Bret Caldwell and Brian Rainville, two senior veterans of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters who have worked together in the union's communications and leadership operations since 1999, joined the America's Work Force Union Podcast for the first episode of Labor 132, presented by the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association National Labor Office. Labor 132 is our annual labor history series that runs in the month leading up to Labor Day.
They discussed the launch of the Teamsters Digital Archives, a new website featuring more than 27 unedited oral history interviews with participants from across the political spectrum covering the tumultuous period of Teamsters history from 1975 to 1999. Rainville described the project as an effort to put raw, unmediated accounts of a consequential period on the record before key participants age out of reach, with full transcripts available for download and a commitment that no interview would be edited or shaped to serve any particular narrative.
Caldwell outlined the origins of the Teamsters Archives at George Washington University and described new historical films and photographs, including footage of James R. Hoffa supporting the Highway Safety Act of 1966, that will populate the site.
- The Teamsters Archives at George Washington University grew from a sobering realization at the union's 100th anniversary in 2003 that previous administrations had discarded materials critical to telling the union's history. Under Chief of Staff Leo Deaner's guidance, the union established a relationship with GW in 2007, endowing a permanent archives, a permanent archivist and the James R. Hoffa Chair in Modern Labor History — only the second named labor chair in the country alongside the Harry Bridges Chair at the University of Washington. A digitization endowment was added in 2018.
- The teamsterhistory.org oral history project was designed so participants could tell their own stories without fear of editing or misinterpretation. Interviews were conducted with participants from across the full political spectrum, including James P. Hoffa, TDU founder Ken Paff, Ron Carey's chief of staff and government affairs director and a growing list of others. Every interview was committed to the archives in its complete, unedited form. Rainville described the reaction from one participant who was shocked that the union actually did what it said it would do, noting that most organizations sanitize and clean everything up.
- General President Sean O'Brien's willingness to fund a project that shows the imperfections of the union as well as its accomplishments was described by Rainville as what made the whole effort possible. Most great ideas of this kind die when leadership realizes the project will also surface unflattering information, he added. O'Brien's instruction was to put the story out there, which Rainville called genuinely unusual for any institution of the Teamsters’ size and history.
Two People, 25 Years, One Institution
Bret Caldwell and Brian Rainville arrived at the Teamsters together in 1999, shortly after James P. Hoffa took office. Caldwell came in as media coordinator. Rainville was the magazine editor. A year later, they were appointed to run the communications department together. Their paths diverged over the following two decades. Rainville went on to serve as chief of staff at Teamsters Joint Council 25 in Chicago before being named chief of staff by General President Sean O'Brien upon his election in 2021. Caldwell ran the communications department through Hoffa's retirement before moving to the General President's office on O'Brien's inauguration in 2022. Between them, they have watched and participated in a significant span of Teamsters history from the inside, which makes them well-suited to talk about a project dedicated to preserving it.
What the 100th Anniversary Revealed
In 2003, the Teamsters celebrated their 100th anniversary with a special dinner attended by approximately 4,000 people. The celebration was a success. The preparation for it was a revelation. When the union began assembling materials for the centennial, Caldwell said the union found very little institutional record of its own history. Previous administrations had discarded materials that would have been important to telling the union's story. The archives did not exist.
That realization led to a multi-year effort, championed by Leo Deaner, who served as Chief of Staff to James P. Hoffa. He became the largest individual contributor to the archives outside of the union itself. Deaner donated hundreds of boxes of Teamsters materials, more than 650 books and his personal collection of radical-left political materials from the late 1960s and early 1970s. Under his guidance, the union explored establishing formal archives at a university. They hired an educational consultant and received proposals from institutions across the country. The union also identified three components it wanted to fund: a permanent archive, a permanent archivist and a labor faculty position.
In 2007, the union signed a memorandum of understanding with George Washington University. The endowments created the permanent home for the Teamsters' institutional memory and established the James R. Hoffa Chair in Modern Labor History, the country's second-most-named labor chair, alongside the Harry Bridges Chair at the University of Washington. A permanent archivist was hired in 2008, and the union and local unions began transferring materials. A board of advisors with four union representatives and four university representatives was established. The Teamsters Labor History Research Center at GW's Gelman Library opened in 2011 with historical displays, event space and a work area for the archivist and student workers. A digitization endowment was added in 2018 to expand and preserve the collection.
