Search
Close this search box.

Class war in Minneapolis

Dave Jenkins

Fifty years ago the American city of Minneapolis was a battlefield in the class war between workers and bosses. Three strikes in 1934 shook the city and American society to their foundations. The feature of these strikes by the Teamster Union Local 574 was that they were led by Trotskyists.

Minneapolis boasted the strongest branch of the Communist League of America (CLA) the American Trotskyist organisation. This branch was led by a veteran workers leaders like Carl Skoglund and the Dunne Brothers, Vincent Raymond (known as Ray), Miles and Grant – and in the course of the strike recruited young teamster militants like Farrell Dobbs. In the battles of 1934 the Trotskyists exposed the lie, so often levelled at Trotskyists then and now by the Communist and social democratic parties that they were incapable of winning mass support and leading workers to victory.

The victory of the 1934 Minneapolis strike was of decisive importance for the development of Trotskyism. So too was it for the whole of the American working class. The victory of Local 574 in making Minneapolis a union town inspired other workers to take on the rapacious U.S. bosses, If the truckers could win against a powerful bosses’ organisation like the Minneapolis “Citizens’ Alliance” backed up by the police and National Guard, then other workers could defeat their bosses. Following Minneapolis the American working class, enthused and inspired by the struggles and tactics of Local 574 made a “giant step for labor.” A wave of mass strikes and factory occupations in 1935 and 1936 gave rise to the new industrial unions grouped in the CIO.

In the last twelve months Farrell Dobbs, one of the strike leaders and the historian of the Minneapo!is Teamsters and his companion, Marvel Scholl, founder of Local 574’s Women’s Auxiliary, have both died. We respectfully dedicate this article to them and to the heroes and martyrs of local 574. We do this in the knowledge that their story is not merely fascinating history but one rich in lessons for he militants struggling against the bosses and their state today, Picketing miners would do well to read Farrell Dobbs’ book “Teamster Rebellion’ (Published by Pathfinder Press) from which all quotations are taken unless otherwise stated.

In 1929 the “Roaring Twenties” in America came to an juddering halt. In that year the Wall Street Crash which started on of September 23 heralded an oncoming economic and long grinding Depression that wrecked havoc in the lives of millions of American workers. Between 1929 and 1933 unemployment rose from 3.2% to 24.9% as more than 15 million were thrown out of work. In the same period the average wage in manufacturing industry fell by 2per cent. Poverty and hunger became the norm.

The response of the trade union leadership to such a massive attack on the working class was “business as usual”. Bureaucrats like William Green, President of the American Federation of Labor (AFL), were a dominated by reactionary narrow craft outlook and had already had purged their organisations of “radicals” in 1926-27. These “labor statesmen”, as they liked to be called, practised “business unionism”. They operated the unions as services for the bosses in return for meagre reforms. However during the slump their services were not so necessary. By 1933 the AFL’s membership had sunk from over 4 million in 1920 to barely over 2 million, as even skilled workers found their lives ravaged by capitalism’s crisis.

But while the unions continued to decline in numbers in the early 1930s, the anger of the working class was demonstrated in a number of ways. Unemployed councils sprouted in every city. Their struggles against eviction and for relief often reached riot proportions. In Chicago home evictions were suspended because of the direct action of the 45 branches and 22.000 members of these Councils. Such movements were normally brutally suppressed. The Ford Hunger March in Detroit in March 1932 was met with fierce state resistance and four workers were shot dead by the police.

Non-unionised workmen struck spontaneously against sackings and wage cuts. In one such strike in North Carolina in July 1932, a few hundred hosiery workers walked off the job and within days 15,000 workers had joined them, closing 100 factories. Such militancy needed to be organised on a permanent footing if workers were to defend themselves and advance. The urgent need for new non-craft based industrial unions and an independent working class political party was clear.

Hostility to the bosses parties

Indeed hostility to the traditional bourgeois parties was evidenced in certain areas, In Minnesota, whose largest city is Minneapolis, the hostility of workers and smaller farmers was evidenced in the 1932 election of Floyd Olson as State Governor on a Farmer Labor Party (FLP) ticket. But this experience was not repeated on a national scale. The Republican. Herbert Hoover, was the clear-cut candidate of Big Business. And the FLP channelled their efforts into supporting F.D. Roosevelt. the Democratic candidate, who offered the vague promise of a New Deal.

