for the IBT.
They got a seat at the table now. Paff and Levin sold out the back and file for 💰

[Faust]

“In any case, whatever ideas IS activists may have had about raising class consciousness were quickly discarded. As La Botz explains:

Within the TDU, the IS soon abandoned virtually all efforts at socialist propaganda and gave up attempts to recruit new members to socialism… The IS leaders in TDU therefore lowered their expectations and focused on maintaining TDU as a militant pole of attraction within the IBT… The result was a certain shift in TDU activity, from a focus on workers’ struggles against the employer at the local level to an emphasis on national contract campaigns, organizing within the union around democratic issues, and elections for local office…

Toward its long-term goal of making space for itself within the Teamsters, the TDU created a national newspaper, hired Paff as a full-time organizer, and procured a Washington D.C. national office. Through such means, “TDU members were elected local leaders in a variety of unions, from Denver to Atlanta.”[11]

Behind the TDU’s deceitfulness was not a fear of supposedly right-wing workers, but of alienating sections of the anticommunist trade union bureaucracy, with whom the TDU hoped to collaborate. Even in the 1970s, in the midst of the last great strike wave in US history, the IS equated the anticommunism of the union bureaucrats—which was rooted in the defense of their privileged positions within the capitalist system—with that of the workers, who, whatever their political confusion, were objectively being driven into a struggle against the profit system and the two corporate-controlled parties that defended it.”

You need to stop with your article length posts. No one is reading them.

[Mr. Teamster]

You need to stop with your article length posts. No one is reading them.

Something you and I agree on. We have reached more common ground. These guys are idiots.

[Teamsterstrong]

All they do is steal your money dave Lavine will strong arm you for money 😉

[TheMilitantTeamster]

Seems like they are just the “PR branch of the OZ administration” as Brother Cochran said in his radio/YouTube interview

[Harold Smith]

For the first time in its existence, TDU has supported an action taken by the IBT and it turns out to be OZ's decision to fire 13 organizers of color. Tells me all I need to know about TDU at this time.

[Thisischange?]

No substance, a storefront of ideas without any product.Please donate today!

[JZuraw]

Bashing TDU from the Left or bashing TDU from the Right - neither line of attack does any good for rank & file Teamsters. A compromised TDU is better than no TDU. And a lot of the 'history' in these posts is bunk. TDU gives rank & file Teamsters access and resources.

[Watcher745]

I’m sorry, TDU used to have a morals, they reported on issues fairly. The multiple stories they have failed to comment on because of their bias towards O’Brien is a serious problem . The removal of the members bill of rights , no longer reporting on excessive salaries, ignoring lawsuits where the IBT has been found guilty of retaliation, settling multi million dollar discrimination suits brought against us . Not a word . Attacks against a long time TDU member , former member of the steering committee and now a Vice President , not a word .
This is not the TDU I knew .

[Faust]

How about the salary report they stopped publishing?

[TheMilitantTeamster]

Playing PR for OZ isn’t good for anyone except OZ.

[DanaCos]

TDU has sold out for the hopeful increase in membership, AKA money.

[Thisischange?]

Consider this head on bashing. They have turned a blind eye to the multitude of wrondoings and stand for absolutely nothing. Their stale assed workshops are 20 plus years of retreaded shit. Paff has always been about funding the store. Dana you are 100% correct.

[Wiggy]

Bashing TDU from the Left or bashing TDU from the Right - neither line of attack does any good for rank & file Teamsters. A compromised TDU is better than no TDU. And a lot of the 'history' in these posts is bunk. TDU gives rank & file Teamsters access and resources.

TDU ignores anything that could possibly be considered critical of the IBT under O'Brien as a result they've lost credibility.

[Gimme_Danger]

No substance, a storefront of ideas without any product.Please donate today!

Did 2 of the 3 owners of this site feel that way when it helped with their political ambitions?
Past critics of TDU used to say they thought it was too negative, and would only say something positive about a political ally.
TDU people seem to be distancing themselves from the overly negative types.
Seems this site is the hub for those left behind.

[TheMilitantTeamster]

Sometimes you gotta call a spade a spade

[DanaCos]

Did 2 of the 3 owners of this site feel that way when it helped with their political ambitions?
Past critics of TDU used to say they thought it was too negative, and would only say something positive about a political ally.
TDU people seem to be distancing themselves from the overly negative types.
Seems this site is the hub for those left behind.

What do you mean? One of the three that I know was in the fight to reform the union back when the movement was getting traction. When the 2 gents did a video asking why TDU was heading in the direction it was, I was quietly applauding because I saw TDU for what it was worth long before most. TDU fought the scumbags that were propping up the Fascist Hoffa or so we thought. When I got the chance to speak to people that were in TDU when Fred broke away from his ass kissing antics and acted like a Vote No advocate, they (Local 89 TDU members) told me they were stabbed in the back by Ken Paff. They were fighting the administration and Suckerman and gave their full attention to TDU and then Paff decides to make Zuckerman their idol instead of treating him like a pariah.

By the way, I will ask again, where we you in 2013 when we were fighting against the worst contract in UPS history?

[Faust]

He was sucking up to Hoffa and O'Brien.

[Watcher745]

A very good question about who people supported in the past ! There were people who supported TDU when TDU supported a real reform movement. The same way in the past O’Brien supported Hoffa , Coli , Aloise ( whom he considered a candidate to run as his ST)
Did O’Brien feel that way when HE threatened TDU ? Seems like “ the pot calling the kettle black “ he went from being suspended for threats against members being supported by TDU to being their keynote speaker and a annual attendee at the TDU conventions .

[DanaCos]

Exactly!!!