Edgar Esquivel reports on the recent contract negotiations of Teamsters-represented U.S. railroad workers and contextualizes the current struggle within the long history of militant railroad worker organizing.
Introduction
In the midst of new Teamsters General President (GP) Sean O’Brien’s public relations campaign against UPS, thanks to the exposure of a friendly media, on September 15th the union celebrated a tentative agreement (TA) brokered by President Joe Biden’s Presidential Emergency Board (PEB), twelve railroad unions and the railroad companies. The TA was reached hours before the provisions of the anti-worker Railway Labor Act (RLA) were due to expire. The TA averted a strike that would have jeopardized the American economy at a tune of $2 billion per day and shut-down trains across 140,000 miles of railroad tracks. However, the TA was met with anger by the membership and more so two independent caucuses within the unions: the Railroad Workers United and the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee (RWRFC) as the unions refused to release information of the concessionary TA which included two Teamster affiliates.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) claims to have 57,000 members and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees (BMWED) another 26,000 out of a total of 115,000 unionized railroad workers. Combined these 83,000 railroad Teamsters make-up 7% of the 1.2 million members in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and over 73% of all unionized railroad workers. For nearly three years these members have been ready to strike and shake-up the very foundations of American capital. The militant workers have led the way without the support of their own conservative brand of pro-business union bureaucrats who have come under fire from not only the members but also the American public over their horrific working conditions.
O’Brien who launched his run for Teamsters GP in 2018 as a self-described “militant” Teamster, has been nothing but. He has, however, been promoted by a friendly mainstream media transmitting him as an affable guy due to his close ties to the neoliberal establishment: the Democratic party. His cozy relationship with the Democrats appears to be more important to O’Brien than his enraged railroad Teamsters ready to revolt. At the Labor Notes Conference last June, O’Brien launched a war of rhetoric against UPS when he exclaimed, “we’re gonna put that company [UPS] on its knees…” At the Teamsters for a Democratic (TDU) Convention last month, he doubled down on his rhetoric by declaring, “we gotta strategize, we gotta organize and then we gotta pulverize UPS.”1 Unfortunately for railroad Teamsters, O’Brien doesn’t appear to share the same feelings about putting the railroad companies on their knees or pulverizing them.
When the TA was finally released by the unions, the agreement did not meet the paid sick day demands of the members, nor the harsh disciplinary policies that leave train crews “on-call” for twenty-four hours a day due to a shortfall of workers generated by downsizing. The 24% general wage increases over five years also fall well below the excessive levels of runaway inflation suffered over the past two years. Finally, twenty-five days after the TA was reached—BMWED Teamsters voted and did so by rejecting the deal by 56%. Not happy with the result, President Tony Cardwell issued a statement attempting to frighten members into submission by falsely claiming that a strike is “illegal.” Cardwell also added the union would do nothing to defend workers who took part in an “unsanctioned” work stoppage. He further accused those in favor of striking were “fringe” groups advocating “dangerous ideas.”2 Frustrated with the union officialdom, the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee issued a statement:
This is an act of sabotage. The bureaucrats at all 12 rail unions never tire of threatening workers with congressional intervention, acting as Congress’s bag men and messenger boys. But by extending the strike deadline until after the midterm elections on November 8, they are deliberately inviting Congress to pass anti-strike legislation, giving them the chance to intervene with fewer political repercussions. They are even baking in an extra five days to allow Congress to take their time to work out legislation for the second the deadline expires, without suffering the indignity of calling a special session that cuts their post-election vacations!3
After a series of delays lasting seven weeks, the BLET finally mailed-out ballots October 31st. BLET President Dennis Pierce who is running for reelection of the largest railroad union has been extremely cautious in further angering his already enraged members. After the TA was reached, the BLET Facebook page disabled commenting to avoid reading further ridicule of “selling-out” from their members. It is no surprise Pierce like the rest of the other eleven railroad unions have been working deliberately on behalf of the bosses and against the workers they claim to represent. The new vote count date has also been extended to November 20th. Despite all the delays, BLET members have had no trouble receiving mailers from Pierce’s reelection campaign efforts and his BLET United Slate 2022. Enraged BLET members have the ripest opportunity to send him packing next month.
Using old-guard Teamster tactics of coercion and intimidation against delegates, Pierce succeeded in keeping David Manning and his Railworkers Accountability Slate 2022 from being nominated at the BLET Fifth National Convention. However, Pierce wasn’t successful in coercing delegates from nominating the independent candidacy of Eddie Hall who has since been endorsed by Manning in a rank-and-file effort to topple Pierce’s bureaucratic apparatus. Pierce who ran on the James P. Hoffa Jr., backed; and Rome Aloise engineered Vairma-Herrera 2021 Teamsters Power Slate for the position of International Vice-President, has since his humiliating defeat last November turned in a 180-degree angle to embrace O’Brien.
