The Engine Inside the Hood

Decked out in the latest in ventilated sports shoes, straw hats with foulard bands, tailored silk suits and open-weave summer shirts, a band of 13 men mushed across the thick carpet in the lobby of Los Angeles' flossy Sheraton-Town House Hotel last week for a three-day meeting.

They planned one day to meet on a palm-shaded lanai in sight of the swimming pool and then, to avoid nosy newsmen, switched with their retinue (five lawyers), like French-farce husbands, from the Atwater Kent Suite to the Mary Martin Suite to the parquet-floored Terrace Room. They looked and acted like directors of General Motors come to dream about new models, but they were the General Executive Board of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters trying to work their way out of trouble.

Facing these powerful barons of transportation were charges by the Ethical Practices Committee of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. that might get their whole brotherhood thrown out of the big union. The heart of their problem was best illustrated by the fouled sparkplugs brought along by the four biggest of them: bellowing Dave Beck, newly harassed (he cried) by some absurd vendetta of the income tax people; Minneapolis Teamster Vice President Sidney L. Brennan, convicted of accepting a bribe; Western Conference Chair man Frank Brewster, convicted of contempt of Congress; and, with topmost billing in the news, James Riddle Hoffa, chairman of the Central States Conference of Teamsters, struggling to keep his tail gate from the teeth of the law.

For the first three, there was little to look forward to; for big things in union labor, they were through. But tough, ruthless Jimmy Hoffa was getting ready to take the big step to ultimate power among the Teamsters. His mouth hardened into a grim line; his accustomed arrogance softened to a lighter hauteur; he stiffened his muscle-packed (5 ft. 5 1/2 in., 170 lb.) frame and snapped: "I have been as clean as anybody else in the labor movement. What I have done was in keeping with the membership's authority vested in me."

Only a prefix away from the international union's presidency, Vice President Hoffa, 44, controls a mighty voting force which he has assembled through the years by tirelessly reaching out from his Detroit headquarters into every accessible Teamster domain, tirelessly wooing business agents and local leaders, establishing a machine which owes allegiance only to Hoffa. He maintained it by virtue of his famed reputation as a tough negotiator of union contracts and a self-styled protector of the ranks. While conspiring with hoods, he has won the confidence of businessmen and has even assumed a stance of labor statesmanship.

"I do not like irresponsible labor leaders," he cried before the St. Louis Advertising Club last year. "Within the Teamsters international union . . . we have no room for dishonest people." As a guest lecturer at Harvard's Graduate School of Public Administration last year, he lectured Economist Sumner Slichter's class on the economics of collective bargaining.

Bites of Coal. For Jimmy Hoffa the Terrace Room of the Town House, the leadership of 1,400,000 Teamsters and the classroom at Harvard represent a long, hard climb. He fought every step of the way.

He was born the son of a tough coal prospector in Brazil, Ind., who tested the quality of coal by biting into the ore. When Jimmy was four, John Hoffa died with a coating of coal dust on his lungs. Viola Riddle Hoffa, mother of two girls and two boys, was as tough as her husband. Says Jimmy's brother Bill: "She was always telling us, and she made us listen, that Dad always kept his word . . . We had rules in our house. If your mother or father told you to do something, you did it. And they only told you once. The second time it meant a swat across the mouth." To this day, one of Jimmy Hoffa's proudest boasts--confirmed by people who deal with him--is that he always keeps his word.

To support her family, Viola Hoffa went to work, tirelessly washing and ironing the laundry that her two boys hauled home in a wagon. When Jimmy was about ten, the family moved 20 miles northwest to Clinton, on the Wabash River. The boys chopped and sold wood, set out trotlines in the river, caught catfish, bass, suckers; some were sold, the rest were eaten at home. They scraped the bottom of the Wabash for mussels, boiled them in big oil drums, sold the shells to button makers at the rate of $6 a ton. They learned how to take care of themselves and to get what they could, any way they could.

When Mrs. Hoffa took her children to Detroit's two-fisted southwest side, the boys continued their endless search for a buck. One day they would haul ashes; the next would bring a handsome $2 for passing out handbills (patent-medicine ads) to workers at the Ford River Rouge plant. Soon afterward, Jimmy, who was later to lecture at Harvard, quit Neinas School after the ninth grade.

It was a tough life. Brother Bill took the crime road: felonious assault (1938), violation of probation (1940), carrying concealed weapons (1942). Today Bill Hoffa is a business agent for Teamster Local 614 in Pontiac, Mich.

