Jacobin: TDU and the New Labor Insurgency

By Teamsters for a Democratic Union’s (TDU’s) Ken Paff

TDU’s theory of change is that reforms that open up the labor movement to member involvement build worker power. It’s a participatory democracy model that has sometimes been a hard sell both with workers and on the Left. But now this model is spreading.

In 2021, United Auto Worker (UAW) militants took a page from the TDU playbook. In the wake of a major corruption scandal among union leaders, UAW members won the right to vote for their leaders, elected new leadership, and took on the Big Three automakers. UAW president Shawn Fain told the TDU Convention in November 2023, “There is no stand-up strike without TDU.”

In March, TDU members launched a campaign to win direct elections in the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employes (BMWE) in the rail industry. United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) members are planning to launch a similar drive.

TDU won the right to vote for top union officers in 1989, and we have used it twice to join a coalition and successfully elect new leadership in the 1.3 million–member Teamsters: first in 1991, with the victory of Ron Carey in the first-ever one-member-one-vote election, then again in 2021, with the election of the Teamsters United slate headed by Sean O’Brien and Fred Zuckerman.

But TDU is not primarily about electing top leaders, cheering them on, or criticizing them. TDU is fundamentally an independent movement that builds worker power from the bottom up by opening up the union to member participation, developing organizers and leaders, and organizing grassroots campaigns. We call this approach rank-and-file power.

…Under new Teamster leadership, strategies for building worker power through rank-and-file power are spreading through the union, including vigorous contract campaigns; practice picketing; coordinated bargaining; the lining up of multiple contracts to maximize worker leverage; picket line extensions to build strike solidarity across Teamster locals; and organizing in core industries with member organizers; to name a few.

…The union refused to use the normal approach of keeping the gains won in bargaining secret until a final deal is in place. Instead, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) reported the tentative agreements to the members as they were secured.

…That tactic and the slogan “Just Practicing for a Just Contract” is spreading…

You might think that new leadership and a new direction in the Teamsters would diminish the audience for TDU. But the opposite has happened: member participation in TDU is way up…