http://socialistworker.org/2011/05/20/teamster-rebellion-of-1934The 1920s was a dismal period for most workers in the U.S. A wave of militancy following the First World War had been crushed by state repression. Unionization levels were very low, and the labor movement was dominated by the elitist craft unions of the American Federation of Labor, which preferred backroom deals with the bosses to organizing the mass of workers.
Three strikes in 1934 helped transform the situation. Phil Gasper looks at the Teamster rebellion in Minneapolis.
THE ONSET of the Great Depression at the end of the 1920s led to massive unemployment, with up to a third of the workforce without jobs, and sharp wage cuts for those who had work.
Yet it was the hardship of the Depression that led to a renewal of rank-and-file struggle. When the economy began to pick up in 1933-34, the bitterness of workers in many cities exploded into militant unionization drives. Nowhere were the events more dramatic than in Minneapolis.
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