Daniel Joseph Tobin (April 1875 – November 14, 1955) was an American labor leader and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT, or "the Teamsters") from 1907 to 1952. From 1917 to 1928, he was treasurer of the American Federation of Labor. He served on the federation's Executive Council beginning in 1934, and served until his resignation in 1952.
Early life Tobin was born in Miltown Malbay, County Clare, Ireland, on April 2, 1875, and baptized on April 3, 1875, at St. Joseph's Roman Catholic Church in Miltown Malbay to John and Bridget (Kennelly) Tobin. His father was a shopkeeper, and the family Roman Catholic. He attended public school in Ireland, but did not graduate. In August 1898, he married Annie Reagan.Fink, Biographical Dictionary of American Labor, 1984. The couple had five sons and one daughter."Daniel Tobin Dies," New York Times, November 15, 1955.
Tobin immigrated to Boston, Massachusetts, in 1890. He found employment as a sheet metal worker, and attended high school in Cambridge, Massachusetts at night. In 1894, he became a motorman and driver for a local street car company. He found work as a truck driver for a local meatpacking firm (earning $11 a week), and joined Local 25 of the Teamsters at its founding. He was elected the union's business representative in 1904. On January 1, 1907, he was elected president of the Teamsters' Joint District Council covering the Boston area."Shea Beaten By 10 Votes," Boston Daily Globe, August 10, 1907.
Election as Teamster president
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) had begun organizing local unions of teamsters soon after its founding in 1886. These local unions were directly affiliated with the AFL rather than a national union of their own. In November 1898, the AFL called a convention to establish a national union for teamsters—the Team Drivers' International Union. George Innis was elected the union's first president. In 1902, another new national union of teamsters formed in Chicago, Illinois, the Team Driver's National Union. In 1903, the AFL brokered a merger agreement between the two unions, which created the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Cornelius Shea was elected the union's first president, but the union remained divided between its two primary predecessor groups.Taft, The A.F. of L. in the Time of Gompers, 1957.
In 1905, Shea led the Teamsters in a walkout aimed at the Montgomery Ward department store in Chicago. The strike, which was unsuccessful, was a violent, long and bitter one. Toward the end of the strike, Shea and several other Teamster leaders were indicted on charges of extortion.Leidenberger, Chicago's Progressive Alliance: Labor and the Bid for Public Streetcars, 2006. Angry at the strike's failure, Shea's apparent guilt in the extortion plot, and Shea's failure to unite the union's two warring factions, union members ousted Shea in August 1907 and elected Tobin in his place by a vote of 104 to 94 Deseret Evening News, August 9, 1907
Tobin took control as president of the international union on August 10, 1907, and moved to Indianapolis, Indiana, (where the IBT's headquarters were then located). 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.
Teamster presidency, 1907-1931
Tobin faced a crisis early in his presidency. In mid-1907, a group of dissident teamsters, the United Teamsters of America, had formed as a dual union and was seeking to organize members. Tobin pleaded for Samuel Gompers, president of the AFL, to intervene and bring about unity. Although Gompers worked hard at healing the rift, he was unsuccessful. When unity proved unworkable, Gompers denounced the United Teamsters as a dual union, declared their organizing practices deceptive, used the power of the AFL to promote the Teamsters as the only "legitimate" union for drivers, and ordered all local and regional AFL bodies to refuse to affiliate or cooperate with the United Teamsters. The tactics worked, and the United Teamsters soon faded away.
Much of Tobin's presidency was consumed by a long-running and sometimes physically violent jurisdictional battle with the National Union of United Brewery Workmen. The Teamsters had challenged the Brewery Workmen's right to organize beer wagon drivers in 1903 and 1905. At Tobin's insistence, in 1907 the AFL revoked the Brewery Workers' charter, but a firestorm of protest from local unions around the country led the AFL to reinstate the charter in 1909. In 1933, the AFL Executive Council agreed to strip the brewery workers' union, now known as the United Brewery Workers, of the beer drivers. The United Brewery Workers filed suit in federal court in 1936 seeking to bar their suspension and the transfer of workers to the Teamsters. As the case worked its way to the Supreme Court of the United States the AFL attempted to mediate the dispute to no avail. The Supreme Court found in the AFL's favor, and the United Brewery Workers were suspended from the AFL.Galenson, The CIO Challenge to the AFL: A History of the American Labor Movement, 1960."Craft Unionists Win in Federation," New York Times, October 11, 1933.