The bare bones of FDR’s New Deal was an increased role for central government in an attempt to foster national economic recovery. As strikes increased in 1933. undermining the prospect of recovery, one element of the New Deal became the creation of Labor Boards to defuse strikes, enforcing cooling off periods and compulsory mediation. Symbolically Section 7a of the National Industrial Recovery Act. granted Labor the right to “organise unions of their own choosing”. This legal provision was a useful propaganda weapon for the union militants, Nevertheless the provision lacked teeth and, to make organisation a reality, militants had to fight every step of the way against union busting bosses. Minneapolis was a. case in point.

The I. B. T.

Minneapolis was the great market and transport hub of the vast Midwestern grain belt. Thus transport was , central to its economy and workers in this sector held a power economy was typical. It was organised by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT nationally in the iron grip of the odious business union man Daniel Tobin. Locally its membership of less than a thousand was divided into splinter branches or ‘locals’ according to the commodity trucked, Local 574, a General Division Local, was used as a clearing house for new members pending sub-division,

In 1933 its membership numbered 70 or so. With the exception of its President, Bill Brown, “a fighter by nature”, its executive was slavishly pro-Tobin. “On balance, there was little more in Local 574 than an IBT charter with which to begin an organising campaign” (Dobbs). This was precisely the objective that the Trotskyists set themselves. It was a crucial step in their attempt to root their forces in the working class.

The local CLA leaders Carl Skoglund and V. A. Dunne and his brothers worked in the coal hauling industry. In 1933 they began a drive to organise coal truckers and loaders, Stealthily they organised a volunteer committee of workers to fight for admission into Local 574 against the local executive. During this struggle, eventually won in 1934, they democratically prepared the demands of the members.

In the thirties the city was a communication and distribution centre, a link between the vast agricultural expanses to the west and the large scale industry coming to dominate the neighbouring cities around the Great lakes to the east, Its industry was ruled by the Citizens Alliance (CA), a federation of bosses dominated by the biggest capitalist concerns, which had crushed every strike attempt for 20 years. James Cannon, founder of the CLA. said of Minneapolis: “It was a town of lost strikes, miserably low wages, murderous hours and a weak and ineffectual craft-union movement:’ (History of American Trotskyism).

They centred on union recognition, increased wages, shorter hours, premium pay for overtime, improved working conditions, and job protection through a seniority system.

On Sunday 4th February 1934 a mass meeting gave the employers 48 hours to negotiate and elected a strike committee. With Citizen Alliance backing the employers stood firm against the coal truckers demands. On Wednesday the coal yards were struck. And howl Not only had the Trotskyists picked their target well- coal shortages in sub-zero temperatures- but their organisation and militancy shocked the employers.

The yards were tied up tight by over 600 pickets.

Any coal truck movements were tracked and stopped by the use of cruising picket squads or what are now called the flying pickets. By Friday the bosses were forced to retreat. A Labor Board mediation resulted in union recognition and improved wages. This short sharp shock for the “Citizens” and their open-shop policy was also an encouraging prelude to a drive to organise workers in other sectors beyond coal. In line with the union rules Local 574 had contacted head office for endorsement. Typically the day the strike ended in victory the strikers received a letter from Tobin: “Strike endorsement .. cannot be granted”.

Rank and file rule

The organising committee developed in the coal drive now became an official body by rank and file consent. A recruitment drive on industrial rather than craft lines was launched. As in coal, the young militants who spearheaded the drive, built up the demands as they recruited. Objections of the official executive were overruled by the rank and file.

By April the Local was confident enough to make public its growth. A mass meeting at Shubert Theatre, packed to overflowing heard Governor Olson’s message to workers “to band together for your own protection and welfare.” By now 3000 had been organised. Carl Skoglund argued the union’s next step and the meeting voted to strike on their demands if the employers failed to meet the union deadline.

