Can Hoffa Win?
RICH, J. C.
Can Hoffa Win? The real fight will develop when local Teamster organizations have to choose between staying with the AFL-CIO and becoming outcasts in the labor community By J. C. Rich George...
...On the contrary, he has been more than conciliatory toward the federation and its component unions...
...Instead, those locals that do not want to be severed from the merged labor movement will find a haven in the AFL-CIO as federally chartered, independent locals...
...He has let others make such manifestations of anger and hostility as were necessary to "steam up" the Teamsters...
...ILGWU President David Dubinsky told this writer that he anticipated a struggle more virulent and exhausting than the one with the Communists in the '20s and '30s...
...Three for four is not a bad score in any game...
...The real fight will develop when local Teamster organizations have to choose between staying with the AFL-CIO and becoming outcasts in the labor community By J. C. Rich George Meany could easily have scored a victory on points in his bout with the Teamster leadership...
...The Council's response was that no one could clean house with a dirty broom...
...Non-cooperation with any union that votes against the Teamsters is reputed to be Hoffa's threat—a cogent one in view of the key role played by teamsters in many industrial disputes...
...nor will they be quick to break lifetime associations and friendships to serve the ambitions of a distant leader...
...The ILA is still an outcast from labor society, still suspect in the general community, still in a state of uneasy parole and surveillance by the police...
...Thus, it was not Hoffa but John English, the Teamster Secretary, himself a member of the AFL-CIO Council, who told the Council to "go to hell" for its supposed infringement of Teamster autonomy...
...A substantial sum of money is involved—some $800,000 a year— and it will be lost at a time when AFL-CIO headquarters will need it most because of the war with the Teamsters...
...No one—neither Meany nor Dubinsky nor Walter Reuther nor A1 Hayes—will break with it with an easy heart...
...It would be unnatural for them to do otherwise, for the working teamster is concerned less with the politics of the big shots in Washington than with the bread and butter of the family next door...
...Nobody paid any attention...
...He reportedly asked for a year's time to institute any reform the AFL-CIO and its Ethical Practices Committee directed, and cited the fact that Beck, Brewster and Brennan had been ousted and Beck denied the title and pension of President-emeritus, just as the Ethical Practices Committee desired...
...The record was against Hoffa, and on this record the Council voted to suspend the Teamsters...
...The AFL-CIO will have to curtail some activities, increase its per-capita assessments, or both...
...Teamster officials command leading positions in most of these labor organizations...
...Beck and the others were deposed at the Teamster convention not because of indignation at their misdeeds, but because there was no room for them in the machine Hoffa was assembling...
...Teamsters in the various communities stuck by their friends rather than by the rule laid down by their president...
...Qualms of this sort were recently expressed by Louis Hollander of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers, who is New York State CIO chairman...
...The presence of hoodlums and ex-convirts in Hoffa s claque at the Teamster convention was not a persuasive reference for good conduct in the future...
...The AFL-CIO may be hurt in the course of the struggle, but it will come out cleaner and stronger for the effort...
...The next move, expulsion, will come at the AFL-CIO convention which opens on December 5 in Atlantic City...
...Harassed by court actions which the labor movement would normally be the first to protest and repudiate, he feels that he is being victimized both by the forces of law and order, which he has been careful to sidestep, and by stalwarts of labor to whom he has offered friendship...
...In view of all this, few observers see how Hoffa can win...
...Only one of the four Teamsters against whom the AFL-CIO Ethical Practices Committee had brought charges remained in office...
...The threat that the Teamsters might form an opposition federation of ousted and independent unions is dismissed with disdain in AFL-CIO circles...
...To Meany and his associates on the Executive Council, however, the issue was not whether they vanquished Beck, Brewster, Brennan and Hoffa in the Teamsters, Cross in the Bakers, or Valente and Klenert in the Textile Workers...
...Hoffa is reported furious...
...Hoffa's sources intimate that non-support at the AFL-CIO convention will bring non-cooperation on the picket line...
...The Teamsters—1.4 million strong—will be represented there...
...Subsequently, Beck, with Hoffa's aid, double-crossed the AFL...
...They honored picket lines in Beck's day and are expected to continue to honor them under Hoffa...
