Organizers & Carriers

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), formerly known by the name International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America, is one of the largest labor unions in the United States. more...

Home
Art
Basketry
Bead Art
Candle & Soap Making
Ceramics, Pottery
Crafts Wholesale Lots
Crocheting
Cross Stitch
Decorative, Tole Painting
Drawing
Embroidery
Fabric
Fabric Embellishments
Floral Crafts
Framing & Matting
General Art & Craft Supplies
Glass Art Crafts
Handcrafted Items
Kids Crafts
Knitting
Lacemaking, Tatting
Latch Rug Hooking
Leathercraft
Macramé
Metalworking
Mosaic
Needlepoint
Other Arts & Crafts
Painting
Paper Crafts & Origami
Quilting
Ribbon
Rubber Stamping & Embossing
Scrapbooking
Adhesives, Glue & Tape
Computerized, Digital
Cutters & Trimmers
Decoupage
Die Cutting Machines
Dies
Embellishments
Idea Books
Markers, Pens
Organizers & Carriers
Other Scrapbooking
Paper Piecing
Paper Punches
Photo Mounting Paper
Scrapbook Patterns
Scrapbook Templates
Scrapbooking Albums
Scrapbooking Kits
Scrapbooking Paper, Pages
Scrapbooking Tools &...
Stickers
Sewing
Shellcraft
Spinning
Upholstery
Wall Décor, Tatouage
Weaving
Woodworking
Yarn

The name and logo of the union reflect the origin of the union as a craft union when founded in 1903. A teamster was originally a person who drove a team of oxen, a horse-drawn, a mule-drawn wagon or a mule train, but the word currently refers to professional truck drivers.

Early History

The union, like most unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL) at the time, was largely decentralized, with a number of local unions that governed themselves autonomously and tended to look only after their own interests in the geographical jurisdiction in which they operated. Teamster locals, however, by virtue of their key position in transport, often exercised a good deal of influence at the local level within central labor councils, the citywide bodies established by AFL unions. For example, the Teamsters were at the center of the City Front Federation strike of 1901, in which San Francisco unions engaged in something like a general strike.

While the San Francisco strike was largely successful, the union's strike against Montgomery Ward in 1905, on the other hand, was not. The national union was unable to offer much effective assistance to local unions and was weakened by internal factions during its early years. Daniel J. Tobin was president of the Teamsters from 1907 to 1952, having been president of Joint Council No. 10, based in Boston, Massachusetts.

Tobin undertook a long jurisdictional battle with the United Brewery Workers over the right to represent beer wagon drivers. While the Teamsters lost this battle in 1913, when the AFL awarded jurisdiction to the Brewers, they won when the issue came before the AFL Executive Board again in 1933, when the Brewers were still recovering from their near-elimination during Prohibition.

Organizing and growth during the Great Depression

Tobin was both cautious and conservative: he vigorously enforced the provisions of the union's constitution that barred strikes unless the union's membership approved strike action by a two-thirds vote, and imposed additional conditions, withholding strike benefits if the union had not made sufficient efforts to mediate the dispute before striking. A group of radicals within the union in the Minneapolis area, however, circumvented Tobin in 1934, successfully organizing every major trucking outfit in the city, a major distribution center in the upper Midwest, and the warehouse workers employed by those trucking companies in a series of strikes.

Read more at Wikipedia.org