Ken Paff
Encyclopedia
Kenneth T. Paff is one of the founders and current National Organizer of Teamsters for a Democratic Union
, a rank-and-file union democracy
movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), or Teamsters
.
, a small Rust Belt
town near Pittsburgh. He was the son of a union steelworker and a homemaker, the youngest of seven children. In 1956, when Paff was ten, his parents divorced, and he moved to Santa Ana, California
with his mother, where he attended high school.
, where he went to study physics
. There he became involved in the Free Speech Movement
and the civil rights movement
. After receiving his bachelor's degree, Paff began a Ph.D. program in physics at UC Berkeley, but quickly abandoned his studies to focus on movement activism. His first exposure to labor movement activism was in 1970 as a supporter of Cesar Chavez
's United Farm Workers
union, when he leafleted supermarkets in support of striking farmworkers in the Salinas Valley. During this time he worked briefly as a computer programmer, then a teacher, but did not feel that either profession suited him.
At Shippers and Preston, Paff connected with rank and file workers across the Midwest who had been active in previous Teamster efforts such as Teamsters United Rank and File (TURF), and he got involved with starting a new Teamster reform organization. It was initially called Teamsters for a Decent Contract (TDC), since it was organized around mobilizing for the 1976 National Master Freight Agreement negotiations. At their founding convention at Kent State University outside of Cleveland in September 1976, TDC formally changed their name to Teamsters for a Democratic Union
(TDU).
Being based in Cleveland, Paff and TDU to drew the attention of Cleveland Teamster boss Jackie Presser
, who would be elevated to Teamster General President in the 1980s. Indeed, Presser organized a contingent of retirees to picket the founding TDU Convention, and opposed TDU members who showed up at union meetings. He also enlisted the help of associates of Lyndon Larouche
to oppose the TDU. The Larouche followers, along with a mix of Teamster officials and others, eventually created the Brotherhood of Loyal Americans and Strong Teamsters (BLAST) in opposition to the TDU.
As TDU's National Organizer, Paff has been a central force behind TDU's many accomplishments in the years since its founding, including defeating concessionary agreements such as the notorious freight "relief rider" that Presser attempted to foist on the membership in 1983, overturning the so-called "two-thirds" rule, which allowed contracts to be ratified with as little as one-third of the membership voting to approve, protecting Teamster members' pensions, and helping countless numbers of rank and file Teamsters learn their rights, run campaigns to reform their local union bylaws, run for shop steward, and win office to reform their locals.
One of Paff's best-known accomplishments is his work helping Teamster members win the right to vote for their top leadership. As detailed most clearly by author Kenneth Crowe, it was TDU's intervention with the Justice Department (assisted by attorneys Thomas Geoghegan and Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen
) that led the government to reject their initial plan to impose a government trusteeship of the IBT and opt instead for a system of government-supervised elections.
Once Teamster members won the right to vote for top officers, the Teamster reform movement then faced the problem of fielding a candidate to run for office. After extensive internal debate, TDU decided to endorse Ron Carey
, head of New York Local 804, for Teamster General President at their 1989 convention. In the ensuing two years, Paff was the acknowledged "field general" of the grassroots operation that led dark horse reform candidate Carey to be elected to the top office in the IBT.
With Carey in office, TDU faced the new problem of how to redefine their relationship to a changed International Union. Although some thought that TDU's job was done now that Carey had been elected, Paff understood the continued necessity of an independent rank and file organization. "We need to be an independent movement that unites the best in the Teamsters, from top to bottom," he said. "The 1991 election opened up some important doors, but only the membership can complete the job we started." That necessity became abundantly clear as Teamster old guard officials, although no longer in power at the International level, continued to use their power at the local and Joint Council level to stonewall Carey's reform efforts, sparking a virtual civil war within the union. In response, TDU helped Teamster members organize to pressure their recalcitrant local leaders to get on board with Carey's mobilizing strategies, particularly surrounding national contract negotiations in carhaul, freight, and at UPS. Although difficult at first, that so-called "pincer" strategy—with a mobilized rank and file uniting with a reform leadership at the top to pressure the mid-level leadership—paid off, as evidenced by the landmark 1997 strike against UPS.
