O'Brien, Teamsters & UFW

Police dogs picked up Hoffa’s scent in bodyguard Chuckie O’Brien’s trunk.

O’Brien, Teamsters & UFW
By Bob Alexander

Charles "Chuckie" O'Brien, the Hoffa foster son who has become a central figure in the disappearance of the "little man," has recently surfaced as a Midwest organizer in the Teamsters' protracted campaign against Cesar Chavez' United Farm Workers of California (UFWOC).

While Teamsters continued to collude with growers against UFWOC organizing efforts, and Farmworkers and even sympathetic Teamsters were getting roughed up in the fields by thugs of suspicious origin, O'Brien showed up in Ann Arbor last month with several labor contractors to pitch the University Housing Committee. The Committee, unimpressed, voted unanimously to maintain its boycott of non-UFWOC lettuce.

In one of the more blatant examples of Teamster anti-labor activity, the Brotherhood has been cozying up to growers and fighting grass-roots organizing since 1935--when they hooked up with Safeway supermarkets to successfully oppose California's limits on monopoly food chains. In 1946, when northern California cannery workers voted for the AFLCIO, the Teamsters helped the owners force the union out.

In California, agribusiness is a billion-dollar operation involving over 200,000 seasonal and migrant workers.

Led by Chavez, farmworkers have been organizing, striking, and calling boycotts for years in support of the UFWOC. Agricultural workers, however, are specifically exempted from the pro-union provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act. So growers are free to sign "sweetheart" contracts with any union that will supply cheap, unorganized labor--the Teamsters, that is.

Despite the opposition of the rest of organized labor, in the early '60's the Teamsters supported the "bracero" program. The most oppressive form of the labor-contractor system, the bracero program brought in thousands of Mexican workers who, although they became dues-paying Teamsters, were ineligible for benefits due to their alien status. Some farms used as much as 90 per cent bracero

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UPW

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labor. Meanwhile, in 1963, the Teamster pension fund loaned one grower a million dollars.

Conventional Teamster efforts to organize farmworkers have failed. Each time a secret election has been held, the UFWOC has won, and the Teamsters have returned to scheming with the growers.

In 1967, the UFWOC was picking up momentum after winning the wine and table grape contracts and pressuring some lettuce growers to sign. Three years later, the Teamsters secretly signed most lettuce growers to sweetheart contracts. When some 7,000 farmworkers went out on strike, the Teamsters brought in scabs. These replacements have paid their dues, but they have not seen Teamster business agents, had a grievance procedure, received unemployment insurance, or had a local ranch election. Chicano workers under the Teamsters have never seen contracts written in Spanish, held union offices, or received such benefits as medical insurance.

When the growers pushed California Proposition 22 to forbid farm labor strikes and boycotts, the Teamsters did not oppose it-but 58 percent of the electorate did. One month later, the UFWOC won another victory when the California Supreme Court ruled that the 1970 lettuce strike was not a jurisdictional dispute, since the growers had imposed the Teamsters on the workers. The Teamsters responded by "renegotiating" contracts for 30,000 workers in fifteen days. They also met secretly with the wine and table grape growers and arranged for new sweet-heart contracts to replace UFWOC contracts due to expire in 1973.

California exploded in a series of UFWOC-led field strikes. The Teamsters again brought in thousands of scabs, mostly illegal Mexican aliens conveniently "over-looked" by U.S. customs. They also hired $67-a-day thugs to "organize" by attacking peaceful Farmworkers' picket lines. Over 3,700 UFWOC strikers and supporters were arrested, hundreds beaten, and two killed while police looked the other way. An assistant to Teamster boss Frank Fitzsimmons was beaten up by an "organizer." Due to a national outcry, Fitzsimmons finally called off the violence.

Although the California legislature has recently passed a farm labor union bill, the Teamsters have stepped up their harassment of grass-roots organizing activity. Last month some Teamsters who were supporting the UFWOC were beaten up. Before the incident could be investigated, the workers involved were deported as illegal aliens.