Word: kierdorf
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Detroit. Hoffa helped Herman Kierdorf get a parole from a prison term for armed robbery, hired him as a Teamster organizer. Hoffa also found a job as a Teamster business agent for Herman's ex-convict nephew Frank, who then set about shaking down small businessmen in Flint, Mich. He was fatally burned last year while setting fire to a Flint dry-cleaning establishment (asked by the McClellan committee to name some of the hoodlums he had got rid of since becoming Teamster president, Hoffa had the gall to list the late Frank Kierdorf). Other ex-convict business agents...
...took it to the state mediator-we weren't big enough for the National Labor Relations Board-and Kierdorf said no. Just like that. He wouldn't agree...
...drivers at the station. Our drivers were supposed to go in pairs. That's what I told them to do for protection. They waited until one of our men was in the warehouse. The other was getting in his truck to move the truck over to the dock. Kierdorf's Cadillac pulled up behind the driver just getting in the truck, and four fellows jumped out, beat him over the head with a pipe, beat him to the ground. Twenty-two stitches. The railroad men were up above, and as the Cadillac turned around to leave, they...
That blow licked us. I gave up and we were unionized. First he signed the drivers and the outside men. Then Kierdorf let me rest for three weeks. Then he came back and said, "We want your secretaries." So, finally, we went to George Kamenow [the Detroit bagman for Labor Relations Associates Boss Nate Shefferman, great and good friend to the then Teamster President Dave Beck] and paid off $2,000 and agreed to pay a monthly retainer of $75. That was that; no secretaries were organized. But two weeks after the McClellan committee began sniffing around, Kierdorf came around...
...police are afraid. They know Kierdorf's men are bigger than they are. Oh yes, they are too. I'd ask them for help-I've known most of the people around here most of my life-and they'd say, "We can't enter a labor dispute." It shakes your confidence in democracy...