...In other words, it was in Hoffa's interest, not in the interests of union probity, that they were sidetracked...
...The real fight will develop on a local basis, when state and regional labor bodies are required to withdraw recognition from the Teamsters...
...Labor men, Meany among them, recognized these as sensible questions...
...It was this last that made compromise with Hoffa impossible...
...The Teamsters Union has been a good friend and cherished ally in many labor struggles...
...Several years ago, Dave Beck made a similar implied threat...
...Contrary to the general impression, he has not been personally hostile to the AFL-CIO command...
...Hollander is not a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council, but his views are respected in the labor community...
...The team of vice presidents elected at that convention would certainly be no check on the union president who had hand-picked most of them...
...Instead, the AFL-CIO President chose to subject himself to a brutal pummeling...
...Teamster locals can decide whether or not to honor a picket line...
...Hoffa wasn't kidding anybody, he was told...
...They will remember who were their friends and who their enemies, and will act accordingly...
...They will not easily relinquish them...
...Already the word has gone out that the Teamsters will keep score at the forthcoming AFL-CIO convention...
...After expulsion, the AFL-CIO will not charter an opposition Teamsters international...
...As for Hoffa himself, the findings of the Ethical Practices Committee stand unrefuted so far as the AFL-CIO is concerned...
...A teamster loses little if anything when he passes up a struck plant on his daily route, and his action may be of great help in a strike...
...These are that he "used union funds for personal purposes," used his "official union position for personal profit and advantage, frequently to the direct detriment of the Teamster Union membership," "engaged in improper activities relating to health and welfare funds," and, finally, "associated with, sponsored and promoted the interests of notorious labor racketeers...
...In fact, he had argued against suspension and ouster when the Council wrestled with the Longshoremen's cases, but Beck insisted on drastic measures and prevailed...
...The Brotherhood is a congeries of separate unions...
...Each local or council of locals conducts its own negotiations with employers and signs its own contracts...
...Despite the almost unanimous vote for suspension in the Executive Council, there is considerable doubt among AFL-CIO leaders that suspension and ouster are the wisest course to follow with the Teamsters...
...He asked why the million-and-a-half teamsters should be penalized for the sins of some of their leaders, why the AFL-CIO should cut off a limb when it wants to get rid of a wart, why it could not create the authority to oust a crooked leader without ousting the union as a whole...
...Hoffa, able, energetic and resourceful, recognizes this...
...Hoffa may therefore have difficulty with many locals which do not want to break their old associations with the movement...
...The AFL-CIO will be hurt to the extent that it will lose membership and income provided by the Teamsters...
...Meany and the Council, with full knowledge of the formidable forces confronting them, moved into battle for what is likely to become the most harrowing, most convulsive, most violent war in labor history...
...They cannot win in the same sense that the racketeer elements dominating the International Longshoremen's Association have not won...
...As a suspended organization, their delegates will have a voice but no vote...
...At the hearing of the Executive Council that preceded the Teamsters' suspension from the AFL-CIO, Hoffa is said to have made a strong plea for a chance to clean up his union...
...The Teamsters Brotherhood is so constituted that there is no overriding economic or industrial reason for locals to stay with it...
...Matters of social prestige and political power are involved in such affiliations...
...The issue was whether the labor movement would abide by concepts of integrity or would fall back into an easy lassitude...
...But if the Teamsters are expelled they will feel no obligation to honor the line of an AFL-CIO affiliate...
...Fringe benefits and welfare funds are also maintained on a local, not an international, basis...
...Meany had toppled the supposedly invincible Dave Beck, and with him two other powerful Teamster leaders, Frank Brewster and Sidney Brennan...
...He said that recognition of a picket line would not follow automatically by the Teamster locals, but would have to be passed first by his office...
...Nevertheless, lacking authority to separate the sheep from the goats, the Executive Council voted for suspension as its only disciplinary measure...
...In the long-range view, James R. Hoffa and his cohorts cannot possibly win, though all the immediate advantages are on their side...
...It is doubted that John L. Lewis or anyone of stature in labor would join in such a movement...
...When they do, the movement of goods in and out of a struck plant is hampered if not completely stopped...
...Meany had entertained similar doubts when he moved against the racketeers in the ILA...
Vol. 40 • November 1957 • No. 45