Berries & Bruises. Ambitious Jimmy Hoffa, a smarter boy, hardened his muscles on a series of jobs, most of them part-time, until at 18 he hoisted himself into steady work in Detroit with the Kroger grocery chain. The job: unloading boxcars at 32-c- an hour. Jimmy and his co-workers got paid only for actual hours worked, though they had to stay close by the loading platforms for 12 to 15 hours a day. In 1932 Jimmy organized a strike. Gathering a six-man committee, he made his demands on the management just as a carload of strawberries and cantaloupes arrived at the warehouse. The company, faced with imminent spoilage of the fruit, quickly made peace. "It was only a small raise," says Hoffa, "but they gave us an insurance deal."

With the passion of his father cracking his teeth into raw coal, Jimmy took a hungry bite of victory. Within two years he had acquired an A.F.L. charter, moved his boys into the Teamsters Union, taken over the trusteeship of debt-ridden Teamster Local 299 in Detroit. Singlemindedly, he shoved ahead. "In those days," says Hoffa in his rough, staccato voice, "Detroit was the toughest open-shop town in the country. It was like a dime crime novel, with all the shootings and slug-gings. I was hit so many times with nightsticks, clubs and brass knuckles that I can't ever remember where the bruises were. But I can hit back. Guys who tried to break me up got broken up. It was no picnic, but I gave as good as I got."

He gave service too. In the dreary Depression days of strikes and lockouts, Hoffa's springy figure and his vibrant personality (expressed with a wealth of the four-letter words) became a familiar sight. His commodity was spirit. He found men to form picket lines, sometimes scraped up money to pay for their bread. He toured meetings of locals like an itinerant troubleshooter ("I know how to coordinate all the locals, how to use them to give full strength wherever we need it"), wore out his share of shoe leather on countless picket lines ("I was picked up [off a picket line] and put in jail 18 times in 24 hours. Every time I went back").

It was on a picket line that he met Josephine Poszywak. She was a striking laundry worker, and he was an interested Teamster; they were married in 1936, have a son, James Phillip, 16, and a daughter, Barbara Ann, 19. Jimmy doesn't expect Josephine to do picket-line duty now. When he took the stand before the McClellan committee, he said: "I asked my wife not to watch it [on TV]. It would just upset her. What's the use of her watching things she doesn't understand?"

Power & Push. His first successful reach for big power came in 1940, when he was made negotiating chairman of the Central States Drivers Council, for which he talked contract for over-the-road drivers of twelve states. This kind of power was there for any aggressive man to grab. International President Dan Tobin, growing ineffectual after more than 30 years in office, was little more than a figurehead ruler of a vast, decentralized realm of baronies. In the Far West a redheaded baron named Dave Beck was already capitalizing on organizational weaknesses that fairly cried for a strong hand; stealthily Beck's hand reached out. In the Midwest roughhousing, baby-faced Hoffa was doing the same. He got caught a couple of times: in 1946 he was indicted, eventually assessed costs of $500 for eliciting "fees" from independent grocerymen, who, rather than hire union drivers, were hauling their own provisions; in 1942 he was fined $1,000 for his part in a conspiracy to restrain trade among Detroit's wholesale paper companies.

Heady with his new power, Hoffa jumped into Michigan politics. Once, in 1948, he helped his old friend and confidant. Attorney George Fitzgerald, in a successful campaign for Democratic National Committeeman. But the state's Democratic powerhouse, then abuilding under such shrewd carpenters as G. Mennen Williams and United Auto Workers' Walter Reuther, soon brought down Fitzgerald and Hoffa. Jimmy himself tried twice to win a precinct delegate election, but each time he lost. In the 1950 precinct elections. Hoffa men filed fraudulent petitions in an effort to move in at the local level, but the petitions were tossed out. He tried to get Fitzgerald nominated for lieutenant governor in 1954, but failed. Since that time, says one Michigan Democrat, Hoffa has been "on the outside, glaring in."

There were no such setbacks in the Teamsters Union. He joined forces with Dave Beck, who had organized his own network into an eleven-state Western Conference (over the futile opposition of President Tobin) and had forced his way into the newly created job of Tobin's executive vice president. A gentle push in 1952 moved 77-year-old Dan Tobin into retirement and Beck into the big chair. The pusher: James Riddle Hoffa, the man with the Central Teamster organization--and the critical packet of votes--safely in his pocket. His reward: virtually limitless autonomy in his area.