Soon after the UPS victory, however, TDU faced yet another, far more serious challenge, as Carey was removed from office when his campaign manager was caught laundering union money. In the subsequent rerun election he was replaced by old guard favorite James P. Hoffa
. While some forecast TDU's demise, Paff worked with the rank and file TDU leadership to keep the reform movement on track. By keeping the movement focused on core substantive issues of union reform, such as contract campaign, member mobilization, and local union elections, Paff played an important role in guiding TDU through that difficult period.
Now into his fourth decade as National Organizer of TDU, Paff continues to help rank and file Teamsters defend their rights, speak out for greater democracy, and prod reluctant union leaders to protect wages, benefits, and working standards.
In keeping with his emphasis on faith in the members, Paff has developed and instilled an organizing culture within TDU that emphasizes local member initiative, and establishes a close connection between the staff, the elected leadership (known as the International Steering Committee, or ISC), and the membership. He also argued forcefully from TDU's inception that the movement should operate openly, not clandestinely. "The employers are going to find out about you," he said. "The people that aren't going to find out about you are the rank and file. We're going to put ourselves out there. We're going to take that chance. If they come after us, they're going to have to do it publicly."
Many analysts have credited TDU's model of mobilizing tactics and its long tradition of rank and file organizing as being key factors behind the successful 1997 strike
at UPS
.
In 1996 Paff was portrayed in the movie Mother Trucker: The Diana Kilmury Story, a biographical film focusing on the life of longtime Teamster reform activist and former IBT International Vice President Diana Kilmury. His character was played by actor Robert Wisden
.
In 2003, the late Studs Terkel
published an interview he made with Paff as a chapter in his book Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union
Teamsters for a Democratic Union is a rank-and-file union democracy movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters , or Teamsters. TDU was created out of the merger of the Professional Drivers Council and TDU in 1979...
, a rank-and-file union democracy
Union democracy
Union democracy is a school of thought within organized labor which argues that sound unionism requires adherence to principles and practices of democratic trade unionism; that internal democracy and greater membership control make unions stronger and better able to fight for the rights and...
movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), or Teamsters
Teamsters
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of several local and regional locals of teamsters, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue-collar and professional workers in both the public and private sectors....
.
Early years
Ken Paff was born in Beaver Falls, PennsylvaniaBeaver Falls, Pennsylvania
Beaver Falls is a city in Beaver County, Pennsylvania, United States. The population was 8,987 at the 2010 census. It is located 31 miles northwest of Pittsburgh, and on the Beaver River, six miles from its confluence with the Ohio River...
, a small Rust Belt
Rust Belt
The Rust Belt is a term that gained currency in the 1980s as the informal description of an area straddling the Midwestern and Northeastern United States, in which local economies traditionally garnered an increased manufacturing sector to add jobs and corporate profits...
town near Pittsburgh. He was the son of a union steelworker and a homemaker, the youngest of seven children. In 1956, when Paff was ten, his parents divorced, and he moved to Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana, California
Santa Ana is the county seat and second most populous city in Orange County, California, and with a population of 324,528 at the 2010 census, Santa Ana is the 57th-most populous city in the United States....
with his mother, where he attended high school.
Joining the Movement
In 1964 he gained admission to the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, Berkeley
The University of California, Berkeley , is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA...
, where he went to study physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
. There he became involved in the Free Speech Movement
Free Speech Movement
The Free Speech Movement was a student protest which took place during the 1964–1965 academic year on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley under the informal leadership of students Mario Savio, Brian Turner, Bettina Aptheker, Steve Weissman, Art Goldberg, Jackie Goldberg, and...
and the civil rights movement
Civil rights movement
The civil rights movement was a worldwide political movement for equality before the law occurring between approximately 1950 and 1980. In many situations it took the form of campaigns of civil resistance aimed at achieving change by nonviolent forms of resistance. In some situations it was...
. After receiving his bachelor's degree, Paff began a Ph.D. program in physics at UC Berkeley, but quickly abandoned his studies to focus on movement activism. His first exposure to labor movement activism was in 1970 as a supporter of Cesar Chavez
César Chávez
César Estrada Chávez was an American farm worker, labor leader, and civil rights activist who, with Dolores Huerta, co-founded the National Farm Workers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers ....
's United Farm Workers
United Farm Workers
The United Farm Workers of America is a labor union created from the merging of two groups, the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee led by Filipino organizer Larry Itliong, and the National Farm Workers Association led by César Chávez...
union, when he leafleted supermarkets in support of striking farmworkers in the Salinas Valley. During this time he worked briefly as a computer programmer, then a teacher, but did not feel that either profession suited him.
