Daniel J. Tobin - Teamster Presidency, 1907-1931

Teamster Presidency, 1907-1931

Tobin faced a crisis early in his presidency. In mid-1907, a group of dissident teamsters, the United Teamsters of America, had formed as a dual union and was seeking to organize members. Tobin pleaded for Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, to intervene and bring about unity. Although Gompers worked hard at healing the rift, he was unsuccessful. When unity proved unworkable, Gompers denounced the United Teamsters as a dual union, declared their organizing practices deceptive, used the power of the AFL to promote the Teamsters as the only "legitimate" union for drivers, and ordered all local and regional AFL bodies to refused to affiliate or cooperate with the United Teamsters. The tactics worked, and the United Teamsters soon faded away.

Much of Tobin's presidency was consumed by a long-running and sometimes physically violent jurisdictional battle with the National Union of United Brewery Workmen. The Teamsters had challenged the Brewery Workmen's right to organize beer wagon drivers in 1903 and 1905. At Tobin's insistence, in 1907 the AFL revoked the Brewery Workers' charter, but a firestorm of protest from local unions around the country led the AFL to reinstate the charter in 1909. In 1933, the AFL Executive Council agreed to strip the brewery workers' union, now known as the United Brewery Workers, of the beer drivers. The United Brewery Workers filed suit in federal court in 1936 seeking to bar their suspension and the transfer of workers to the Teamsters. As the case worked its way to the Supreme Court of the United States the AFL attempted to mediate the dispute to no avail. The Supreme Court found in the AFL's favor, and the United Brewery Workers were suspended from the AFL.

Tobin led the Teamsters in a series of raids against the United Brewery Workers for the next several years. Both unions also fought over the same workers in numerous organizing campaigns. The United Brewery Workers affiliated with the CIO in July 1946 to try to marshal enough resources to stop the raids. A major dispute broke out on September 1946 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both unions engaged in jurisdictional strikes against one another. Beatings, riots and bombings occurred in, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Ohio. Fears grew that the labor war would spread across the country. An NLRB election held in 1949 was won by the United Brewery Workers and defused the tense situation, but raiding continued for the next 20 years.

The Teamsters also engaged in fierce jurisdictional disputes with the Gasoline State Operators' National Council (an AFL federal union of gas station attendants), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, the Retail Clerks International Union, and the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks.

The Teamsters began to expand dramatically and mature organizationally under Tobin. When he was elected president, power in the union was held by big-city locals—which handled all research, contract negotiations, legal services, communication and strike activity. Tobin pushed for the development of "joint councils" to which all local unions were forced to affiliate. Varying in geographical and industrial jurisdiction, the joint councils became important incubators for up-and-coming leadership and negotiating master agreements which covered all employers in a given industry. As collective bargaining became the norm throughout the Teamsters, Tobin actively discouraged strikes in order to bring discipline to the union and encourage employers to sign contracts. Tobin also founded and edited (for a time) the union magazine, the International Teamster.

Initially, Tobin remained outside the AFL's decision-making hierarchy. But his policy stands reflected his support for Gompers. In 1913, when the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was locked in a bitter strike in Michigan, Tobin supported Gompers' refusal to establish a national strike fund to aid the WFM—or any other union, for that matter.

In 1915, the Catholic Archbishop of Trois-Rivières, Quebec, François-Xavier Cloutier, denounced secular labor unions. Archbishop Cloutier urged Catholics to abandon secular trade unions and join Catholic workers' unions. By 1919, anecdotal reports indicated that the number of Canadian Catholic workers leaving unions affiliated with the AFL had grown significantly, and Gompers feared a backlash by Protestant union members. In 1921, Gompers appointed Tobin, along with Matthew Woll and Frank Duffy, to a committee to investigate the problem. Their report indicated that the number of disaffiliating members was low; the problem was limited to the cities of Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City; and that the only union significantly affected was the Carpenters. Tobin and the others issued a report documenting the inferior contracts of the Catholic workers' unions, and the issue was laid to rest.

