HOFFA AND THE UNDERWORLD

...Never in any conversation has Hoffa displayed any concern except for the very narrowest of worlds...

...respected insurance companies willing, indeed anxious, to give kick-backs to union officials in exchange for welfare and pension fund accounts...

...But even this cynical view of the world, in which personal loyalty and not squealing to the cops become the basic virtues, does not totally explain Hoffa's ties to the underworld...

...How MUCH of HOFFA's apparent candor is a pose and how much is truly a reflection of his conviction is an intriguing question...

...Rather, he seeks to become part of the administration and attach himself to the leader in power...

...Except for a few men, considered oddballs by their colleagues and, to a great extent, by their members, most American union officials are convinced that fundamentally the world in which they have achieved leadership is the best of all possible worlds and needs few changes, ei ther externally or internally...

...The unions in mass production industries are less vulnerable to underworld operations than are business enterprises, and there are still very many union leaders whose radical pasts or middle-class presents act as barriers to underworld infiltration...

...It is precisely because Hoffa reflects the narrow but very sharp demands of American workers that his thundering against employers sounds like the rumbles of the class war...

...Neither the teamsters nor ILWU membership appear disturbed about an alliance, although a merger would be far more difficult to sell to the ILWU ranks...

...Hoffa, more than Reuther, is their kind of a guy...

...Quite apart from Robert Kennedy's obvious obsession with the pursuit of Hoffa, what was primarily lacking in the McClellan Committee was a sense of judgment...

...It was then that Meany "arranged" for the council to be invited to Puerto Rico, which is also a very pleasant place to be during the winter...

...Since so little is actually known about Hoffa's possible relations to the underworld, it is extremely difficult to compare him, on this score, with other union leaders who have also had some connections, by choice or necessity, with either the true underworld or the prosperous demimonde of American society...

...Nevertheless, there has been surprisingly little serious attention paid to this phenomenon...

...Lepke's view of American society would have been fascinating and Frank Costello's even more so...

...lawyers willing to make payoffs to get "good deals" for their business clients and employers who try to cheat their workers while stealing from their customers...

...This meeting was in Detroit and the speaker was Jimmy Hoffa, talking to his own local union while a CBS crew filmed, him for TV...

...It is true that even when the Trostkyists controlled the Minneapolis teamsters, there were mysterious underworld relationships that occasionally rose from beneath the surface...

...In this situation the courts, through the monitors, are being asked to prevent the direct control of the union by its members—one form of that "union democracy" so glibly idealized by Congress and the press...

...To Hoffa almost all of society is peopled by businessmen looking to make a fast buck...

...I am not here concerned so much with the possible financial rape of a union treasury through the exploitation of expense accounts (though this is possible in rare cases) as I am with the "legitimate" use of expense accounts while on union business or the practice, not at all restricted to unions, of manufacturing a reason to take a trip and then justifying it by the excuse of "business...

...Almost all of the journalists who have spent time with him are quickly shaken by the discrepancy between his public image and what appears to be the private reality, as revealed by his hard work, lack of hypocrisy and strange quality of frankness...

...There is a general disposition on the part of writers sympathetic to the stated aspirations of the unions, to ignore the underworld's presence even if they are aware of it...

...all that is unique is that Hoffa has been more gauche about doing what other union leaders have learned to do with finesse...

...For Hoffa must also know that this area is where he is most vulnerable, if not as yet to the law, at least to the blows of public and private opinion...

...Traditionally, before the merger with the CIO, winter meetings of the old AFL council had been held in Miami Beach...

...The American industrial economy is changing rapidly...

...Hoffa's possible underworld relationships seem to me the most important questions thus far posed about him...

...others use violence...

...What does seem important to me is that Hoffa does share with many other union leaders a common set of values and aspirations, based, naturally, on the predominant mores of American society...

...But if in these personal characteristics he is different from most American union leaders, in many other ways he is far more like them...

...In other ways, however, Hoffa is much more comparable to one fairly large group of union leaders...

...One of the reasons for Hoffa's deep cynicism is that he continually contrasts the stated ideals of the society with the actions of its members and then concludes from the comparison that the only common denominator for all people is hypocrisy...

