Truckers Protest High Fuel Prices
by Jeff Ruha
This is an edited version of a message posted on the Internet May
4, 2004, by Jeff Ruha, a railroad worker in Minnesota, who is active in the
rank-and-file reform movement in the United Transportation Union (UTU). He can
be reached here.
For more information, click
here or here.
Independent
truckers have engaged in creative protest over high fuel prices and have affected
Union Pacific intermodal business (see below for links to reports of the
protest).
This
illustrates the point made in several recent Labor Notes articles pointing out the
existence of transportation “choke points” that are vulnerable to limited
direct action.
For example,
Chris Kutalik and Ron Hume had an article in the April 2004 Labor Notes on the merger between the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) and the Brotherhood of Locomotive
Engineers (BLE) and [IBT President] Hoffa’s vision of a “seamless
transportation union.” They wrote: “Some industry experts agree that the merger
could indeed potentially strengthen the power of North American transportation
workers. ‘There is power and leverage to be had in this sector,’ states Edna
Bonacich, a sociology professor at the University of California, Riverside, who
has compiled research on the growing integration of rail/trucking/longshore
work. ‘Logistics (transportation and warehousing) is the [employers’] Achilles’
heel,’ Bonacich observes. ‘The corporations have created extended supply chains
that depend on timely delivery. Inventory has been cut to the bone, so that any
blockage in the system can cause them major problems. Having one big transportation/warehousing
union, like the IBT, means that it would be possible to disrupt the flow of
cargo in a coordinated way that could be very damaging.’”
Management as
victim of its own success. Of course any serious working stiff looking to
pursue this vision of a “seamless tranpsportation union” better get in touch
with the Teamsters for a Democratic Union.
Here are a
few headlines from the Omaha World-Herald
on the independent trucker protest. (For the articles themselves, click on the
titles.)
Trucker
protest delays some U.P. shipments
Truckers abandon
rigs in L.A. protest
See also (click
here)
Before there
was a UNION, there was simply SOLIDARITY.
“All great
reforms, great movements, come from the bottom and not from the top.—Governor John
Peter Altgeld (D/Illinois., 1892–1896), 1892
“To help
organize in the best way, unions cannot be competing against one another. We
need to act like Wobblies, as one big union.”—Glennis Ter Wisscha, one of the
Willmar 8
ATTENTION -
ATTENTION - ATTENTION - ATTENTION - ATTENTION
UTU members
please check out Roger Griffeth’s reform
website
A new Members
Against Corruption (MAC) caucus is forming.
Historic
opportunity to move the UTU back on track.
ATTENTION -
ATTENTION - ATTENTION - ATTENTION - ATTENTION
NEW REMOTE
CONTROL LOCOMOTIVE SURVEY!
If you are a
user of remote control locomotive (RCL) technology in the rail industry please
go here to take the online survey. If you are not using but know people
who are and you would be willing to help distribute paper copies of the survey,
they can be found on the same website. You can reach the usual suspects here
or snailmail them at
The Eugene
Victor Debs Committee
P.O. Box
13058
Dinkytown
Station
Minneapolis,
MN 55414
There is also
a new RCL discussion group
forming
Please visit
and contribute your two cents worth.
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