A broad strike committee, elected from the meeting, then swung into action. Alliances were built with the unemployed and with poor farmers. Crucially efforts were made to get the blessing, if not the help of the AFL’s local officialdom. This way the strikers hoped to neutralise the likely sabotaging interventions of Tobin. Following the lead of the earlier Progressive Miners’ Strike, a women’s auxiliary was set up.

As in the strike committee so in the support organisations it was the Trotskyists who took the initiative. CLA members active in the unemployed movement campaigned for an unemployed section of Local 574. Unemployed leaders were drawn into the union’s picketing plans. Far from being a source of scab labor, as the Citizen’s Alliance hoped, and the union officials, contemptuous of non-contributors to their fat salaries, predicted, the unemployed were drawn into battle alongside the strikers.

Organising the women

Marvell Scholl and Clara Dunne recruited women to the idea of active involvement in the strike. staffing the commissary, the office. nursing and when the action started, picketing too. Farrel Dobbs describes the motives, initial problems and eventual success of building the women’s auxiliary in terms that ring familiar from the development of the miners’ wives groups today:

“The aim would be to draw in wives, girl friends, sisters and mothers of union members. Instead of having their morale corroded by financial difficulties they would face during the strike they should be drawn into the thick of battle where they could learn unionism through first-hand participation … The proposal (to form a women’s auxiliary – Ed.) was adopted although not with much enthusiasm, After I got some needling, especially from men who saw in their union activity a way to get an occasional night out, but all this stopped suddenly when the women went into action later on,”

The Citizen’s Alliance would not recognise the union. While they did meet the Labor Board “out of courtesy”, they were in fact making time for their preparations against Local 574. Red-baiting and intimidation was rife. The Mayor and the police chief Michael Johannes (Bloody Mike as he came to be known) openly lined up with the bosses and declared their support for the union busting struggle ahead as the new CLA recruit, Farrell Dobbs, discovered when he infiltrated an Alliance meeting.

On May 15th, Local 574 held a mass meeting and voted unanimously to strike in a standing vote. They disregarded. in the name of workers’ democracy, Tobin and the IBT’s ruling on compulsory ballots for strike action. On May16th Local 574 went on Strike. Arthur Schlesinger, the Harvard History Professor noted: “The city. as they put it locally, was tied up as tight as a bull’s eye in fly time.” (The Coming of the New Deal). Once again the extent and power of the union’s organisation caught the Citizen’s Alliance on the hop. In the weeks preceding the strike new headquarters were set up in a garage on Chicago Avenue. This housed a maintenance depot for the cruising picket squads. the commissary, which with expert help from the Cooks and the Waiters Union, fed 4-5,000 people daily, the offices and a hospital.

Army like operations

An elected strike committee of 75 rank and file union members organised a loudspeaker system to address daily mass meetings. Subcommittees were set up to promote material aid, handle complaints, arrange legal assistance and under Ray Dunne and Farrell Dobbs, organise picketing. Dobbs describes this organised picketing:

“Cruising squads in autos ware assigned, district by district, on the lookout for scab trucks. A captain was. designated for each of these squads … At all times a reserve force … was kept on hand. In situations where large forces were involved. a field commander was appointed .. Special cruising squads with handpicked crews were constantly at the disposal of the picket dispatches .. captained by qualified leaders who carried credentials .

In fact it was a force operating like an army. But it was an army recruited from and controlled by rank and file workers and it fought for their class interests. These innovations and developments inspired many other workers and union membership quickly doubled to 6,000. Help poured in from hundreds of unemployed volunteers and students. Then the Yellow Cab drivers encouraged by its militancy joined Local 574 and struck. “Nothing moved on wheels without the union’s permission.

By May 18th the Citizen’s Alliance had recovered from the shock to organise counter-measures. A “citizens’ rally” chose a “law and order committee” to emulate 574’s military-style organisation and to enlist deputies. The next day fighting took place and a number of pickets were badly injured. That same evening an agent provocateur who had infiltrated the strike HQ dispatched a team of pickets into a trap. The pickets, five of them women, were badly beaten by “police clubs and by saps in the hands of hired thugs.”