...Since Hoffa's feeling that he is the key element in the success of the teamsters' union is also shared by his staff and followers, he rarely faces palace revolutions or even the threat of them...

...He is on the phone every day from Washington to Detroit, conducting local business and he attends local meetings at least every six weeks, settling shop grievances, giving contract interpretations, speaking to new groups of workers as they are being organized and generally behaving as an extremely active local leader...

...I've known Hoffa for only three years, ever since I went to Detroit to write about him for The Reporter, but during this time I've seen him in a wide variety of circumstances, behaving in many different ways...

...Indeed, that's all he does...

...For months, Hoffa has been attempting to hold a union convention and have his right to the presidency reaffirmed by the convention delegates...

...But he evinces no real desire either to broaden his intellectual horizons or change many of his basic attitudes...

...The special conditions of teamster members, their lack of education, isolated work, character of the industry, etc., only define the particular ways in which the union operates but do not fundamentally differentiate the members from those in other unions...

...Suppose, however, it didn't...

...he can be absolutely charming as he smiles with a boyish, dimpled grin...

...Certain insurance companies, for example, hot in pursuit of the vast sums of money now available in welfare and pension funds, have always sought to persuade union leaders that the choice of which insurance carrier got the union account was fundamentally a matter of the leader's personal preference, a preference which they then tried to affect in a variety of ways...

...When for the first time McDonald faced opposition from within the steelworkers' union, wasn't his administration's entire machinery put into high gear to smash the possible revolt...

...It is true that there are enormous handicaps facing such an enter prise—the lack of access to information...

...Then I realized that these city employees were mad, damn mad, at their employer and I remembered, from my own experience as a union organizer, that when workers are angry enough voluntarily to organize themselves, at some risk to their jobs, what they seek in a union leader is, above all, the quality of toughness, so important in the American tradition...

...Like most other union members, they are content, on the whole, with the wage increases he brings them and willing, indeed anxious, to abdicate to him all responsibility for making serious policy decisions...

...Once the ethics of American business society are accepted as normal only fine lines separate "proper" practices from "improper" ones...

...But at that union meeting Hoffa symbolized, as he does in general, some of the most crucial problems facing the American trade unions...

...But Hoffa's underworld ties do mark him off from many other union leaders with whom he otherwise has much more in common than is generally admitted...

...and both Bridges and Hoffa, oddly enough, have rather intellectual seconds-in-command—the Communist party-oriented Louis Goldblatt in the ILWU and the exsocialist Harold Gibbons in the teamsters...

...This is not to suggest that the committee's task would have been an easy one, even if Kennedy has been less naive than he was about trade unions and business...

...Somehow, these officials feel more comfortable with Hoffa than with other, more ideological, leaders...

...Like some other union leaders, Hoffa views the union as his personal property, a resource available to him for his disposal as he sees fit, restricted only by the bothersome limitations imposed upon him by law plus some vague and undefined attitudes of doing "good" for the membership...

...Except in one extremely important way, I consider Hoffa a characteristic product of the old AFL tradition...

...What do you think I am, the State Department...

...When Hoffa becomes really angry, his grey-green eyes get incredibly cold and menacing...

...I am only trying to point out that "union democracy" in the sense of a free membership choice of a union president is not really wanted by many who plump loudly for it if the results are known, in advance, to be contrary to the generally accepted standards of public good or particular private interests...

...and jurisdictional battles go on, only slightly affected by decisions of either the umpire or council itself...

...In a hostile and dangerous work world, where toughness for both employers and employees is essential to survival, where the union contract is necessarily complicated, where it is expected that an employer will try to cheat his employees and viceversa, it is only natural for the members gladly to abdicate responsibility to the toughest and smartest of them all—Jimmy, who may be a son of a bitch but is, after all, "our" son of a bitch...

...Hoffa and Bridges are both tough, raw and not especially cultivated...

...In spite of these opportunities and though I've frequently talked to him at length, followed the McClellan Committees hearings rather carefully, read a great deal about him and often discussed him with his subordinates, as well as with employers, public officials and knowledgeable newspapermen, Hoffa still remains an enigma to me...

