Photo by Manny Becerra

It is fairly certain that the International Brotherhood of Teamsters is the most famous, or rather the most infamous, union in the United States. While one can hope the first thing that comes to mind when the Teamsters come up is trucking, it is just as likely thoughts turn to Jimmy Hoffa and his unsolved murder, Las Vegas, the Mafia, etc. Martin Scorsese made quite a bit of hay on such matters in films like Casino and The Irishman. Hoffa himself will go down as the only figure to be portrayed by both Jack Nicholson (Hoffa) and Al Pacino (The Irishman).

If all that is firmly entrenched in popular culture, Joe Allen’s new book Teamsterland: Reports on America’s Most Iconic Union touches on plenty more. The book features a compilation of pieces Allen wrote for various publications from 2019 to early 2025 and inside we’re reminded of the Teamsters’ undermining of Cesar Chavez’s United Fruit Workers and the union’s longtime and early support for Israel, among other things.

Then there is the actual business of organizing and running a union. While hauling freight in trucks is probably still what the Teamsters are most known for, that largely went away when the trucking industry was deregulated in the late-1970s. The union now represents workers across the economy in sectors from warehousing to food processing (membership peaked at 2 million in 1976, now it sits at 1.4 million). For a while even the roughly 300 horse-drawn carriage drivers in Central Park who skillfully convince tourists to part with large amounts of money for 20-minute rides were under the Teamster banner.

But the main thing now is package delivery to homes and United Parcel Service (UPS) is the largest Teamster employer in the U.S. as well as the largest unionized employer in the U.S. As Allen explains, many Teamster locals wouldn’t exist without UPS and the union as a whole would be ‘a........

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