It is quite evident that the IBT’s aims were to extend the vote count past the midterm elections in an effort to buy the Democrats enough time to save their chances of holding both Houses of Congress. But regardless of who controls Congress, both corporate parties of capital will work in alliance to carve-out a plan to prevent the paralysis of America’s railways during the Christmas peak season. When opposition to the TA became relevant, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi threatened to issue a congressional injunction against the railroaders if they struck and admitted that House Democrats had legislation ready if they walked out–a position shared by Republicans.4 Hence, frustrated with rank-and-file opposition to the TA, O’Brien delivered an intolerant speech at the BLET Convention, He bluntly told the delegates that, “Teamsters love to complain,” and attacked the influence of “outsiders” in the union, and to keep disagreements among themselves.5
Matt Mortensen who was recently elected to TDU’s International Steering Committee (ISC) and also serves as President of BMWED Local 2403 said, “he [O’Brien] got us out of mediation and into a PEB because of his relationship with [U.S. Labor Secretary] Marty Walsh, then we voted it down after he said it was a good deal.” Walsh who is a hometown friend of O’Brien’s, moved up the bureaucratic ladder of the Laborers International Union of North America’s (LiUNA) Local 223 in the Boston metropolitan area before crossing-over to Democratic party politics and being elected mayor of Boston. When Biden appointed Walsh to head the U.S. Department of Labor, the Teamsters celebrated his appointment as a victory for labor. Last week, Walsh went on CNN to express his disgust with rank-and-file members opposition to the TA and his desire for Congress to interfere and impose it.6 Like pro-business unionist cowards, neither O’Brien (IBT), Pierce (BLET) or Cardwell (BMWED) condemned Walsh’s anti-labor position.
For O’Brien, the latest ratification by 1,675 UPS Airline Maintenance members across the nation is nothing to brag about. The mediocre agreement gives workers 3.3% in annual general wage increases and 13.5% in pension. If UPS offered those figures without a fight, there is no reason to doubt they will make the package division the same offer for O’Brien to handshake and celebrate as a victory. But worse off are the 18,000 Costco Teamsters who the IBT allowed to work for eight-and-half months without an agreement. The new three-year substandard TA fell well below the high levels of inflation and their pension raises were an insulting 12 cents, 13 cents and 14 cents per year. More important, neither O’Brien nor Chair of the Teamsters Costco national negotiating committee Mike Bergen endorsed the weak TA. On a You Tube presentation Bergen was quick to declare that he and the International were “neutral” on the contract vote. In his mid-70’s, the unhealthy Bergen looked confused, incoherent and dour throughout the presentation. Ironically, his own executive board at Teamsters Local 166 recently stripped him of driving a union issued automobile following the California Department of Motor Vehicles’ decision to suspend his driver’s license. That O’Brien appointed Bergen as Teamsters Costco Chair is beyond comprehension.
Yet, the history of American railroad workers has amongst the richest and most radical traditions dating back to the Great Railroad Strike of 1877— the year they turned America upside-down. It is apparent, but not surprising that neither the leadership of the IBT, BMWED or BLET know this important history. If Sean O’Brien intends to defend his self-proclaimed credentials of “militant” Teamster, he should study the lessons of the thousands of radical American railroad workers who on three separate occasions over the last 145 years brought American railway companies down to their very knees. This is their forgotten history.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1877
The Railroad Strike of 1877 represented a turning point in American history. Within two weeks, the strike spread swiftly through fourteen states across the nation. Over 100 workers lost their lives and millions of dollars in property were destroyed. The stoppage became the first truly national strike in America and the first one in which Washington intervened with the military on the side of big business—an action that would be repeated numerous times. Although the strike failed, it marked the birth of a working-class movement far broader and more powerful than anything experienced before. The strike registered the fact that class relations had become a central issue of national life and that the U.S. would not be able to avoid the class-based conflict that had also plagued Europe since the birth of industrial capitalism.7
The conflict began to brew after the economic slump of 1873, also referred to as the Panic of 1873 in which railroad companies pushed to slash the wages of railroad workers who were working twelve-hour days for $1.75 and under very harsh conditions. Railroad deaths and loss of limbs and fingers were very common among rail workers. The workers were pushed beyond their limits of endurance when four of the companies: the Pennsylvania, New York Central, Erie and Baltimore and Ohio (B&O) met to cut their wages. When the B&O implemented a 10% wage cut workers responded with a spontaneous and violent strike. President Rutherford Hayes, acted immediately to aid the B&O and stop what he referred to as an “insurrection.”
