‘Upon this (foundering) rock’: Minneapolis Teamsters and the transformation of US business unionism, 1934–1941

Abstract

This article examines an understudied consequence of the labor upsurge of the 1930s – namely, the way in which the conflict between conservative business unionism and more radical alternatives of the period fundamentally transformed business unionism itself. The author illustrates this through a case study of the struggle within the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) between the business unionist leadership and an insurgent movement spearheaded by the Trotskyist leaders of Minneapolis Local 544. In order to defeat the insurgents, the IBT leadership violated their commitment to anti-statist voluntarism, using newly enacted labor policies to mobilize coercive state power in their favor. This episode foreshadowed expanded state intervention in union affairs in the post-war period and marked the ascendancy of a new model of industrial business unionism. The latter blended innovative tactics borrowed from radical challengers with the narrow economism and political conservatism of its craft business unionist forebears.