“Up to now the workers had gone about their activities bare-handed; but they found that attempts to exercise their right to peacefully picket were being prevented. They tooled up with clubs of all sorts. The Alliance let it be known that they intended to load trucks in the Market and on Monday “two organised and disciplined forces were to face each other, club against club, in a battle fought along military lines.” Thousands of armed pickets prevented the scabs operating and more than 30 cops and deputies were hospitalised. When, in frustration. the police drew their guns, “Bob Bell a I. man and fearless” drove a truck into the midst a cops allowing pickets to jump out and preventing shooting in the melee.

“Chief Johannes decided to call it a day.” But only to call up reserves. A repeat of the battle was ordered by him for the next day. 1500 caps and deputies entered the fray. Many thought that a victory over the “lower classes” would present no problems at all. James Cannon wrote that the deputies “came to the market in a sort of gala holiday spirit. One of the special deputies wore his polo hat. He was going to have one hell of a time down there knocking strikers’ heads around like polo balls. The ill-advised sportsman was mistaken; it was no polo game this time:’ (History of American Trotskyism). The pickets were organised, they knew their job and they were lad by seasoned picket captains. They proved the value of creating workers’ self defence organisations where the mass picket is faced with violent police opposition. In the ensuing battle the pickets concentrated on the less seasoned deputies. In the “Battle of Deputies Run” two of the specials were killed in the fighting. The pickets won and again nothing moved on the streets.

On Monday and Tuesday, when the fighting reached its peak, the Building Trades Council called a sympathy strike. The electrical workers, inspired by 2 CLA members, marched as a body to Local 574’s HQ to put itself at the teamsters’ disposal. Delegation after delegation from union locals arrived to offer their support.

In these circumstances a panicky Labor Board quickly prepared a 24 hour truce- suspending truck traffic and closing the market while a settlement was prepared. The “Friend of Labor” Olson mobilised the National Guard but was reluctant to use it because of union and FLP rank and file pressure. Instead the truce was extended to permit negotiations. Local 574 withdrew pickets pending “union recognition and an acceptable settlement,”

By May 25th the union’s negotiating team, under complete rank and file control via regular mass meetings had reached an agreement which the strike committee could recommend to a mess meeting as a satisfactory compromise. Improved pay and conditions, the reinstatement of all strikers, a seniority system and most important union recognition, were all won.

Membership soared to over 7,000, many of them “inside workers”. That is workers other than truckers and loaders but employed as packers and such like in the warehouses or markets, While this agreement was being carried out by the employers and scrutinised by the workers a new row was brewing over whether the inside workers were properly covered by the settlement.

To the strikers the inclusion of inside workers in the deal had been a sticking point. This was an important statement of their commitment to industrial rather than craft, unionism. But the employers, then Governor Olson and the Labor Board backtracked. In late June Local 574 held a membership meeting which voted to press for union recognition for all its members and better pay. Preparations for a third strike began.

The “Weekly Organiser”

The CLA national leadership had earlier dispatched James Cannon, the founder of American Trotskyism, to the scene. In the light of the new events it now sent out a team of Cannon, plus two journalists, an attorney and Hugo Oehler an experienced organiser of the unemployed.

Apart from offering Local 574 their experience in class combat and a political understanding of the class struggle second to none, the Trotskyist cadres made one other vital contribution to the strike. They helped launch a union paper, the Weekly Organiser, under the editorial control of union leaders and party journalists. This paper, transformed during the next strike into a daily, was to become a formidable weapon to counter the bosses’ lies.

Alliances with the unemployed, women and farmers were strengthened and yet more streamlined organisation developed. On July 6th the union showed its strength when 12,000 filled a meeting hall leaving thousands more outside.

Five days later Local 574 voted for an all out strike by a standing vote. When the bosses countered about the undemocratic nature of the vote, the strike committee recommended a secret ballot to a mass meeting. The meeting threw out the proposal and re-affirmed its commitment to workers’ democracy by repeating its standing vote and on July 17th Minneapolis was again brought to a standstill. The strikers elected a strike committee of 100, democratically accountable to them, to run the strike on a day to day basis.

