Remember Jimmy Hoffa? He’s Back

The furious battle for the presidency of the Teamsters is unprecedented for any union, but the basic theme that James P. Hoffa is using against the reelection bid of Teamster President Ron Carey on Nov. 8 is as audacious as any ever used in any American election.

Carey charges that Hoffa “is spearheading efforts to return control of the international to a clique of corrupt and mob-linked racketeers and is a stalking horse for a dying breed of corrupt local Teamster bosses.”

But “Junior” Hoffa, as Carey contemptuously calls him, says his goal is to restore the Teamsters’ past power. Hoffa doesn’t mention that in those days, the union was led by a succession of racketeer-dominated presidents, including his father, James Riddle “Jimmy” Hoffa.

As a campaign motto, it might not play too well with the rank and file to imply that Hoffa wants to return to the years of mob control, when the union’s top officers lived in luxury, often held two or three paid union jobs with salaries that ran into the hundreds of thousands of dollars and had unlimited expense accounts and multiple pensions.

Three Teamsters presidents, along with more than 200 lesser officers, have gone to prison, mostly for embezzlement and other white-collar crimes. And the first real internal fight against Teamster corruption didn’t begin until 1989 when, to avoid several indictments against its members, the union’s executive board agreed to a government-supervised, secret-ballot election for the top posts and an outside independent review board to help rid the union of mobsters. Carey won that election.

But the seemingly self-defeating tactic of campaigning for the union presidency by calling for a return to the past might resonate among many members whose union contracts gave them relatively good wages and benefits--except those covered by “sweetheart” contracts negotiated mostly for the benefit of employers who were pals with some union officers, including the earlier Hoffa.

At its peak in the late 1960s and early ‘70s, the union had more than 2 million members; its tough-guy image was bolstered by mob ties. Now it has 1.4 million members, losing many thousands of jobs because of deregulation of the trucking industry. Small, often owner-operated firms forced thousands of larger unionized companies out of business; those remaining tried to compete by hiring nonunion workers willing to accept low wages and few if any benefits.

Before Carey won the union’s first contested election, in 1991, Teamster corruption centered on mob use of members’ substantial pension funds. The money went to finance a host of illegal and legal schemes, backing anything from luxury resorts to Las Vegas gambling casinos.

Hoffa the elder in 1967 was sentenced to 13 years in prison for mail fraud and jury tampering. He served four years, then had his sentence commuted in 1971 by President Richard Nixon, after the Teamsters endorsed Nixon for president. While attempting to regain his Teamster post, Hoffa disappeared in 1975. It was generally presumed by the FBI and others that he was murdered by mobsters who feared his return to office might upset their close relationship with his handpicked successor, Frank Fitzsimmons.

Hoffa the younger campaigns among union members by introducing himself by saying, “Hi, I’m Jimmy Hoffa,” as his father was always called, and then, pumping a clenched fist in the air to symbolize the power he wants the union to regain, he tells members that he “learned very well at the hand of my father how to negotiate strong contracts.”

Hoffa has suffered some setbacks in his bid for the presidency, including the decision by his running mate, William T. Hogan Jr., head of Teamsters Local 714, to drop out of the race for secretary-treasurer of the international. Hogan quit after his 11,400-member Chicago-area local was put into trusteeship following a report by a federally appointed independent review board alleging corruption and nepotism.

As part of a court-order cleanup of the Teamsters, Carey has placed 64 other locals under trusteeship, moves that Hoffa says are an attempt to get rid of Carey’s foes.

The union’s ugly reputation was used for years by many employers and anti-union politicians to smear all unions as corrupt and mob-controlled. If the Hoffa scion succeeds in unseating reformer Ron Carey, it would only help revive that sordid reputation and hurt the AFL-CIO’s attempt to restore the economic and political strength it once held.