UNIONS: The Teamsters' Return

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Normally AFL-CIO Chief George Meany treats former Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa with the silent contempt he might reserve for a scab laborer. But a few weeks ago, Hoffa delivered a diatribe that Meany could not ignore. Publicly championing a Teamsters assault on Cesar Chavez's United Farm Workers Union, Hoffa declared that the fledgling AFL-CIO affiliate must be stamped out because "Chavez is incompetent." An angry Meany responded at a press conference by charging that the Teamsters, whom he booted out of the AFL-CIO 15 years ago, were guilty of "strikebreaking."

Such criticism is not likely to deter the Teamsters. After years of being shunned as the pariah of organized labor, the Teamsters have nourished an ardent romance with the Nixon Administration that has given them a new measure of respectability and influence. An unbridled push for expansion has brought the union more than 2,000,000 members, making it the largest in the non-Communist world. What worries Meany and other labor leaders is that much of the Teamsters' growing strength is coming from raids on AFL-CIO unions.

The move to thwart the U.F.W. drive to organize California lettuce pickers is a prime example of Teamster tactics. Hours before the U.F.W. campaign was to begin, the Teamsters rushed through their own contract with the growers; the union did not bother to fill in the sections on wages and benefits, and the growers said nothing about a representation election. Last December, the California Supreme Court upheld the farm union's charge that the Teamsters and the growers had conspired to sabotage the U.F.W., opening the way for Chavez to resume his organizing program. But the Teamsters still claim command of 30,000 farm workers, and forcing them out will be tough.

Unhampered by jurisdictional restraints imposed by membership in the AFL-CIO, the Teamsters are free to roam the labor lot in search of new recruits. Though over-the-road truck drivers continue to be the union's elite, earning up to $20,000 a year, the majority of its members are now in much lower paid, non-trucking jobs. Card-carrying Teamsters now include hospital workers, bridge tenders and race-track guards in New York, rice-mill workers in Houston, lampmakers in Los Angeles and campus police at the University of Minnesota. The Teamsters will shortly absorb an entire union, the 47,000-member Brewery Workers. Yet for all their recruiting success, often the result of extravagant promises to workers, the Teamsters in non-trucking fields have the reputation of a do-nothing union that is content to accept area pay patterns and collect dues.