The bosses retaliate

On the other side. the bosses organised too. Just like MacGregor, Thatcher and her Cabinet cronies today, they attacked the union’s leaders. wrote individual letters to strikers and then hurled the forces of the police. and the National Guard against their enemy within. They were ably helped in their attack by Tobin, who now castigated the earlier strikes as illegal and the Dunne brothers as “serpents in human form”. Tobin’s red baiting, like that of a (Gavin) Laird or a (Frank) Chapple, was faithfully regurgitated in the bosses’ press.

The red-baiting was answered firmly and sometimes humourously in the Daily Organiser. In one edition the Organiser published a verbatim “confession” from the Editor: “Well, to tell the truth, it was all planned out in Constantinople a few months ago. Some of the boys worked a week driving trucks and saved up enough money to take a trip to Europe. They went over to see Trotsky in Constantinople and get instructions for their next move. Trotskv said :’Boys, I want to see a revolution in Minneapolis before the snow flies.’ They said ‘O.K: and started to leave:’ (Cannon- Notebook of an Agitator) The Organiser could afford to laugh its readership of 10.000 who paid for the paper and more besides through donations, had nothing to fear from the Trotskyist “reds”. Their courage and their resolute defence of the workers’ interest had earned them the trust and respect of these readers. The red baiting showed the bosses and bureaucrats fear of Trotskyism precisely because it was winning mass influence.

Fearing the failure of their red -baiting and not fully trusting Governor Olson and the Federal Labor Mediators he brought in to settle the dispute, the employers decided to try and cow the workers into submission. Their lickspittle police chief did their bloody bidding with a vengeance, On July 20th, “Bloody Friday” as it became known, the police ambushed two truck loads of unarmed pickets. With out any provocation they opened fire. When their revolvers and rifles lell silent 67 people lay bullet’ ridden, mainly shot in the back. Two of these – Henry Ness and John Belor – died. Thirty four had a total of 160 pieces of lead removed from them in surgery. Just as today the police here beat miners in the streets of Armthorpe and on the fields of Orgreave, so, fifty years ago in Minneapolis. they were performing similar violent services for their overfed capitalist paymasters. The Minneapolis workers, like today’s miners, fought back. But their methods of doing so – organised picket defence, mass mobilisation of other workers in solidarity strike action – can teach miners some useful lessons today.

City at a standstill

On the evening of JUly 20th 15,000 angry workers attended an open air meeting. On the Saturday there were four times as many pickets, The Organiser argued for a one-day strike by all transportation warkers on Monday 23 rd. That day too, laundry workers went on strike alongside Local 574 for their own demands linked with those of the teamsters. On Tuesday. Minneapolis was at a standstill as 50,000 workers attended the funeral of Henry Ness.

As the police attempted to resume trucking every operation was flanked by larger numbers of flying pickets. While the strikers had decided not to arm themselves with guns or knives, for tactical reasons, the police didn’t know this and faced with mass organised cruising pickets, armed with clubs and instructed to “defend themselves”, they found it impossible to crack the strike.

Increasingly desperate federal mediators now proposed a settlement, endorsed by Olson who threatened martial law if either side rejected it. Another sign of Olson’s qet-tough policy was the arrest the same day of Cannon and Max Schactman, one of the CLA journalists. Then to the surprise of the Alliance, the strike committee recommended acceptance. The deal, which included recognition of the inside workers. was a basis to build on. Realising this the employers rejected it and Olson imposed martial law that was, in every respect, used against the strikers not the bosses. Far from being neutral in the conflict the state forces actually punished ‘the strikers for the bosses’ rejection. The powerful capitalists who ran the Alliance referred to the mediation as surrender. The strikers responded by warning that on August 1st mass picketing in defiance of the state militia would begin.

At 4 am that morning, Olson moved against the strikers. Their HQ was surrounded and Ray and Miles Dunne with Bill Brown were thrown into the stockade.

