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Minneapolis Teamsters Strike: February 7 tour to mark 75th anniversary of pivotal coal yards strike MINNEAPOLIS — The Great Depression still held this country in its grip during the brutal winter of 1934, but the Minneapolis Labor Review had some good news to report. “Coal Drivers’ Whirlwind Strike Wins Recognition of Organization,” the Labor Review declared on the front page of its February 16, 1934 issue. “With a dash and unity that electrified the city, Coal Drivers of Minneapolis last week after a whirlwind strike of two days and a half won recognition of the union,” this paper went on to tell its readers 75 years ago. “It was a short sharp but effective engagement with employers who had steadfastly maintained that their employees were not organized, and it sent shivers up the back of the Citizens Alliance bosses as they witnessed the power of labor militantly organized.” Strike organizers strategically delayed the strike during a January thaw, when coal orders dropped. But, when bitter cold returned and coal orders jumped, they quickly took all of the city’s 62 coal yards out on strike — 700 workers. The brief February strike, organized by Teamsters Local 574, laid the foundation for further job actions that summer that would change the course of labor history in Minneapolis, the series of strikes known today as the 1934 Teamsters strike. Now, in 2009, a group of labor activists are marking the 75th anniversary of the 1934 Teamsters strike with a February 7 bus tour visiting sites associated with the walk out by the coal yard workers. The tour, sponsored by the Minneapolis Labor Review, will be led by David Riehle, a local labor historian and union activist, who is helping organize a series of events this year commemorating the 1934 Teamsters strike. “The coal drivers job action, as brief as it was, gave Local 574 the momentum it needed to launch major strikes that summer that would make this city a national center of union activism,” Riehle said. “The bitter Teamsters strike of 1934, which culminated in street violence in the city’s market district, broke the hold of the anti-union Citizens Alliance which had thwarted union organizing in this city for decades.” “While the coal yards of the 1930s have disappeared, we will be visiting their sites to get a better understanding of the events that occurred there at the height of the Great Depression,” Riehle said. The tour will visit the site of the Central Labor Union’s 1934 headquarters on First Avenue North, along with former coal yard sites on NE Harrison Street, West Broadway, East 24th Street and Lyndale Avenue. The Minnesota Transportation Museum will supply a reconditioned 1954 Twin Cities Lines bus for the free two-hour tour. The Saturday, February 7 tour will leave from the United Labor Centre, 312 Central Ave., Minneapolis, at 1:00 p.m. . To reserve a seat on the tour bus, call the Minneapolis Labor Review at 612-379-4725. Click here for more information. Iric Nathanson is completing a history of Minneapolis in the 20th century, to be published by the Minnesota Historical Society.
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