...If I had a bunch of Detroit cops here, I'd clean out these joints in no time," he said disgustedly as we once strolled, loudly quarreling, along Grant Avenue, the Boulevard of the Beats in San Francisco...

...If a teamster member does desire to be a union leader, he rarely pursues his goal through challenging the existing administration...

...It's then that his ruthlessness, his obvious belief in physical violence as an instrument of power shows through as an important element in his personality...

...The industry tradition of toughness, the isolated conditions of work and the special characteristics of the drivers help define the loose boundaries of the moral territory in which Hoffa roams without great complaints from his union membership...

...I sat in the rear of the room watching Hoffa assure them of his support and thinking how curious it was that a group of city employees, generally a conservative group, would come to Hoffa and the teamsters in the face of the violent public attacks upon the union...

...While I was in Detroit with the CBS television crew, I heard Hoffa speak to a group of city employees from Dearborn, Michigan, who were attempting to organize a teamster local there...

...To outsiders, especially liberal outsiders, the fact that only a small percentage of union members attend meetings is somehow taken as an indication that undemocratic practices prevail...

...Gus Tyler of the ILGWU has been pointing at the problem for some time and I agree completely with him that we must look into this aspect of American life far more searchingly...

...To do so would have raised the entire question of the role played by the expense account for nearly everybody in society— for the businessman who goes to Las Vegas with a customer, for the corporation which spends thousands of dollars entertaining foreign buyers, and for the defense industry that flies high ranking military officers to lush Bahamian islands for "conferences...

...LET ME MAKE CLEAR that what concerns me here is not whether other union leaders are more hypocritical than Hoffa...

...Yet the possibility has not brought any public protest or comment from other union leaders in the AFL-CIO probably because no matter what their feelings, it would be considered impolitic for any union leader publicly to identify himself with Hoffa in this situation...

...The monitors, however, have thus far refused and instead are preparing court actions to have Hoffa removed from his office...

...I don't want to get into world politics...

...What problems would be solved...

...Now, obviously Jimmy Hoffa is not committed to overthrowing the capitalist system...

...At the moment, Hoffa is engaged in a struggle with the board of monitors over his right to hold the presidency of the union...

...Yet the teamster attendance record is probably neither better nor worse than that of any other union—throughout the unions attendance at normal meetings is poor...

...V Let's now refer to the issue of democracy in the teamsters, comparing Hoffa's union with others...

...George Meany wanted last winter's meeting of the AFL-CIO council again to be held there, but the council, under goading from some of its members, either more ascetic or more conscious of public pressure, voted against Florida as the site for the meeting...

...But Hoffa's desire for a convention and the monitors' refusal to permit it are obviously based on his and their belief that such a convention would certainly elect Hoffa president, even without his having to stuff ballot boxes, illegally elect delegates or in any way attempt to influence improperly the choice of delegates to the convention...

...Still, other union leaders grow angry when crossed...

...When Hoffa says he doesn't want to change the world, he is speak ing for those union leaders who don't even want to change their own unions...

...HOFFA Is STILL pretty spontaneous, although growing more cautious in his public speech...

...A local teamster union president in Minneapolis was once murdered under strange conditions and gangster elements once attempted, unsuccessfully, to muscle into one of the locals...

...Would this fact make it right for Hoffa to be president...

...Within those worlds, he's enormously knowledgeable...

...You don't have to become a prostitute yourself but sometimes you have to get their votes...

...the overwhelming truth that the price for betraying the underworld is almost always death or something just short of it...

...politicians who, like ex-Senator George Bender, say, "If cats and dogs would vote, I would shake hands with them...

...Vis-a-vis their membership and the society at large, Bridges and Hoffa play startlingly similar roles...

...He always speak of the teamsters as "my union" and the "my" here carries the connotation of personal property in addition to that of pride...

...Hoffa is probably the only international president who still runs the affairs of his own local while carrying out his other work...

...outside them very ignorant, although obviously capable of learning quickly...

...Strategically, the teamsters are in an excellent position to assist or hurt other unions and it is the recognition of this power, for example, that lies behind Hoffa's attempts, for three years, to bring about an alliance between the teamsters and Harry Bridges' ILWU...