To Olson’s surprise the picketing after his crack- down intensified. The seasoned troops of Local 574, with its hundreds of picket captains improvised on contingency plans. ‘”Within a few hours over 500 calls for help were reported into military headquarters. Troops responded … usually to find scabs who had been worked over but no pickets,” Further Olson’s attempt to find softer negotiation merely gave him the chance 10 meet Kelly Postal, Ray Rainbolt – one of the few Trotskyist Native Americans and Jack Maloney, three picket captains who refused to talk until their leaders were released. Olson retreated and the strike leaders were freed.

As August wore on some of the smaller employers were cracking despite Olson’s attempts at military strikebreaking. Back to work movements failed. Dobbs describes a war of attrition between militia and pickets well into August.

Eventually the determined Local and its Trotskyist leadership won the day. AFL bigwigs. Olson and Citizen Alliance men all met with Roosevelt. A fresh mediation was launched under Roosevelt’s direct supervision.

Olson now agreed the release of all pickets from the stockade prison. The union would be recognised, inside workers too, wherever it won an election. On August 21st the strike committee recommended acceptance to a mass meeting. Local 574 was soon recognised as the bargaining representative in all the major trucking firms and most of the rest. Wages and conditions were improved. And to cap their victory, the workers elected their tried and tested representatives in place of its moribund predecessor.

A fighting union

The Trotskyists who led the organising drive and three strikes were confirmed as Local 574’s leaders. In 6 months Minneapolis had been transformed from an open-shop citadel into a union town. In that time the Local had been transformed from a branch of 70 odd members under the control of tame Tobin men, into a fighting union of 7000 plus, democratically run by its rank and file. More than this, their Struggle had been closely watched by millions of workers suffering similar misleadership after a long period of retreat.

Three days before the victory Jim Cannon writing in an Organiser article: “The Secret of Local 574” had said of the union: “The outward form is old fashioned and ‘regular’, but the inner content is modern and pulsating with new vigorous life. In sense of the word it can be said that Local 574 represents a fusion of the new and the old at the moment when the American labor movement as whole stands before the prospect of great change: to meet the modern needs of the workers.” Two years later the CIO was formed in a yet greater act of working class revolt.

Of course circumstances are vastly different in Britain in 1984 and the American city of Minneapolis in 1934. Nevertheless the reasons why the Minneapolis strikes won, are important guidelines to militants today. The democratic organisation of the strikes embodied in regular man meetings whose decisions were binding ensured that the members were mobilised in the strike and not left at home tend gardens and isolated. The rank and file ran the strikes. This was symbolised in the July/August strike by the election of the Committee of 100. Significantly its key leaders – CLA members – did number a single full-time official in their ranks.

Class struggle

In the struggle to win the strikes Local 574 recognised the importance of defence and the spread of the strike. Every instance of brutality was answered in kind and used as a means of mobilising support from other workers. The building of an active women’s auxiliary played a crucial role in this latter endeavour. Their role was organising welfare plus spreading the strike and winning support for it.

In the end the strikers won union recognition.

In an isolated town in vast America they couldn’t hope to achieve much else. Union recognition itself was a tremendous gain. More than that, however. the influence of the Trotskyists made sure that Minneapolis achieved a more lasting significance. In the leadership of the struggle they showed that trade unionism, if it was to truly defend the workers’ interests, had to be founded in class struggle not class collaboration. They showed, in the best traditions of revolutionary trade unionism, what could be achieved when the workers fought the bosses – asserting their own needs and interests above all else. Class fighters today, in the NUM and other unions must develop a similar understanding, an understanding that James Cannon expressed well when he wrote in the Organiser: “local 574 doesn’t take any stock in the theory that capital and labor are brothers, and that the way for little brother labor to get a few crumbs is to be a good boy and appeal to the good nature of big brother capital. We see the issue between capital and labor as an unceasing struggle between the class of exploited workers and the class of exploiting parasites. It is a war. What decides in this war, as in all others is power. The exploiters are organised to grind us down into the dust. We must organise our class to fight back.

Content

You should also read
Share this Article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Print
Reddit
Telegram
Share this Article
Facebook
Twitter
WhatsApp
Print
Reddit
Telegram