The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of the Team Drivers International Union and the Teamsters National Union, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue- and white-collar workers in both the public and private sectors, totalling about 1.25 million members in 2025. The union was formerly called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America.

History

Early history The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had helped form local unions of teamsters since 1887. In November 1898, the AFL organized the Team Drivers' International Union (TDIU).Sloane, Hoffa, 1991.Taft, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers, 1957. In 1901, a group of teamsters in Chicago, Illinois, broke from the TDIU and formed the Teamsters National Union. Unlike the TDIU, which permitted large employers to be members, the new Teamsters National Union permitted only employees, teamster helpers, and owner-operators owning only a single team to join, and advocated higher wages and shorter hours more aggressively than the TDIU. Claiming more than 28,000 members in 47 locals, its president, Albert Young, applied for membership in the AFL. The AFL asked the TDIU to merge with Young's union to form a new, AFL-affiliated union and the two groups did so in 1903, forming the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), and electing Cornelius Shea as the new union's first president. The election process proved tumultuous. Shea effectively controlled the convention because the Chicago locals—representing nearly half the IBT's membershipMontgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925, 1987.—supported his candidacy en bloc. Shea was opposed by John Sheridan, president of the Ice Drivers' Union of Chicago. Sheridan and George Innes, president of the TDIU, accused Shea of embezzlement in an attempt to prevent his election.Sheridan and Innes alleged that Shea had billed locals in Massachusetts $9.61 for services while charging the national union $19.44 for the same services. "Drivers Bolt Meeting", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1903. Shea won the election on August 8, 1903, by a vote of 605 to 480. The new grouping elected Edward L. Turley of Chicago as secretary-treasurer and Albert Young as general organizer."Drivers Bolt Meeting", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1903."Shea Chosen," Boston Daily Globe, August 9, 1903.

The union, like most unions within the AFL at the time, had a largely decentralized structure, with a number of local unions that governed themselves autonomously and tended to look only after their own interests in the geographical jurisdiction in which they operated.Galenson, The CIO Challenge to the AFL: A History of the American Labor Movement, 1960.Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933, 1972. The teamsters were vitally important to the labor movement, for a strike or sympathy strike by the teamsters could paralyze the movement of goods throughout a city and bring a strike into nearly every neighborhood. It also meant that teamsters leaders were able to demand bribes in order to avoid strikes, and control of a teamsters local could bring organized crime significant revenues. During Shea's presidency, the entire teamsters union was notoriously corrupt.Fitch, Solidarity for Sale, 2006.Witwer, "Unionized Teamsters and the Struggle over the Streets of the Early-Twentieth-Century City," Social Science History, Spring 2000.Tilman, "John R. Commons, the New Deal and the American Tradition of Empirical Collectivism," Journal of Economic Issues, September 2008.

Several major strikes occupied the union in its first three years. In November 1903, teamsters employed by the Chicago City Railway went out on strike. Shea attempted to stop sympathy strikes by other teamster locals, but three locals walked out and eventually disaffiliated over the sympathy-strike issue."Teamsters Are For War", Chicago Daily Tribune, November 23, 1903; "Teamsters Split Over Contracts", Chicago Daily Tribune, November 25, 1903; "Labor's Leader Made to Dance", Chicago Daily Tribune, December 18, 1903. A sympathy strike in support of 18,000 striking meat cutters in Chicago in July 1904 led to riots before the extensive use of strikebreakers led Shea to force his members back to work (leading to the collapse of the meat cutters' strike).Barrett, Work and Community in the Jungle: Chicago's Packing-House Workers, 1894-1922, 1990; Halpern, Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54, 1997; "Strike Spreads", Chicago Daily Tribune, July 27, 1904; "Riots In Streets After Nightfall Involve Drivers", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 10, 1904; "Mob of 4,000 Men Charges Police", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 19, 1904; "Meet in Secret to End Strike", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 14, 1904; "Meat Supply in Drivers' Power", Chicago Daily Tribune, September 2, 1904."Shea, Head of the Teamsters, Has Risen From A Tip-Cart Man," Boston Daily Globe, December 2, 1906; "Strike Spreads Among Drivers", Chicago Daily Tribune, August 9, 1904. In the midst of the strife in 1904, the teamsters convention in Cincinnati, Ohio, re-elected Shea by acclamation on August 8, 1904. Under his leadership, the union had expanded to nearly 50,000 members in 821 locals in 300 cities, making the Teamsters one of the largest unions in the United States.