The interference of the federal government on the side of big business proved to be the spark that ignited the Great Uprising of 1877. The strike that had begun in West Virginia spread to Baltimore and then Pittsburgh. In Pittsburgh under the banner of the Trainmen’s Union, the iron workers joined the railroad workers against the much-hated rail conglomerates owned by the J.P. Morgan and Kuhn-Loeb families. More importantly the railroad workers gained the sympathy of the city’s population that included the militia companies. In response to the chaos in Pittsburgh, from Philadelphia a militia was called. Upon their arrival they were met by violent rioters which triggered the troops to unleash deadly force upon them. When the gunfire ended twenty people were left dead including children.8 When the news of the dead spread, thousands of workers from the mills, mines and factories stormed the railroad yards. The angered workers set fire to dozens of freight cars and burned the buildings where the Philadelphia militiamen had sought refuge.
Another twenty workers and unemployed residents were killed by militiamen as they systematically burned and looted the property of the Pennsylvania Railroad company. Organized workers and residents responded by forming citizens’ patrols to restore order and prevent further looting. With the arrival of federal troops, the patrols were disarmed, and the strike finally put to a halt. But within a few days the strike had spread to other cities: Baltimore, Buffalo, New York, Chicago, St. Louis, Indiana, Galveston Texas and San Francisco. In Chicago and St. Louis, workers led by socialists in the newly formed Workingmen’s Party of the United States turned the uprising into two citywide general strikes. The strikes there also culminated with the arrival of federal troops and their arsenals on the streets. Although the strikes were eventually defeated after minor concessions from the railroad companies, more than half of the freight on the nation’s 75,000 miles of tracks had stopped running at the height of the conflict.9 The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 not only marked the birth of a radical labor movement in America, but more so laid the foundations for the development of organized labor in the country. The events of 1877 that shook the very foundations of American capital went on to be recorded as the most violent labor conflict in the history of the United States.10
The Pullman Strike of 1894
In 1893 America experienced a new economic crisis and by far the worst till that date. After several decades of wild industrial growth, financial manipulation and uncontrolled speculation—the bottom fell-off when hundreds of banks and thousands of businesses closed down. Out of a labor force of fifteen million workers, three million were left jobless.11 The economic slump generated a wave of anger and resentment towards the ruling-class that were followed by a wave of strikes. The largest of these work stoppages was a nationwide strike of railroad workers building sleeping cars for the Pullman Company in Chicago. They were led by an Indiana born young radical Eugene Debs who had been elected president of the American Railway Union (ARU) in 1893. The conservative labor bureaucrats of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) like Samuel Gompers viewed the ARU with dread, but as the Pullman conflict reached a climax he dared not to challenge Debs.
In June of 1894, workers at the Pullman Company walked-out with the support from other unions in Chicago after negotiations over declining wages failed. The ARU announced a nationwide boycott of all Pullman cars and soon more than twenty railroad lines leaving out of the city were brought to a complete halt. The strike turned violent as members derailed freight cars, blocked railroad tracks, destroyed tracks and pulled scabbing engineers off trains for refusing to cooperate. The railroad owners responded by sending in 2,000 paid deputies to break the strike, but they were unsuccessful. The Grover Cleveland administration issued an injunction on the grounds that U.S. mail service was being interfered with, but the strikers ignored the government’s injunction and carried on. Grover responded by sending in troops as hundreds of railroad cars were set afire by strikers.
By the second week of July the state militia of Illinois was sent in to assist federal troops. But they were met with a violent crowd of approximately 5,000 Chicagoans. A bloodbath followed with over twenty-four dead, fifty-three wounded and seven hundred arrested.12 Only after 14,000 troops, police and militiamen were sent in were the bosses able to crush the strike. Debs and other leaders of the ARU were arrested for contempt of court and violating the government injunction. They were sentenced to six months in prison. Debs, who was falsely accused of being a socialist during his trial, devoted his imprisonment studying the subject. His development as a socialist leader of the working-class would last the rest of his life. But he emerged from the Pullman experience convinced that industrial organization was not enough and that a political struggle was also required.13
After breaking with the capitalist parties in 1898, Debs helped found the Socialist Party of America (SPA) and ran for president under the SPA ticket in 1900, 1904, 1908, and in 1912. In that latter year, Debs garnered one million votes in a four-way contest against incumbent Republican President William Howard Taft, Democratic candidate Woodrow Wilson and Progressive Party candidate and former Republican president, Theodore Roosevelt. In 1905 Debs also helped co-found the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) or “Wobblies.” The most radical and militant union in the history of America, which was made up of a multitude of industrial unions led by militant anarcho-syndicalists, socialists and other radical trade unionists that had been excluded by the craft unionism of the AFL.
