Word: hoffa
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Winning the Teamsters election was the easy part for James P. Hoffa. Now comes the challenge: Leading a bankrupt union, which has lost $162 million in the past seven years, in the face of two powerful rivals, each ready and willing to limit his influence. As a result, predicts TIME correspondent Edward Barnes, Hoffa's three-year term will prove a tough haul for the new Teamsters president at a critical time when the labor movement is struggling to regain its old political influence...
...Hoffa's first challenge will come from his own nominal allies, the organized labor movement. "Hoffa will have to come to an accommodation with the AFL-CIO," says Barnes. But "it will be very difficult" for him to do that, says Barnes, because the top AFL-CIO leadership supported Ron Carey, Hoffa's predecessor and nemesis, who was ultimately toppled because of campaign irregularities. The second challenge will come from the feds, whose continuing monitoring has helped drain the union's coffers and limited its influence. To undo those shackles, says Barnes "Hoffa will have to come to Washington with...
...Hoffa's International Brotherhood of Teamsters would not only rival the power of the U.A.W., it would also become known as America's most corrupt union. That the two men, almost polar opposites, should have existed in the same city at the same time is not just remarkable. Their differences would define the deepest schism in American labor, splitting the movement into two irreconcilable camps, one progressive and idealistic, the other conservative and avaricious...
While Reuther was a social activist, Hoffa focused on the exercise of power. The U.A.W. was organizing auto factories that had thousands of workers; Hoffa focused on small trucking companies with a simple two-step campaign. He would threaten to bomb employers' trucks if they didn't enroll in his union. Then he carried out the threat. It got results. His organizers took a cut of the dues and initiation fees of every new member. It was a franchise scheme that attracted Mafiosi and created a feudal structure of warlords...
While Reuther embraced politics, Hoffa simply bought influence, paying off policemen, prosecutors and anyone else who stood in the way. His image was cemented forever in 1975 when Hoffa went to a Detroit restaurant to meet several Mafiosi and never returned. He is still revered by members who say they owe their place in the middle class to him, and his legacy lives on. The results of the election campaign his son James P. has waged for his father's old job are expected this month...