In late 1916, Samuel Gompers began pushing for the AFL to take a strongly supportive stance on President Woodrow Wilson's pro-war policies vis-a-vis Germany. Tobin and eight other international union leaders met on May 27, 1915, to oppose American war preparations. Unwilling to actually oppose war, the group asked Gompers to form a committee to enunciate labor's stand on the European conflict. When war came, Gompers wholeheartedly supported it. On March 11, 1917, the AFL Executive Council met and (reportedly) unanimously endorsed American entry in the war. Tobin quickly exposed this as a lie. In an article in the International Teamster, he wrote that the vote had been up-or-down, with no possibility of amendment. He also reported that he himself had abstained from voting, which made the vote only technically unanimous. After the United States entered World War I, Tobin initially refused to acceded to Gompers' request for a ban on strikes.

In 1917, Tobin defeated John B. Lennon in the race for treasurer of the AFL. Although membership in the AFL had risen to 2.371 million in 1917 from 2.072 million the year before, socialists and others in the federation felt that Lennon had not been sufficiently aggressive. Tobin, however, was forced to defend his previous actions, denounce pacifism, and declare his full support for the war effort. AFL president Samuel Gompers and Tobin quickly became close friends and supporters of one another. Tobin quickly became one of the inner circle of AFL vice presidents (which included Matthew Woll, John P. Frey and William Hutcheson). During the presidency of William Green, Tobin and the others largely controlled the AFL.

Tobin served as one of the AFL's delegates to the President's Industrial Commission in 1919.

That same year, Gompers chose Tobin as the AFL's second delegate to the founding convention of the International Federation of Trade Unions (IFTU). Tobin would serve as an AFL delegate to the IFTU until the AFL withdrew from that body in 1945. In 1918 and 1920, he served as an AFL delegate to the Pan-American Labor Conference.

In 1920, Annie Tobin died. In October 1922, Tobin married the former Irene Halloran. The couple had one daughter.

In September 1921, Tobin attempted to resign as treasurer of the AFL in a dispute with Gompers over the AFL's support for unemployment insurance. Gompers opposed the legislation, fearing worker dependence on government handouts and that government rather than unions would be seen as more important to workers. Tobin strongly supported the initiative, however. Gompers, however, realized he was in the minority on the AFL Executive Council and relented. Gompers refused to accept Tobin's resignation, and Tobin continued as treasurer.

In 1921, Tobin helped defeat an amendment offered by African American union members which would have forced all members of the AFL to remove the word "white" from their constitutions and to admit all workers regardless of race, creed or nationality. Although three resolutions were offered, only one made it to the convention floor. When black delegates attempted to bypass the Committee on Organization (which had jurisdiction over the resolutions) and introduce the amendments on the floor of the 1921 AFL convention, Tobin supported Gompers in declaring the amendment out of order because it violated the AFL's explicit policy of noninterference in its members' affairs.

Tobin tried and failed to get the AFL to endorse Robert M. La Follette for President in 1924. When Tobin attempted to obtain AFL endorsement of the candidacy of Democrat Alfred E. Smith in the 1928 presidential election, AFL President William Green forced a resolution through the AFL Executive Council which reaffirmed the federation's nonpartisan policy. Tobin resigned as treasurer of the AFL in anger. Although Green and others feared the Teamsters might withdraw from the federation, Tobin assured the Executive Council he had no intention of doing so.

He became increasingly involved in ] politics, and chaired the Labor Bureau of the Democratic National Committee in 1932, 1936, 1940, and 1944. His re-appointment in 1936 by DNC chair James A. Farley deeply upset the leadership of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), who felt Tobin an uninspired campaigner and strategist. In response, the CIO formed Labor's Non-Partisan League to fully and completely mobilize labor support for Roosevelt. But despite the division in the American labor movement, by 1944 Tobin was working closely with the CIO PAC.