Word: hoffa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Pillows & Salve. Such brutality was plausible. Kierdorf had an arm-long arrest record, once served 27 months for armed robbery. On parole he had been made, at Jimmy Hoffa's insistence, a Teamster official like his ex-convict uncle, Herman Kierdorf (impersonating a federal officer, armed robbery), before him. As business agent of the 5,000-member Local 332, Kierdorf used brutal methods and produced satisfactory results. Once he tried to run over a stubborn employer. Said another: "You don't give him arguments." By brutal methods (see box) and by picketing until employers anted up money, Kierdorf...
What kind of man was Frank Kierdorf, Jimmy Hoffa's friend and business agent for Teamster Local 332 in Flint, Mich.? For a reading, a TIME correspondent tracked down a Flint businessman ("For God's sake, don't mention my name") who had had labor dealings with Kierdorf. The answer raises other questions. What kind of city is Flint? And what kind of nation is the U.S. when it lets Hoffa-type racketeering stand astride U.S. businessmen and workers? The report...
...Lumberman George Francis Heid, 35, was afraid of was not the power of the U.S. Government, as represented by the McClellan committee. It was the power of the Teamster Brotherhood, the U.S.'s biggest labor union (membership 1,500,000). Heid knew that testifying against Teamster Boss Jimmy Hoffa and his henchmen might bring ugly reprisals by Hoffa's ex-convict bullyboys. But with a pledge of protection by the committee. Heid huskily admitted that, under Teamster threats, he had perjured himself in 1956 by testifying in defense of a Minneapolis Teamster boss who was charged with blowing...
Fear of hard-boiled Hoffa was evident in the behavior of witnesses called to testify about a $17,500 payoff that Detroit laundry operators handed over in 1949 to avert a threatened strike of Teamster truck drivers. Committee investigators had scraped up some persuasive evidence that at least $10,000 of the payoff had found its way to Jimmy Hoffa. Under questioning, Hoffa conceded that he got $10,000 in "loans" from the bagmen who collected from the laundrymen. but beyond that, his memory failed him. He could not recall any details about repaying the loans, nor could he produce...
...Finding Hoffa uncooperative, the committee called up two Detroit laundrymen who had signed affidavits indicating that they thought at least part of the payoff went to Hoffa. But something had happened to make the witnesses wary. Obviously frightened, they shied away from their notarized affidavits, professed sudden doubts whether Hoffa really got any of the money after...