front cover of Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union
Corruption and Reform in the Teamsters Union
David Witwer
University of Illinois Press, 2002

Almost since its creation, recurring problems with corruption bedeviled the Teamsters Union. David Witwer provides the first in-depth historical study of the forces that contributed to the Teamsters' troubled past and the mechanisms the union employed--from top-down directives to grassroots measures--to combat corruption. 

Witwer draws on the perspectives of rank-and-file members, union leaders, and the criminal element to explain the processes that allowed organized crime to seize power inside the union. His account includes the infamous links between the Mafia and union head Jimmy Hoffa, but he also tells the little-known story of the McClellan Committee investigation that first brought those links to light. Witwer also examines how anti-labor forces used the Teamsters' unsavory reputation to influence popular and legislative opinion in a broad attack on workers' rights.

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front cover of Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers
Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers
The Business of Transnationalism
Robert Alvarez Jr.
University of Minnesota Press, 2005
Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers illuminates how local groups and individuals engage the global world and capitalism in creative ways. Robert Alvarez analyzes how the produce and trucking industries in Mexico affect the organization of work, community, and social space for miles on either side of the international border. Taking an ethnographic approach, Alvarez focuses on the impact transnational economic policies like NAFTA have had on growers of mangos and chiles in Mexico, those who transport the produce across the U.S.–Mexico border, and the immigrant communities receiving these goods in the United States. 

Contrary to common perceptions in postnational studies, Alvarez shows how the nation-state enacts and connects with the transnational, crossing borders in ways that underwrite new technology and trade. Emphasizing the importance and control of the nation-state in the global process, Mangos, Chiles, and Truckers demonstrates how people make meaning as they struggle with the economic circumstances of their lives, creating cultural traditions and giving new value to old customs and practices. 

Robert R. Alvarez Jr. is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, San Diego. 

George Lipsitz is professor of American studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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front cover of Pedal To The Metal
Pedal To The Metal
The Work Life of Truckers
Lawrence J. Ouellet
Temple University Press, 1994
From this experience, Lawrence J. Ouellet has the advantage of a rare perspective and a profound understanding of the two fundamental questions he asks in this book: Why do truck drivers work so hard even when it doesn't result in more money or other material gains? and How do truckers make sense of their behavior to themselves and to the outside world? A vivid ethnography of trucking culture, Pedal to the Metal documents and analyzes truckers' lives and work ethic, exploring the range of identities truckers create for themselves—the renegade cowboy, the company man, the voyeur, the lone king of the road. To explain truckers' motivations, Ouellet examines the meaning of work and the motivation for excelling despite long, unsupervised hours on the road. He finds that their occupational pride results in extraordinary efforts on the job and, subsequently, a positive sense of self. Driving skill allows truckers to improve their hauling times, which they proudly track to the minute, and to increase their productivity and income. Truckers' knowledge of the industry's structure and the idiosyncrasies of their own company allows them to improve their ability to get and carry out assignments, to maneuver around a traditional concept of rank and seniority, and to recreate to their advantage the pervasive cultural myths that the public expects should dictate a trucker's behavior. Whether capturing the pleasure and enchantment of trucking—driving under moon-lit skies across a snow-covered mountain range—or the miseries of boredom, bad weather, and exhausting schedules, Ouellet exhibits deep appreciation and passion for his subject.
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