...I also suspect that in spite of the adverse newspaper publicity, there is much less underworld infiltration of unions than of business...

...The members of the teamsters' union are HofEa's constituency: he takes care of them, and in Hoffa's case this is done personally, through direct contact...

...he's exceedingly smart and he works very, very hard at his job of running the teamsters...

...THE SOMETIMES PUBLIC and more frequently private attitude of friendliness maintained by other union leaders towards Hoffa is also accounted for by simple economic self-interest...

...For some reason, perhaps rooted in his past and in his own image of himself, Hoffa, except when forced to by a consciousness of public relations problems, refuses to live up to the surface standards of American society...

...V1 What does the future hold for Hoffa and the teamsters...

...Attempts to equate "democracy" in unions with membership participation conjure up sharp dilemmas within the teamsters...

...When Hoffa addressed a recent meeting in San Francisco of the Western Conference of teamsters, he shared the platform with and was applauded by the president of the very large California AFL-CIO and by its secretary-treasurer, the single most powerful labor leader in the state...

...Here, too, there is a great similarity between the teamsters and other unions...

...reactions more quietly shared by most other union leaders...

...There is a wider range of attitudes among trade union leaders and members on this question than on the identification of the union with its leader, but I think that at least a few other union leaders secretly share Hoffa's attitude towards the union treasury...

...When, however, one examines the far less important but curiously troublesome problem of expense accounts, the distinctions between union leaders grow less sharp even among those who reject Hoffa's view of the treasury as a vehicle of personal power...

...IT is (as we would have said once upon an ancient time) by no means an accident that Hoffa's power base, his home local, is a drivers' local...

...It may also be that what disturbs many people, in and out of trade unions, is Hoffa's unwillingness to play the game, making a buck here and there, getting fat on the expense account and still keeping a civil tongue in his cheek by talking like everyone else...

...This is only one instance of practices now common in all of our society, practices which to union leaders like Hoffa are built into the very matrix of the world...

...Paternalism, the leader's identification of the union with himself and the demand for personal loyalty are hardly unique to Hoffa and the teamsters...

...Nevertheless, he has continually resisted purging the teamsters of those elements who, only with the greatest charity, can be described as being even on the fringes of decency...

...Or must he be restrained from the outside...

...During the CBS television show on the teamsters, several shop stewards were interviewed and discussed the low attendance at union meetings...

...Does Reuther permit any less personal loyalty than Hoffa...

...Suppose it went sharply up and there was none of the intimidation of members which may, in fact, exist in some teamsters locals...

...Neither the McClellan Committee nor anyone else has examined, at any great length, the use of expense accounts by unions or industry...

...Both are outcasts or, more correctly, since it was not a voluntary act in either case, both are cast-outs from the main institutions of labor...

...111 Quite apart from the particular case of Hoffa, I do not believe that the general problem of the relationship between the underworld and other segments of our society has been explored with sufficient seriousness...

...The great majority of them do not conceive of the union as either an instrument for the carrying out of any social ideals or as an arena in which they can seek leadership positions...

...I have enough trouble taking care of my own members...

...That is really no matter...

...Yet there seems to be another consequence of the attempts of Congress and the monitors to remove Hoffa: sympathy with him appears to be building up within his own union and possibly among other union leaders...

...There is little overt hypocrisy about Hoffa and a great deal of apparent forthrightness...

...It is not enough of an explanation for his attitude to say that from a moral viewpoint he does not really recognize the underworld's existence...

...He has great contempt for and distrust of most people...

...They feel restrained from acting out their beliefs by fear of exposure, the internal controls of the unions or by the carryover of attitudes formed when their organizations were struggling to survive...

...and the fact that important political interests are linked to the underworld...

...In this case, the generally accepted standards mean keeping Hoffa from the presidency, if possible, even though the membership may want him there...

...the NAACP complains bitterly that nothing has been done to take action against unions violating the civil rights provisions of the constitution...

...Don't give me that...

...He is tied, by strange cords, to the brutal men of the underworld...

...But there is another side to him as well, a more frightening one...

...Hofa's only real interest is the economic role of the teamsters' union and the power he derives from it...

