Teamster Power

The second of four books on the 1930s strikes, organizing drives, and political campaigns that transformed the Teamsters union in Minnesota and much of the Midwest into a fighting industrial union movement.

Written by a leader of the communist movement in the US and organizer of the Teamsters union during the rise of the CIO. Indispensable tools for advancing revolutionary politics, organization, and effective trade unionism.

Also available in Spanish (ISBN:9780873489980)

“Dobbs’ writing style is so interesting and readable that the reader will feel compelled to complete the book in one evening.” —Minnesota Daily

Farrell Dobbs (1907–1983) was national secretary of the Socialist Workers Party from 1953 to 1972 and the SWP presidential candidate four times. In 1934 he emerged from the ranks of the Teamsters as a central leader of battles that transformed the union movement during the Great Depression. He was a leader of the strikes that year that made Minneapolis a union town and later of the organizing drives that brought a quarter million over-the-road truck drivers into the Teamsters union across the Midwest and Mid-South.

During World War II, Dobbs and other central SWP leaders organizing labor opposition to Washington’s war aims were railroaded to federal prison by the US imperialist rulers.

He is the author of the series on the Teamster battles of the 1930s (four-volumes, 1972–77) and Revolutionary Continuity: Marxist Leadership in the U.S. (two volumes, 1980–83). Other works include:
Tribunes of the People and the Trade Unions (2019, coauthor)
50 Years of Covert Operations in the US: Washington's Political Police and the American Working Class (2014, coauthor)
Selected Articles on the Labor Movement (1983)
Counter-Mobilization: A Strategy to Fight Racist and Fascist Attacks (1976)
The Structure and Organizational Principles of the Socialist Workers Party (1971)