Why the Media Version Is Not the Whole Story
Before describing the interview project, Rainville explained why it matters. The Teamsters' story in popular culture has been shaped primarily by the corporate media, and not always accurately. He offered the New York Times as a specific example, noting that the paper's style guide refused to capitalize the word Teamsters when used as a proper noun for decades, a practice Rainville described as a tell on the paper's attitude toward the union that persisted until roughly a decade ago. He said the Times and other media have been making the Teamsters look bad since the union's inception, following standard narratives about organized crime that the facts do not support, at least not at the scale the media suggests.
Caldwell shared how he spent a weekend going through every case handled by the Independent Review Board, the oversight body established under the government consent decree ostensibly to address mob influence in the union. He found documentation of five people on the international union payroll who were removed for mob association. None of them at international headquarters, he said. Two International vice presidents were removed in 1991. Three International representatives were removed in 1992. That was the last time anyone was removed from the International Union for mob association. At the local level, 79 officers were removed during the period of the consent decree, with the majority in New York and New Jersey, and virtually none west of Missouri. The last local officer removed for mob association was in 2003. Since Caldwell and Rainville arrived in 1999, one person has been removed for mob association. There has never been an allegation that a single dollar from the International Union went to organized crime.
The Interview Project: Putting the Facts Where They Cannot Be Ignored
The oral history project at the center of teamsterhistory.org was designed to address the gap between the media narrative and the more complicated reality. Rainville said the goal was not to construct a counter-narrative, but to put facts on the record. This included facts the union is comfortable with and facts it is not. Then, researchers, writers and members were allowed to draw their own conclusions.
The project was triggered by the awareness that a generation of participants from a particularly turbulent period in Teamsters history was aging. The union set 1999 as the project's outer boundary because that was when key figures from the period were retiring or passing away, Rainville said. R.V. Durham, who ran for the general presidency against Ron Carey in 1991, was lined up for an interview. He was in his 90s and passed away before it could be completed. A pre-interview audio recording was preserved and will be made available on the site.
The period runs from 1975 through 1999 and includes the beginnings of the reform movement following the disappearance of James R. Hoffa in 1975, as well as trucking and airline deregulation, the establishment of the government consent decree, the first direct election of international union officers in 1991, the 1994 freight strike, the 1996 and 1998 elections between Ron Carey and James P. Hoffa, the 1997 UPS strike and Carey's subsequent removal from office.
The union hired the History Factory to conduct the interviews. The project started with a target of 10 interviews. Participants recommended additional participants, and the list grew. Approximately 35-36 interviews are expected by the time the project wraps this phase. The roster runs from James P. Hoffa to Ken Paff, founder of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, to Ron Carey's chief of staff and government affairs director, Bill Hamilton. The commitment made to every participant was the same: tell your story, ask for the questions you want asked, and everything goes on the record unedited. That commitment, Rainville said, is why people from all sides of a deeply contentious period agreed to participate. Some participants initially refused until they watched other interviews and saw that the union had actually done what it said it would do.
What Is on the Site — and What Is Coming
Teamsterhistory.org launched in 2026 with the first 27 interviews, complete transcripts and bibliographies. Three additional interviews have been conducted since the June launch, including Sandy Pope, the first woman to run for Teamsters General President, and Arthur Fox, the founder of PROD, the Professional Drivers Council, which was the Ralph Nader-backed predecessor to TDU. Caldwell said the site is a living project that will continue to grow. New historical films and photographs are being digitized, including footage of James R. Hoffa supporting the National Highway Safety Act in 1965, a short film called Carrier or Killer and the archive of photo negatives from the Teamsters’ staff photographer from the 1950s through the 1970s. A link on the site connects directly to the Teamsters Archives at GW so visitors can access everything the physical collection holds.
Caldwell and Rainville both credited General President O'Brien with making the project possible in its current form. Most great ideas of this kind die when an institution realizes the project will also surface unflattering material, Rainfall said. O'Brien's instruction was to put the story out there. That, Rainville said, is genuinely unusual and deserves to be recognized as the act of institutional courage it is.
More information is available at teamsterhistory.org. The Teamsters Archives at George Washington University can be accessed through a link on the site.
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