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minneapolis teamster strike
There’s an old tradition among employers in the United States. When push comes to shove, and a company’s strikebreaking tactics fail – call on your friends in government to come down hard on striking workers. And if that means crushing a strike by military might – so be it.
But it is not a hopeless situation, even when faced with armed troops in the service of management. The history of the Minnesota labor movement testifies to that.
In fact, the famous events that made Minneapolis a union town – the 1934 Teamsters strikes – are a case history of how to overcome all kinds of obstacles, including a strikebreaking National Guard and double-dealing politicians.
As 1934 began, the labor movement was in a sorry state. The Depression was at its worst, unemployment was rampant, and organized labor was taking one body blow after another.
Things changed that year. The Depression still wore on, but in Minneapolis and other cities (most notably Toledo and San Francisco) working people began to organize against their desperate situation.
During the winter of 1934, General Drivers Local 574 International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) initiated a strike in the coal yards to win union recognition. This strike proved successful, and inspired the local to move full steam ahead with its plan to organize every truck driver and warehouse worker in Minneapolis.
The leaders of Local 574, Carl Skoglund, V.R. Dunne, Miles Dunne, and Grant Dunne, were union leaders of a different stripe.
No friends in government
As socialists (they were members of the Communist League of America, a Trotskyist group that had been expelled from the Communist Party for opposing Stalinism), they had no illusions about “friends” in government. Rather, they said, workers must rely on mass picket lines, militant struggle against the employers, and the support of all the workers in Minneapolis and throughout the state.
To this end, they undertook a number of measures. After the coal strike, they set up an organizing committee that consciously sought to organize all the transportation workers – drivers, platform workers, helpers, and carriers – into one industrial union.
The employers refused to recognize the union, and the leaders of Local 574, who had already organized 3000 new members by May, called a strike. This they did in spite of strong opposition from the national leaders of the Teamsters union.
The 5000 members of Local 574 quickly and effectively shut down all trucking operations in the city. They understood that the employers would resort to any and every means to break the strike – and they prepared for every possible eventuality.
To ensure that no scabs were being used anywhere, Local 574 organized “flying squads” of pickets who patrolled the city streets in trucks and cars.
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The strike leaders understood that the ranks had to call the shots, and to this end the general-membership meeting became the highest decision-making body during the strike.
The day-to-day decisions were coordinated by a strike leadership called the “Committee of 100.” From the ranks, such men as Farrell Dobbs, Harry DeBoer, and Jake Cooper emerged as leaders during the strike.
Local 574 knew, too, that support from the public was crucial to their success. That is why they published a daily strike newspaper, which explained the workers’ demands and kept the union and the public informed of every development.
Local 574 also enlisted assistance from farmers, and formed an affiliated organization of the unemployed. This proved crucial in undermining the employers’ efforts to break the strike by using jobless workers as scabs.
These, and other measures, all worked to keep the ranks tight, enthusiasm high, and support from the community solid.
The Citizens’ Alliance, the employers’ council, knew it could rely on the Farmer Labor Party Gov. Floyd B. Olsen, despite his election as a “friend of labor,” and on the mayor of Minneapolis. And they were not disappointed. When the strike began in May 1934, the police were mobilized, volunteers were deputized, and strikers were arrested and beaten.
When the police tried to open the city market, where farm produce was brought, a major battle broke out. The pickets kept almost every truck out, and the mayor responded by tripling the police force. Two hundred arrests were made, and a group of women supporters were beaten unconscious by cops and hired thugs.
The next day 35,000 building trades workers went on strike in solidarity. The employers had a private army of 2200 “special deputies” ready to crack those skulls the police missed. But the union mobilized thousands of strikers and supporters – and a pitched battle was on.
For two days the union took on all the scabs, police, and hired thugs. And they won. No trucks moved. On May 25, the strike was settled and the union recognized.
Taking on the National Guard
The employers, however, stalled on complying with the new agreement and, once again, a strike was called on July 16. The police and employers planned to ambush and shoot isolated strikers (as the governor’s investigation later proved), which would provide an excuse to call out the National Guard to break the strike.
On July 20, “Bloody Friday,” the plan was put into action. The police opened fire, two strikers were killed, and 55 were wounded. Within the hour, the National Guard was in the streets.
Gov. Olsen declared martial law, and soon thousands of trucks were being operated by scabs. The National Guard occupied the union’s headquarters, and arrested some 100 leaders and members of the local.
Still, the ranks persevered, and a mass march of 40,000 forced the authorities to release the imprisoned unionists. Finally, after five weeks of intense struggle, the strikers won.
Harry DeBoer, a veteran of that strike, (and who also worked at Hormel’s Austin plant in 1927) recalled some of the lessons of the 1934 strikes for Socialist Action. They are worth considering in light of Hormel’s union-busting drive.
“Look at what the workers faced,” DeBoer recalled. “They faced thousands of special deputies, they fought them head on. They fought the police when they killed two of our strikers. The governor brought out the National Guard and they even fought them. I recall we had enough injunctions to paper a wall.
“As for the lessons of the strike . . . It is a big thin to have the public on your side. Without that we could not have won the strike. And, of course, we had a leadership that understood that capitalist system.”
The strikers defeated the National Guard. They stoop up to police violence. They defied martial law. And they placed no faith in their “friends” in the Farmer-Labor Party.
Above all, they relied on the power of the union and the entire working class. The odds were against them, but they won.
As the Aug. 24, 1934, issue of the Minneapolis Labor Review said: “The winning of this strike marks the greatest victory in the annals of the local trade union movement . . . It has changed Minneapolis from being known as a scab’s paradise to being a city of hope for those who toil.”
This article was written by Mark Harris, and first appeared in the February 1986 issue of Socialist Action newspaper.