...Indeed, many of the teamster procedures, which seemed so extraordinary to the McClellan Committee, are common to other unions and have significance only when related to substantive problems...

...It seems fairly clear, at this point, that the attempt within the federation to give the headquarters effective power over the affiliates, as in the old CIO, is failing...

...says Hoffa scornfully to me when I argue heatedly with him about the narrowness, in his perspective, of trade union purposes...

...There are some who think neither of these alternatives is the answer but that the solution is in raising Hoffa's level of aspirations...

...All these people need is a bath," he sneered scornfully as he looked at the habitues of the Co-existence Bagel Shop, thus expressing the most primitive reactions to anything out of the ordinary, anything disturbing the status quo...

...Is it possible to raise the membership expectations of Hoffa...

...Does anyone seriously believe that Hoffa would not be overwhelmingly reelected teamster president even if every teamster member voted in a secret ballot election...

...Unfortunately, the McClellan Committee staff came to their work unequipped to make distinctions between matters of substance and of insignificance...

...Unions like steel, auto and rubber, dependent on mass production industries, will decline in membership while the teamsters, organized more on the pattern of the English general union, has the opportunity of growth...

...Just as the U.S...

...In return for his work on their behalf, Hoffa demands total loyalty from the union members and his staff...

...He is probably more accessible to them than the president of any other international union in the U.S...

...And while the presence of criminal elements in the union may be explained by the fact that the trucking industry has always been the kind of marginal business which verges between irrespectability and crime, it does not explain Hoffa's willingness to permit the continued access of criminals to teamster locals...

...And if he makes deals with the underworld...

...Instead, it would have tried to main tain its traditional attitude of giving complete autonomy to interna tional unions and distrusting any disturbance in the status quo which is, after all, a good one, by and large, for most union leaders and mem bers...

...In the case of unions, it is easily understandable why, until recently, less attention has been paid to the underworld than to other problems...

...others are avaricious for power...

...Predictions are always dangerous but assuming that Hoffa retains his leadership of the union either overtly or covertly, the teamsters should continue to grow faster than many other unions...

...he has a great sense of native wit...

...But is any union leader more paternalistic than Dubinsky...

...Out here, in the last stronghold of Stalinist-influenced political liberalism, Bridges still retains some of the charisma of the past when a white-capped longshoreman was the romantic figure of the thirties...

...However, like a summer storm, far off in the distance, the sound is an illusion—to Hoffa, and his members, the class war is only a short engagement, occasionally violent, fought with no weapons barred, no quarter asked or given but quickly ended by the signing of a new contract, Thus workers come to Hoffa and they will probably continue coming to Hoffa, for Hoffa, without social concepts, is at least as much in the tradition of the successful American labor leader as is Reuther, with his deep concern for abstract ideas of justice...

...Some are, some are not...

...These are men who generally have little formal education in a period of American life when high-school has been extended another two years through the creation of the junior college...

...Nor are Hoffa's bad English (steadily improving) and Bridges' Australian accent with its cockney overtones handicaps to them, considering their membership.* * Incidentally, the Hoffa-Bridges alliance seems to have changed the liberal image of Hoffa for the better, at least on the West Coast...

...In the case of the teamster members, their expectations of Hoffa are of a simple order...

...police officers on the take...

...I am not here suggesting that because Hoffa is the membership's choice, therefore the membership is right...

...11 Whether or not Hoffa has alliances with the underworld, he is certainly very tolerant of it...

...A case in point was the recent meeting of the AFL-CIO Executive Council in Puerto Rico...

...Even in the conservative community the public reputation of both Bridges and of the ILWU is one of such scrupulous financial honesty that an alliance between Hoffa and Bridges requires either the scaling down of one's estimate of Bridges or becoming more defensive about Hoffa...

...As a result, the real problems of the American trade unions have become obscured by masses of sensational triviality, dredged up by the committee staff...

...Similarly, even when the McClellan Committee attacked the teamsters incorrectly or for policies carried out by many other unions, there was deep silence from the AFL-CIO...

...Hoffa's completely paternalistic attitude toward the teamsters is one common denominator he shares with other union leaders...

...his staff and much of his membership share his belief that they are dependent upon him for survival...

