ST. PETERSBURG BEACH, Fla. — Employment attorney Thomas P. Krukowski represented the Teamsters union in the early 1970s and at one point litigated cases with newly anointed Teamsters chief James P. Hoffa. His hair is longish, he wears a bow tie and he’s still fond of quoting Saul Alinski’s “Rules for Radicals,” a seminal organizing text of the 1960s.
Krukowski & Costello
Thomas P. Krukowski
But these days Krukowski gets paid by the people he used to battle: companies that want to best the union in its organizing initiatives or in contract negotiations.
Last week the Milwaukee-based lawyer gave a 90-minute speech — to a room not known to harbor a single Teamster — laying out in detail the fix Hoffa is in and what he needs to do to extricate himself from it. He gave the union a truckload of free advice on what they should be doing if they want to win their war with Overnite Transportation, the $1 billion less-than-truckload carrier the union has been striking for three weeks. He exhorted Hoffa and his advisors to show a little resourcefulness in their organizing tactics. Among his suggestions were:
The Teamsters may have limited resources but not limited resourcefulness. The union needs to start thinking more creatively and not just feeding the press the same old story.
The union needs to bring Teamsters for a Democratic Union, the reform wing that has been unremittingly critical of Hoffa since his election and before, back into the fold. “It’s very important,” Krukowski said. “Hoffa has to convince [TDU] that his agenda is the same as theirs.
The Teamsters have to hire people and devote resources to information-gathering about Overnite — logistics experts to research the company’s operations (“We have to find out where they’re most vulnerable”) and accountants to do a major audit of Overnite’s finances.
The union needs to put more pressure on Overnite’s parent, Union Pacific Corp., to make it costly for the railroad to support its trucking unit.
It should implement a “work to rule” strategy, where Overnite employees do everything absolutely by the book so that work effectively slows down.
The union should aggressively seek financial and other forms of support from John Sweeney, president of the AFL-CIO.
For the full story, see the Nov. 15 print edition of Transport Topics. .