In 1905, 10,000 teamsters struck in support of locked-out tailors at Montgomery Ward, and eventually more than 25,000 teamsters manned the picket lines.Cohen, The Racketeer's Progress: Chicago and the Struggle for the Modern American Economy, 1900-1940, 2004."Gigantic Strike Is In Full Swing", Chicago Daily Tribune, April 28, 1905; "Big Strike Has Small Beginning", Chicago Daily Tribune, May 20, 1905; "To Test Union Sympathy", Chicago Daily Tribune, April 6, 1905."History of Great Teamsters' Strike Filled with Sensational Incidents", Chicago Daily Tribune, July 21, 1905. But when local newspapers discovered that Shea was living in a local brothel, kept a 19-year-old waitress as a mistress, and had spent the strike hosting parties, public support for the strike collapsed, and the strike ended on August 1, 1905."Women Betray Labor Leaders", Chicago Daily Tribune, June 12, 1905.Witwer, Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union, 2003. Despite the revelations, Shea won re-election on August 12, 1905, by a vote of 129 to 121."Teamsters Re-Elect Shea," The New York Times, August 13, 1905.

Shea was re-elected again in 1905 and 1906, although significant challenges to his presidency occurred each time."Fight to Defeat Teamster Chief", Chicago Daily Tribune, July 7, 1906; "Teamsters Re-Elect Shea," The New York Times, August 10, 1906. Shea's first trial on charges stemming from the 1905 Montgomery Ward strike ended in a mistrial."Jury In Deadlock In the Shea Case", Chicago Daily Tribune, January 20, 1907. However, during the 1906 re-election Shea had promised that he would resign the presidency once his trial had ended."Shea's Scepter About to Fall?", Chicago Daily Tribune, March 22, 1907. But he did not, and most union members withdrew their support for him. Daniel J. Tobin of Boston was elected Shea's successor by a vote of 104 to 94 in August 1907."Shea Beaten By 10 Votes," Boston Daily Globe, August 10, 1907.

Organizing and growth during the Great Depression Tobin was president of the Teamsters from 1907 to 1952. Although he faced opposition in his re-election races in 1908, 1909 and 1910, he never faced opposition again until his retirement in 1952.Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: The Policies and Practices of the American Federation of Labor, 1900-1909, 1964.

The Teamsters began to expand dramatically and mature organizationally under Tobin. He pushed for the development of "joint councils" to which all local unions were forced to affiliate. Varying in geographical and industrial jurisdiction, the joint councils became important incubators for up-and-coming leadership and negotiating master agreements which covered all employers in a given industry. Tobin also actively discouraged strikes in order to bring discipline to the union and encourage employers to sign contracts, and founded and edited the union magazine, the International Teamster.Fink, Biographical Dictionary of American Labor, 1984.Phelan, William Green: Biography of a Labor Leader, 1989. Under Tobin, the Teamsters also first developed the "regional conference" system (developed by Dave Beck in Seattle), which provided stability, organizing strength, and leadership to the international union.

Tobin undertook long jurisdictional battles with many unions during this period. Fierce disputes occurred between the Teamsters and the Gasoline State Operators' National Council (an AFL federal union of gas station attendants), the International Longshoremen's Association, the Retail Clerks International Union, and the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks.Bernstein, The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941, 1970. The most significant disagreement, however, was with the United Brewery Workers over the right to represent beer wagon drivers. While the Teamsters lost this battle in 1913, when the AFL awarded jurisdiction to the Brewers, they won when the issue came before the AFL Executive Board again in 1933, when the Brewers were still recovering from their near-elimination during Prohibition.Taft, The A.F. of L. From the Death of Gompers to the Merger, 1959."Craft Unionists Win in Federation," The New York Times, October 11, 1933. The raids and new member organizing in the 1930s led to significant membership increases. Teamster membership stood at just 82,000 in 1932. Tobin took advantage of the wave of pro-union sentiment engendered by the passage of the National Industrial Recovery Act, and by 1935 union membership had increased nearly 65 percent to 135,000. By 1941, Tobin had a dues-paying membership of 530,000—making the Teamsters the fastest-growing labor union in the United States.

One of the most significant events in union history occurred in 1934. A group of radicals in Local 574 in Minneapolis—led by Farrell Dobbs, Carl Skoglund, and the Dunne brothers (Ray, Miles and Grant), all members of the Trotskyist Communist League of America—began successfully organizing coal truck drivers in the winter of 1933.Korth, Minneapolis Teamsters Strike of 1934, 1995. Tobin, an ardent anti-communist,Dubofsky and Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography, 1992. opposed their efforts and refused to support their 1933 strike. Local 574 struck again in 1934, leading to several riots over a nine-day period in May. When the employers' association reneged on the agreement, Local 574 resumed the strike, although it ended again after nine days when martial law was declared by Governor Floyd B. Olson. Although Local 574 won a contract recognizing the union and which broke the back of the anti-union Citizens Alliance in Minneapolis, Tobin expelled Local 574 from the Teamsters. Member outrage was extensive, and in August 1936 he was forced to recharter the local as 544.Schlesinger, The Age of Roosevelt: The Coming of the New Deal, 1933-1935, 1959. Within a year the newly formed Local 544 had organized 250,000 truckers in the Midwest and formed the Central Conference of Teamsters.