...As for Hoffa, he went ahead and held his board meeting in Miami, as usual, giving no explanations, using no subterfuges and feeling no need to justify his decision...

...But attendance still remains the same—low...

...Perhaps if a serious study were made, we would learn a great deal about the development of the underworld in general, rather than only in individual unions...

...One rather interesting element in this situation is that the remain der of the trade union leadership has been silent on this attempted in trusion by the monitors and courts into the teamsters' internal life...

...These attributes are so refreshing and appealing in comparison with the worn-out jazz, boringly repeated ad nauseam, by some of the sanctimonious, self-righteous and stupid monomaniacs in union leadership, that there is a tendency, which one must guard against, to gloss over some of Hoffa's faults...

...These are men physically isolated from each other at work, frequently away when union meetings are held, dependent upon business agents rather than fellow-members for the protection of their rights, working in an industry to which respectability has been late in coming and where the police, on highways and in towns, are rarely thought of as friends...

...For many years, at union summer camps, and training schools there have been dreary sessions devoted to increasing membership participation at local meetings...

...I don't want to change the world," says Hoffa and here again he only states openly what many other American union leaders actually believe, in spite of all the resolutions dutifully passed by them at all the conventions...

...Indeed, quite the opposite is true—Hoffa is a staunch defender of American capitalism (after all, it's been very good to him) and his speech was a singular exercise in vulgar demagogery...

...I am dubious about this last possibility...

...There I sat, in a union hall jammed with cheering truck drivers, listening to their union president denounce the capitalist press, radio and TV as instruments of the bosses and shouting at the tough, burly teamsters that they could never expect anything from their employers and that without the union they were helpless...

...He exudes cockiness and ebullience...

...My hunch is that this flows from (as also we would once have said) his contempt for most people...

...It was the revolutionary ideology of the Trotskyist leadership, their commitment to use the teamsters' union for a larger political purpose that most effectively prevented the underworld from getting a foothold, either through force or collaboration, during their tenure of office...

...This view of the union as an institution whose resources can be incidentally used for the personal financial benefit of its leaders is reinforced by those institutions that seek business from unions...

...Since he's franker than most of the others and more willing openly to state his real beliefs about the role of American unions and union leaders, he provides a most useful model, albeit of extreme design, which can be used as a comparison check for one type of union leader in America...

...Usually the quest for power is but one motivation in most leaders' lives, but in Hoffa's case, power, linked with a desire to be feared rather than loved, seems an obsession...

...Automation is replacing large-scale worker production of goods while the work force in the service and distributive trades is increasing...

...I suspect, as I've indicated, that here there may be a marked difference between Hoffa and other union officials but fascinating as the subject is, a discussion about it must inevitably peter out in gross speculation...

...It is Hoffa's attitude to the underworld that sets him apart...

...If, as seems possible, Hoffa is prevented from holding an election and then deposed from the presidency, it could easily set a precedent for similar court action in other cases...

...Indeed, I believe that if it had not been for the pressure exerted upon Meany by some of the old CIO leaders, coupled with the public attention given to the problems of corruption, the federation would not have expelled the teamsters...

...On the ethical practices level, the oper ating engineers and carpenters are still within the family...

...IV To Hoffa dues money is akin to the operating capital of a business...

...They want a union leader who, they believe, can solve their particular problems with their employer now, not one concerned with world affairs...

...Government made a martyr out of Harry Bridges within the ILWU and outside it, so Hoffa, in spite of all the McClellan Committee's revelations about him, is beginning to take on the air of a man who is being harassed...

...the fact that, unlike government, business or the unions, there are so few ex-radical comrades in the underworld, able to have some perspective on it...

...organized opposition groups are as non-existent in the ILWU as in the teamsters...

...The reality of that meeting was tinged with fantasy for me because it took place not during the hectic thirties, in Minneapolis, when the Dunne brothers, leaders of teamster Local 544, were the heroes of the Trotskyist movement, but in 1959...

...I've had to do everything myself to make this union a success," he once told me, openly stating without modesty, what many others believe true but do not say of themselves...

...One trouble, of course, is that no one in the modern underworld writes his memoirs...

...well, that's the way of the world...