Transforming the Teamsters? a Case Study on the Challenges of Union Revitalization

As U.S. union density continues its steady downward decline, there is considerable debate on how best to revive labor’s fortunes. The problem of union revitalization also engages with broader debates within the sociology of organizations on the challenges of organizational transformation, as well as within the sociology of social movements on movement bureaucratization and barriers to mobilization. Simply put, there are many barriers to organizational reform and movement revitalization, and many reasons, both theoretical and empirical, that we would expect reform efforts to fail. This paper seeks to revive and extend current debates on paths to union revitalization through an analysis of current reform efforts in the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), one of the largest and most diverse unions in North America. While it has a history of corruption and bureaucratization, IBT members elected a slate in 2021 committed to organizational reform, backed by a longstanding rank and file reform movement known as Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU). In the two years the new administration has been in office, it has won important victories, including the best-ever contract at United Parcel Service (UPS), covering 350,000 workers across the U.S., and has created more space for rank and file organizing throughout the union. At the same time, it has demonstrated conservative tendencies, such as its decision not to endorse any candidate in the 2024 U.S. presidential election and its General President's overtures to Donald Trump and the Republican Party. Based on still-ongoing interview-based research conducted over the past two years, I assess the IBT leadership's efforts at organizational transformation, and how it has negotiated the challenges of organizational reform.