Tobin led the Teamsters in a series of raids against the United Brewery Workers for the next several years. Both unions also fought over the same workers in numerous organizing campaigns. The United Brewery Workers affiliated with the CIO in July 1946 to try to marshal enough resources to stop the raids."AFL Will Discuss Return of Brewers," New York Times, January 27, 1946. A major dispute broke out in September 1946 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Both unions engaged in jurisdictional strikes against one another. Beatings, riots and bombings occurred in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, New Jersey and Ohio. Fears grew that the labor war would spread across the country. An NLRB election held in 1949 was won by the United Brewery Workers and defused the tense situation, but raiding continued for the next 20 years."Dispute Hampers Breweries," Associated Press, October 3, 1946; "AFL and CIO Dispute Over Brewery Union," New York Times, October 22, 1946; "Breweries Face Supply Blockade," New York Times, October 24, 1946; "NLRB Voting Set in AFL Beer Fight," New York Times, February 9, 1947; "9 Hurt in AFL-CIO Clash," New York Times, November 27, 1946; "Bombings and Beatings in AFL-CIO Rivalry in Beer Trade Are Told to House Committee," New York Times, March 7, 1947; Committee on Education and Labor, The Pittsburgh Beer War, 1947; Levey, "Beck Details Plan of Teamster Drive," New York Times, January 15, 1949; "CIO Union Defies Beck," New York Times, February 21, 1949; "CIO Brewery Unit Wins," Associated Press, September 2, 1949; "Brewery Tie-Up Reduces St. Louis Beer to Trickle," Associated Press, October 24, 1951; Levey, "Major Test Snaps A.F.L.-C.I.O. Peace," New York Times, March 21, 1952.
The Teamsters also engaged in fierce jurisdictional disputes with the Gasoline State Operators' National Council (an AFL federal union of gas station attendants), the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, 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 Teamsters began to expand dramatically and mature organizationally under Tobin. When he was elected president, power in the union was held by big-city locals—which handled all research, contract negotiations, legal services, communication and strike activity. Tobin 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. As collective bargaining became the norm throughout the Teamsters, Tobin actively discouraged strikes in order to bring discipline to the union and encourage employers to sign contracts. Tobin also founded and edited (for a time) the union magazine, the International Teamster.Bernstein, The Lean Years: A History of the American Worker, 1920-1933, 1972.Phelan, William Green: Biography of a Labor Leader, 1989.
Initially, Tobin remained outside the AFL's decision-making hierarchy. But his policy stands reflected his support for Gompers. In 1913, when the Western Federation of Miners (WFM) was locked in a bitter strike in Michigan, Tobin supported Gompers' refusal to establish a national strike fund to aid the WFM—or any other union, for that matter.
In 1915, the Catholic Archbishop of Trois-Rivières, Quebec, François-Xavier Cloutier, denounced secular labor unions. Archbishop Cloutier urged Catholics to abandon secular trade unions and join Catholic workers' unions. By 1919, anecdotal reports indicated that the number of Canadian Catholic workers leaving unions affiliated with the AFL had grown significantly, and Gompers feared a backlash by Protestant union members. In 1921, Gompers appointed Tobin, along with Matthew Woll and Frank Duffy, to a committee to investigate the problem. Their report indicated that the number of disaffiliating members was low; the problem was limited to the cities of Montreal, Sherbrooke and Quebec City; and that the only union significantly affected was the Carpenters. Tobin and the others issued a report documenting the inferior contracts of the Catholic workers' unions, and the issue was laid to rest.
In late 1916, Samuel Gompers began pushing for the AFL to take a strongly supportive stance on President Woodrow Wilson's pro-war policies vis-a-vis Germany. Tobin and eight other international union leaders met on May 27, 1915, to oppose American war preparations. Unwilling to actually oppose war, the group asked Gompers to form a committee to enunciate labor's stand on the European conflict.Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 1987. When war came, Gompers wholeheartedly supported it. On March 11, 1917, the AFL Executive Council met and (reportedly) unanimously endorsed American entry in the war. Tobin quickly exposed this as a lie. In an article in the International Teamster, he wrote that the vote had been up-or-down, with no possibility of amendment. He also reported that he himself had abstained from voting, which made the vote only technically unanimous. After the United States entered World War I, Tobin initially refused to acceded to Gompers' request for a ban on strikes.Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States: Labor and World War I, 1914-1918, 1987.
In 1917, Tobin defeated John B. Lennon in the race for treasurer of the AFL.At the time, the offices of secretary and treasurer were separate. "Re-Elect Gompers, Lennon Defeated," New York Times, November 25, 1917.One scholar argues Tobin's election win over Lennon—Gompers' "trusted aide"—was a signal that the member unions of the AFL were unhappy with Gompers' pro-war policies and failure to win government support for union organizing. Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 1987, p. 386. Although membership in the AFL had risen to 2.371 million in 1917 from 2.072 million the year before, socialists and others in the federation felt that Lennon had not been sufficiently aggressive. Tobin, however, was forced to defend his previous actions, denounce pacifism, and declare his full support for the war effort. AFL president Samuel Gompers and Tobin quickly became close friends and supporters of one another. Tobin quickly became one of the inner circle of AFL vice presidents (which included Matthew Woll, John P. Frey and William Hutcheson). During the presidency of William Green, Tobin and the others largely controlled the AFL.Dubofsky and Van Tine, John L. Lewis: A Biography, 1992.