The Feminist Awakening of the St. Louis Teamsters

Abstract

The Teamsters have a mixed reputation in the realm of organized labor. Known in the popular imagination for a legacy of corruption and autocratic management, the group is rarely named as a source of progressive advocacy. Known too as a union of truck drivers, the Teamsters are not often recognized for their organization of women workers. This case study of a rank-and-file movement in Teamsters Local 688, a historically prominent St. Louis, Missouri, union, challenges such assumptions. By the early 1970s, the local became a left-liberal font of activism that extended to feminist issues. Detailing 688’s mission, its support for abortion rights and the Equal Rights Amendment, the creation of collective organizing spaces for trade-union women, and the launch of an on-the-ground feminist day care project, this paper addresses the synergy between the labor and feminist movements in the 1970s. It inquires into the relationship between union leadership and working-class initiative on matters of gender inequity as it documents a little-known dimension of the politics of the Teamsters Union. In a time of new possibilities for organized labor and renewed urgency for progressive social movements, looking back at the feminist awakening of the Teamsters Union shows both the possibilities and the impediments facing wage-workers’ efforts for social change.