Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1957-04-01

the construction industry and
also to lesser extent in the
milk. bread and other delivery
systems.
These members are known as
owner-operators. After the war,
employers in construction and
other industries decided they
didn't want lots of money tied
up in trucks. So they worked out
deals for men owning their own
trucks to work for them.
The Transfers Union bar
gains for this type of worker,
fixing rates for his wages and
rent for his truck, and also
wages and rental for any of the
owner-operator's employees OPP
Grating the truck on second and
third shifts.
The Transfers Union is d.
vided into city. State and area
duchies, each with its own set
OF bosses. Generally speaking
they have. by tradition. OBJ
Grated as they saw fit.
Beck and Hoffa have changed
this quite a bit in the last few
years. Beck, having welded to-
gether an ll-State organization
INTO the Western Conference of
Ieamsters. carried the plan fur
tner after becoming national
president. He established similar
Eastern. Central States and
Southern Transfers Conferences.
The result has been that where
Ieamsters previously bargained
Tor city or regional areas, they
now bargain on conference
scope. It's a move toward ma
tional bargaining.
The trucking operators have
never centralized as much as
the Transfers. So. in recent
years at least. they have been
unable to put up a very strong
night against so powerful a
union.
] The Transfers have more
than 800 local unions. There are
A joint councils. which are
sometimes Statewide and some
times COMMUNICATIVE, such as
the Chicago or Boston areas.
/ Who are the Transfers? They
are the truck drivers. the long
haul boys jockeying freight
across country.
But there are thousands and
thousands of other teamsters
driving local delivery trucks.
taxicabs. ambulances and prac-
tically every other type of We
hicle.
The union also represents pro-
auction workers in milk plants.
breweries. canneries. all sorts of
fruit and vegetable processing
workers and handlers. race track
employees. warehouse employees.
and pinball and vending machine
servicemen.
The Transfers once put on a
campaign to enlist single
motorcycle messenger in the
Washington Office of the Associ-
ated Press. 1T turned out he
already belonged to another
union.
One key to success of Team
sters organizing is their boycott
practices. Businessmen's organi-
cations keep special stats busy
doing nothing else but criticizing
these practices and encouraging
legal action against them.
The boycott amounts to this:
The teamsters have hot cargo"
clauses lin their labor contracts.
When an employer agrees to this
he agrees to refuse to handle
any goods shipped his way by
an employer whose products the
Transfers Union has LABELED as
hot"
Thus, when trying to organize
a baking employers workers.
the union doesn't have to worry
much about the workers. 1t Just
labels his output hot" spreads
the word to the unionized en-
Iployers and sits back to watch
the original employer squirm
when he can't find truck trans
portation This a pretty effective
way to organize and also often
illegal under Taft-Hartley law
provisions.
4 But the boycotted employer
often hasn't the time or in
clination to take a case to court.
Boycott practice. incidentally, is
at the root of much of industry's
demand to apply the antitrust
statutes to labor unions. so
union and union employers could
not combine against nonunion
employers.
Some employers have held out
and broken the boycott.