Building Teamster Reform
Paff eventually found work as a truck driver in California, and soon moved to Cleveland, where he took a job with Shippers Dispatch, which was bought out by Preston Trucking. As a driver for Preston he became a member of Teamsters Local 407, the major freight local in the Cleveland area.At Shippers and Preston, Paff connected with rank and file workers across the Midwest who had been active in previous Teamster efforts such as Teamsters United Rank and File (TURF), and he got involved with starting a new Teamster reform organization. It was initially called Teamsters for a Decent Contract (TDC), since it was organized around mobilizing for the 1976 National Master Freight Agreement negotiations. At their founding convention at Kent State University outside of Cleveland in September 1976, TDC formally changed their name to Teamsters for a Democratic Union
Teamsters for a Democratic Union
Teamsters for a Democratic Union is a rank-and-file union democracy movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters , or Teamsters. TDU was created out of the merger of the Professional Drivers Council and TDU in 1979...
(TDU).
Being based in Cleveland, Paff and TDU to drew the attention of Cleveland Teamster boss Jackie Presser
Jackie Presser
Jackie Presser was an American labor leader and president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1983 until his death in 1988. He was closely connected to organized crime, and allegedly became president of the Teamsters based on the approval and support of the Cleveland Mafia...
, who would be elevated to Teamster General President in the 1980s. Indeed, Presser organized a contingent of retirees to picket the founding TDU Convention, and opposed TDU members who showed up at union meetings. He also enlisted the help of associates of Lyndon Larouche
Lyndon LaRouche
Lyndon Hermyle LaRouche, Jr. is an American political activist and founder of a network of political committees, parties, and publications known collectively as the LaRouche movement...
to oppose the TDU. The Larouche followers, along with a mix of Teamster officials and others, eventually created the Brotherhood of Loyal Americans and Strong Teamsters (BLAST) in opposition to the TDU.
From Rank and Filer to TDU National Organizer
Paff and the reformers continued to build their organization. As members saw how TDU was consistently standing up to the Teamster officialdom, TDU began to grow. By 1978, the movement was too big to run on a purely volunteer basis, and the TDU Steering Committee voted to hire Paff as its full-time National Organizer. Paff decided to leave his job at Preston, take a very large pay cut, and take the position, which he holds to this day. At that point, TDU also moved its headquarters from Cleveland to Detroit, which brought Paff to the Motor City.As TDU's National Organizer, Paff has been a central force behind TDU's many accomplishments in the years since its founding, including defeating concessionary agreements such as the notorious freight "relief rider" that Presser attempted to foist on the membership in 1983, overturning the so-called "two-thirds" rule, which allowed contracts to be ratified with as little as one-third of the membership voting to approve, protecting Teamster members' pensions, and helping countless numbers of rank and file Teamsters learn their rights, run campaigns to reform their local union bylaws, run for shop steward, and win office to reform their locals.
One of Paff's best-known accomplishments is his work helping Teamster members win the right to vote for their top leadership. As detailed most clearly by author Kenneth Crowe, it was TDU's intervention with the Justice Department (assisted by attorneys Thomas Geoghegan and Paul Alan Levy of Public Citizen
Public Citizen
Public Citizen is a non-profit, consumer rights advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., United States, with a branch in Austin, Texas. Public Citizen was founded by Ralph Nader in 1971, headed for 26 years by Joan Claybrook, and is now headed by Robert Weissman.-Lobbying Efforts:Public Citizen...
) that led the government to reject their initial plan to impose a government trusteeship of the IBT and opt instead for a system of government-supervised elections.
Once Teamster members won the right to vote for top officers, the Teamster reform movement then faced the problem of fielding a candidate to run for office. After extensive internal debate, TDU decided to endorse Ron Carey
Ron Carey (labor leader)
Ronald Robert Carey was an American labor leader who served as president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1991 to 1997. He was the first Teamster General President elected by a direct vote of the membership...
, head of New York Local 804, for Teamster General President at their 1989 convention. In the ensuing two years, Paff was the acknowledged "field general" of the grassroots operation that led dark horse reform candidate Carey to be elected to the top office in the IBT.
