“The white collar crime syndicate known as Corporate America is hereby put on notice that the working people of America have had ENOUGH” – Teamsters General President O’Brien
Statements like this have become a hallmark of what the Teamsters for a Democratic Union have dubbed the “New Teamsters” since 2021. The election of Sean O’Brien and the broad victory of his entire slate throughout the United States and Canada seemed to breathe new life into the perception of the IBT as a union prepared to organize the laboring masses of the United States once again, a departure from the earlier stereotype of the IBT as “business unionism”. However, on the ground beyond statements issued on Twitter and at events tailored to self-avowed socialists like Labor Notes, the Teamsters have not really changed; rather, the TBU has changed.The TDU has irreparably discredited itself as a rank-and-file organization, and it is now time for socialists to step up and lead the teamsters’ opposition from an avowedly socialist position.
As the history of O’Brien in Local 25 becomes well-known, more and more socialists are becoming disillusioned with the man. What once could be presumed as momentary errors, like his support for Biden and private meetings with the Biden administration in the lead-up to strike suppression legislation, now reveals O’Brien as a business union bureaucrat that he always has been. As he leads the Teamsters in negotiations with UPS, he seems to be following traditional IBT bargaining strategies when it comes to UPS: An information blackout, a strict suppression of leaks, and a withholding of tentative agreements until the last possible minute, all the while bragging about minor non-victories on social media.
In spite of all of this, the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, which is the self-proclaimed rank-and-file advocate for transparency and democracy within the IBT, has remained eerily silent and has even reaffirmed their support to O’Brien on many occasions. This has not been limited to just internal union politics, as the TDU made and then quickly deleted a tweet on social media denouncing the Democrats’ authoritarian suppression of the railroad strike, an action to seemingly align themselves with the silence the IBT had on the issue. While rank-and-file members expressed outrage at the Biden Administration, the TDU refused to speak out against forced ratification and instead pushed the IBT line of enforcing sick days while still depriving the membership of their right to vote. The TDU has, through these actions, exposed the reality of its 2021 realignment to bureaucratic IBT leadership. Such an organization, which has prided itself on defending the rights of members and advocating democracy for the rank-and-file, has instead turned into a tool used to suppress opposition, directing anger and dissatisfaction with the IBT into “Teamsters United” campaigns to support the IBT.
What caused the devolution of the TDU into supporting those who called for his TDU opponents to “be punished” shortly before being endorsed by the TDU? The Teamsters for a Democratic Union emerged as an anti-corruption and pro-democracy alliance led by the short-lived Teamster, Ken Paff. These goals themselves, while laudable, lack a long-term vision and an ideological basis. This ideological bankruptcy is evident in what occurred since the 1989 consent decree that governed the IBT until 2020, with the TDU going from one of the most anti-bureaucratic sections of labor in rhetoric to endorsing lifelong bureaucrat Sean O’Brien for the office of General President in 2021. Without a focus on ideology and the strategic aspects of internal union opposition, that is without a focus on the “Why?”, a movement of opposition will inevitably pursue the path of least resistance to achieve their token reforms in pursuit of pure power. The fundamental flaw that the TDU exposed within union opposition groups is that without the addition of the question “but for what?” to the question of union democratization, anti-corruption, and rank-and-file participation, opposition groups will inevitably sell themselves short and be absorbed by the status-quo. Internal union politics without the “but for what?” question has resulted in the TDU reserving endorsement for principled candidates like Sandy Pope in 2011, into endorsing a weak-willed pencil-pushers like Fred Zuckerman in 2016 and finally Sean O’Brien in 2021. The pursuit of power becomes the only real goal in the absence of an ideological goal.
This is the crossroads I and so many other socialists both within the Teamsters and outside find ourselves today. And while the situation as I’ve laid out may seem to be a hopeless diatribe of “doom and gloom”, socialists have not been met with an opportunity like the present to lead the opposition in the Teamsters since the 1970s. This is an opportunity we should not squander for the sake of past relationships or momentary gains in the form of contract campaigns that advance momentary gains at the expense of the more worthy longterm goal: the achievement of democratic rule and socialism. It is time to abandon the failures of the past illustrated here and pursue the construction of a prescriptively socialist organization of Teamsters who provide good and regular critiques of Teamster leadership and remain committed based upon the unifying belief in socialism.
