Word: hoffa
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Hoffa's attempted deal with the I.L.A. had demonstrated that his prime interest is not a clean waterfront but a teamster-dominated waterfront. It was characteristic of the methods that have made Jimmy Hoffa, 43, one of the hottest new stars in labor's firmament and the man most likely to succeed the aging (61) Dave Beck as boss of the 1,400,000-man I.B.T...
Special Conception. In many respects little (5 ft. 5 in.) Jimmy Hoffa and the man whose throne he seeks are cut from the same pattern. Both Beck and Hoffa are blocky, apparently tireless men who shun liquor and tobacco. Both operate with the hard-shell pragmatism of 19th century coal barons. Alongside Jimmy Hoffa, however, the table-pounding Beck appears a mild-mannered...
Born in Brazil, Ind., Hoffa at four lost his coal prospector father, at 14 quit school to go to work full time. His self-introduction to the labor movement came at 19, when, as a 32?-an-hour warehouseman for a Detroit grocery chain, he led a successful wildcat strike of fellow employees. Within three years he had taken over Teamsters Local 299 in Detroit, was president of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters...
...fact that a cocky 22-year-old was able to impose his authority on Detroit's truck drivers and warehousemen does not puzzle anyone who has ever done business with Jimmy Hoffa. "Jimmy," says an old foe, "is probably the greatest organizer in the labor movement." Jimmy's conception of organizational talent is a rather special one. "In those early days," he says, "Detroit was the toughest open-shop town in the country ... I was hit so many times with nightsticks, clubs and brass knuckles I can't even remember where the bruises were...
Supplementary Income. To supplement his union salary ($21,000 a year), Hoffa has at various times held interests in a brewery, a trotting track, a summer camp, oil leases and (through his wife) a truck leasing company called Test Fleet, Inc. (Test Fleet, unsurprisingly, enjoyed excellent labor relations, and in four years paid dividends of more than $60,000 on an original investment of $4,000.) Between his professional and personal activities, Hoffa has run afoul of the law more times than he or anyone else can remember. Says he: "I got a list of arrests maybe as long...