With Carey in office, TDU faced the new problem of how to redefine their relationship to a changed International Union. Although some thought that TDU's job was done now that Carey had been elected, Paff understood the continued necessity of an independent rank and file organization. "We need to be an independent movement that unites the best in the Teamsters, from top to bottom," he said. "The 1991 election opened up some important doors, but only the membership can complete the job we started." That necessity became abundantly clear as Teamster old guard officials, although no longer in power at the International level, continued to use their power at the local and Joint Council level to stonewall Carey's reform efforts, sparking a virtual civil war within the union. In response, TDU helped Teamster members organize to pressure their recalcitrant local leaders to get on board with Carey's mobilizing strategies, particularly surrounding national contract negotiations in carhaul, freight, and at UPS. Although difficult at first, that so-called "pincer" strategy—with a mobilized rank and file uniting with a reform leadership at the top to pressure the mid-level leadership—paid off, as evidenced by the landmark 1997 strike against UPS.
Soon after the UPS victory, however, TDU faced yet another, far more serious challenge, as Carey was removed from office when his campaign manager was caught laundering union money. In the subsequent rerun election he was replaced by old guard favorite James P. Hoffa
James P. Hoffa
James Phillip Hoffa is an attorney and labor leader and the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hoffa was first elected during December 1998 and took office on March 19, 1999...
. While some forecast TDU's demise, Paff worked with the rank and file TDU leadership to keep the reform movement on track. By keeping the movement focused on core substantive issues of union reform, such as contract campaign, member mobilization, and local union elections, Paff played an important role in guiding TDU through that difficult period.
Now into his fourth decade as National Organizer of TDU, Paff continues to help rank and file Teamsters defend their rights, speak out for greater democracy, and prod reluctant union leaders to protect wages, benefits, and working standards.
Organizing Philosophy
Those who have studied TDU's origins and its ability to persist over time have credited Paff's organizing strategy for much of its success. Kenneth Crowe notes that, while Paff could certainly be "stern" and even "caustic," he "provided the kind of egoless, highly organized, and determined leadership that the organization needed." "The key for us in TDU," as Paff explained it, "is faith in the members. You're going to have hope that ordinary people can do extraordinary things, because if they can't, there ain't gonna be no hope for the change we're interested in. We started out to change the union, and we ended up changing ourselves."In keeping with his emphasis on faith in the members, Paff has developed and instilled an organizing culture within TDU that emphasizes local member initiative, and establishes a close connection between the staff, the elected leadership (known as the International Steering Committee, or ISC), and the membership. He also argued forcefully from TDU's inception that the movement should operate openly, not clandestinely. "The employers are going to find out about you," he said. "The people that aren't going to find out about you are the rank and file. We're going to put ourselves out there. We're going to take that chance. If they come after us, they're going to have to do it publicly."
Many analysts have credited TDU's model of mobilizing tactics and its long tradition of rank and file organizing as being key factors behind the successful 1997 strike
Strike action
Strike action, also called labour strike, on strike, greve , or simply strike, is a work stoppage caused by the mass refusal of employees to work. A strike usually takes place in response to employee grievances. Strikes became important during the industrial revolution, when mass labour became...
at UPS
United Parcel Service
United Parcel Service, Inc. , typically referred to by the acronym UPS, is a package delivery company. Headquartered in Sandy Springs, Georgia, United States, UPS delivers more than 15 million packages a day to 6.1 million customers in more than 220 countries and territories around the...
.
Awards and recognition
In 1988 Paff received the Nat Weinberg Award, given to "men and women who ... stubbornly refus[e] to accept defeat and...assert the right of working people to address and solve the problems that confront them." In 1996 he was named a Petra Fellow by the Petra Foundation, awarded to "unsung individuals making distinctive contributions to the rights, autonomy and dignity of others."In 1996 Paff was portrayed in the movie Mother Trucker: The Diana Kilmury Story, a biographical film focusing on the life of longtime Teamster reform activist and former IBT International Vice President Diana Kilmury. His character was played by actor Robert Wisden
Robert Wisden
Robert Charles Wisden is a British actor who has an extensive career in Canadian and American television. In 2000 he won a Gemini Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Featured Supporting Role in a Dramatic Program or Mini-Series for The Sheldon Kennedy Story .-Career:Wisden moved with his...
.
In 2003, the late Studs Terkel
Studs Terkel
Louis "Studs" Terkel was an American author, historian, actor, and broadcaster. He received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction in 1985 for The Good War, and is best remembered for his oral histories of common Americans, and for hosting a long-running radio show in Chicago.-Early...
published an interview he made with Paff as a chapter in his book Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times.