Socialists both within the Democratic Socialists of America and outside must be willing to openly and unabashedly state our critiques and advocate for the socialist solution, which we no longer can do as members of the TDU or as unorganized IBT members. Much like how we cannot interact with existing political parties like the Democrats while not being organized as socialists, if we wish ever to be taken seriously by the laboring mass and our coworkers as real socialist political actors, we cannot hide our beliefs or refrain from expressing them. We must express them loudly and openly, and encourage the entire class to engage with them if we are to ever have a truly conscious class capable of seizing power. Though we must also do more than speak loudly, we must also have action to back up our socialist beliefs.
As newly organized socialists in the Teamsters, we must not only be willing to criticize the positions of the union bureaucracy, we must be willing to engage in actions that challenge their credibility and promote ours within the labor union and the working class as a whole. Socialists must challenge from top to bottom every single elected office of the union, not solely to win, but to create a thoroughly democratic culture within the union where debate and engagement in union business are considered normal by the union membership. While this may be the case already in some parts of the country, many locals throughout the nation are still enthralled in an anti-democratic culture that holds back our ability to genuinely engage the members. However, it must be cautioned that much like our participation in electoral politics, we are not there to win a majority of seats on executive boards just as we are not in electoral politics to win a congressional majority. We are here to legitimize our beliefs as valid ideas worth engaging with, and through our intimate engagement with union affairs, sharpen our critiques against trade, craft, or business unionism in the promotion of socialist unionism.
The action does not only take place in the electoral front of union business since a great majority of union business occurs in the creation, bargaining, and enforcement of collective bargaining agreements. This field must not be left alone to the trade unionists, as this is the front where the majority of the members truly engage with the union. Whether it be fear of a strike, concerns over the contents of bargaining, etc. our future socialist teamster organization must present thoroughly socialist argumentations. Approaching from the opposition, which is where we as socialists exist at the moment, we must point out every instance of selling out, lying, and backroom dealing committed by the established bargaining committees. We must do this in person at workplaces, on physical and online media publications. We must make a coordinated effort to be the point of information that the workers turn to for true and accurate information often hidden from them by bargaining committees. We must make every effort to display the bankrupt nature of trade unionism as an ideology. The enforcement and interpretation of contracts, always deficient in favor of the representatives of capital, must be pointed out as the eternal deficiency of trade unionism whenever it occurs.
We cannot and must not allow ourselves to be caught up in the winds of the pointless strike as so many of us are now amidst the ongoing UPS-Teamster 2023 contract negotiations. We must return to the questions I proposed before: Why? But for what? In the instance of the UPS-Teamster 2023 contract negotiations, international leadership, the TDU, and many current members of the DSA and other socialist organizations have been parroting the IBT line regarding the willingness and real possibility of a strike as contract expiration approaches. This is an error and has led to much disillusionment among members, many of whom have serious concerns about layoffs that beating the drum of a strike leaves unaddressed and only aggravates. We, socialists, should not be drumming up support for a strike for which we don’t even know what the goals are. They certainly aren’t socialism, but we do not even know what the trade unionist want to call as victory—are they a new third tier of workers? There’s no possible way to answer that question definitively with a yes or no given the lack of vision or even basic information. The only actual consequence of building support for a hypothetical strike at the moment is that the position of Socialists and the DSA become tied at the hip to actions for which we have no influence. Moving forward, we must refuse support by default to all strike action initiated by union leadership; rather, we must show solidarity only after a genuine review of the merits of such actions, their basis in the laboring masses, and the potential for the promotion of class consciousness. No more letting ourselves get bogged down in the petty interests of unions of labor union employees.
We are letting other actors dictate what our socialist position is through our uncritical support of labor unions. This has become the default position for socialists in America so much so that questioning this practice is treated as a great offense against socialism. We must not let ourselves be fooled by our own unjustified confidence. We can only engage in trade unions for the promotion of socialism if all of our activities within them are done as socialists in order to achieve socialism. We should not be afraid of “scaring people off”. We should not be afraid of the accusation of “damaging unions” which have shown themselves to exist in opposition to the position of socialists and the working class. If we are fearful we will only ever be chasing the tail of the masses while never directing it into paths of effective resistance. Our position will become strengthened by our dedication to the cause, and by the accuracy of our ideas. The compromise of either of these results in a compromised movement as a whole.
– Corbin Palakarn