The Wobblies energy, their persistence, their inspiration to others, their ability to mobilize thousands at one place at any given time, made them an influence on the country far beyond their numbers.14 They scared the power structure to death. In response, the First Red Scare was ushered by Washington—using every weapon at their disposal throughout the first two decades of the twentieth century to smash them. The methods of repression against them included censorship, arrests, torture, disappearances, deportations, exile to Bolshevik Russia and even murder. Among those deported were the anarchists Emma Goldman and her lover Alexander Berkman. American socialists like “Big” Bill Haywood of the Western Federation of Miners and John Reed—author of Ten Days that Shook the World were among other prominent figures to be exiled under the Espionage Act of 1917.
The Great Railroad Strike of 1922
The end of the First World War in 1918 was followed by another economic slump. In response the capitalist-class lobbied Congress to pass a post-war readjustment bill that would fall on the workers. Hence, in 1920 congress passed the Transportation Act which formed the Railroad Labor Board (RLB). The RLB pretended to work as a neutral arbiter but in fact sided with the bosses. In 1921 the RLB imposed wage cuts that affected over two million railroad workers. As sentiment among the workers grew, much like today they were betrayed by the Big Four operating brotherhoods. But when the RLB imposed another wage cut of 12% in 1922 the workers exploded.15 As a result, an epidemic of strikes and labor disputes broke-out across America involving approximately 4,160,000 workers.16 The Great Railroad Strike of 1922 commonly referred to as the 1922 Shopman Strike involved over 400,000 workers and carried on for two months.
The Warren Harding administration responded with absolute brutality against the striking workers who were accused of being part of a communist conspiracy. Just five years prior the Bolsheviks had overthrown the semi-feudal Tsarist monarchy in Russia and the radical Wobblies had been subjugated three years prior. Again, the government used every weapon at their disposal to crush the strikers. Workers and union leaders were arrested and the most radical were murdered. Through the RLB, Harding ordered an anti-labor injunction that effectively stripped striking workers of the rights of freedom of speech, assembly, and the press, on the specious grounds that the strike was an illegal conspiracy. Unfortunately, the strike failed as a result of the unwillingness of the four biggest railroad unions to support the struggle of the shopmen. While the Army was not used to defend the bosses, the National Guard was called out on a state-by-state basis to crush the radical “communist conspired” strike. Deputy U.S. Marshalls were appointed freely and even thugs were deputized to brutalize the strikers. At least ten workers were killed during the two-month stoppage.
Fearing the potential danger of a national railroad strike, the Railway Labor Act (RLA) was passed by Congress in 1926 as a response to the Shopmen’s Strike. The anti-worker RLA was enacted to end strikes by forcing employers and unions into a long, tedious process of mediation under the National Mediation Board (NMB).
Conclusion
The leaders and workers of these three very important events defined union militancy. Sean O’Brien today has the golden opportunity to show his “militancy” as a labor leader and lead these enraged railroad Teamsters from the BLET, the BMWED and paralyze the American economy. As for both independent caucuses there is no time for division or sectarianism. Both the Railroad Workers United and the Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee need to come together in their struggle against corporate greed, Washington and their own union bureaucrats in bed with them. Fortunately for both, the opportunity to throw-out the treasonous and rotten Dennis Pierce from the BLET throne has arrived.
At this very ripe moment for railroad workers, O’Brien should consider following the powerful example of militant IWW organizer, Joseph Ettor:
If the workers of the world want to win, all they have to do is recognize their own solidarity. They have nothing to do but fold their arms and the world will stop. The worker are more powerful with their hands in their pockets than all the property of the capitalists…
- Stephen Franklin, “Teamsters President Sean O’Brien Vows to “Pulverize” UPS in Fiery TDU Convention Speech,” In These Times, November 2, 2022.
- The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee, “The unions say they won’t ‘sanction’ a strike. That decision rests with workers, not the bureaucracy!” WSWS, October 27, 2022.
- The Railroad Workers Rank-and-File Committee, “After rejection of BMWED contract: Fight against union sabotage! Prepare a strike before the midterm elections!” WSWS, October 10, 2022.
- James Politi and Taylor Nicole Rogers, “Joe Biden secures deal to avert US rail strike,” Financial Times, September 15, 2022.
- Joe Allen, “Will there be a national strike at UPS? The status quo is untenable for rank-and-file Teamsters,” Tempest, October 23, 2022.
- Chris Isidore, “Labor Secretary says Congress needs to block rail strikes without new deals,” CNN, November 12, 2022.
- Herbert G. Gutman, Who Built America? Working Class People & the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture & Society, (Pantheon Books: New York, 1989), 553.
- Ibid., 556.
- Howard Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, (The New Press: New York, 2003), 183.
- Alan Woods, Marxism and the USA, (WR Books: New York, 2020), 79.
- Zinn, 203.
- Ibid., 205.
- Tom Mackaman, “Eugene V. Debs and the struggle of railroaders,” WSWS, October 9, 2022.
- Zinn, 242.
- Steven Millies, “The great railroad strike of 1922,” Workers World, February 27, 2014.
- Woods, 109.