As an international vice president in his own right, Empire-Builder Hoffa, with all his growing power, began to push Beck in a different direction. He cornered trusteeships, i.e., almost complete control, over 16 locals. Operating at the bargaining table like a master surgeon, he carved gain after gain out of the hides of truckers. Employers, some of them onetime drivers and consequently tough eggs to meet, found Hoffa almost unbeatable. He could sit at negotiation sessions for 36 hours at a stretch, with only a quick shower to put him back into shape.

An Industry's Stability. One top Hoffa staffer says, with considerable justification, that "the stability of the trucking industry depends to a large extent on Jimmy Hoffa." Says Victor Schaeffner, counsel for the Michigan Cartagemen's Association: "Hoffa knows the trucking business better than probably 99% of the owners. He knows what he wants, and he knows what he can get. That's why his demands are never out of line with what the industry can pay." Says one experienced negotiator: "You don't go into negotiations thinking you are going to be enemies from the word go. Hoffa is a businessman. He's trying to build up that impression. He's not a crusader, not like Reuther." Adds a labor-relations expert: "When you finish negotiations with Jimmy Hoffa, you can sleep well that night. When you finish with Walter Reuther, the trouble is often just beginning."

While trucking-industry management generally likes Hoffa and looks upon him with some awe, bigger fish tend to fear him. At the biggest dinner of its kind ever held in Detroit, more than 2,600 well-wishers last year paid $100 apiece in honor of Hoffa's 25 years in the labor movement (proceeds for a children's home in Israel). Scores of important names in the Midwest seized the chance to shake the hard, square hand of Hoffa. And though General Motors, Ford and Chrysler employ only 500 Teamsters (out of a total payroll list of 800,000), the auto industry sent big men: a General Motors vice president, a Ford vice president, and a Chrysler industrial-relations executive. One reason: Jimmy Hoffa's Teamsters truck most of America's cars from assembly points to dealerships around the country.

Cons & Confidence. The mark of Hoffa's skill is that he has been able to win widespread confidence on both sides of the bargaining table while borrowing money under curious circumstances from businessmen with Teamster contracts, consorting with hoods and ruthlessly pushing around local Teamster leaders who got in his way. He teamed up with New York Racketeer Johnny Dio to discredit old-time Teamster Vice President Tom Hickey and to dethrone Martin Lacey from the presidency of the powerful New York Teamsters Joint Council 16 (some 60 locals). Hoffa succeeded ultimately: his man John O'Rourke finally became president of the council. Now Old Teamster Hickey is standing up in opposition to Hoffa's bid for the Teamsters' presidency, but not even Hickey thinks he will have a chance when the I.B.T. holds its convention in Miami Beach this month.

The mark of Hoffa's brazen determination to get what he wants any way he can was his performance in the early days of the Senate Labor Rackets investigation. New York Lawyer John Cye Cheasty swore that Hoffa hired him to spy on the committee's investigative work. When Hoffa was arrested and tried on bribery and conspiracy charges before a jury of eight Negroes and four whites, Hoffa's good "friend," ex-Heavyweight Boxing Champion Joe Louis, made a conspicuous show of himself in the courtroom. During the trial John Cheasty noted a recurrent Hoffa action. Jimmy, he said, would wait till the jury's eyes were turned from him, then raise a hand as if to rub his neck. Cheasty saw what Hoffa wanted him to see: a Hoffa thumb zipping across the throat in an unmistakable gesture of a knife slit. Translation: Hoffa's description of what could happen to Cheasty.

Once acquitted of the bribery charge, Hoffa, before the McClellan committee, boldly took the "I don't recall" amendment. As the committee rolled out evidence of his sordid dealings with Dio and other racketeers, Hoffa's close friend and unofficial chief of staff, Harold Gibbons, Teamster boss in St. Louis, spoke the defense that seems to satisfy a lot of Teamsters: "Is it all right for Dulles to deal with a whore like Saud, or a bum like Franco to get his objectives? Hoffa found he had to work with Dio to bring his people into the union. When you work with a man to win an objective, you can't turn around and spit in his face. Working with Dio for a certain goal doesn't lower Jimmy's moral standards. He has the highest moral standards of anyone."

Not Even Coffee. Jimmy's personal life is, in fact, simple and unassuming. Money, for its own sake, is apparently unimportant. He still lives in a nondescript northwest neighborhood in Detroit, in a plain brick house that he bought in 1939 for $6,800. A man of simple tastes, he always wears white socks because colored ones "make my feet sweat." Says Harold Gibbons: "Remember, Jimmy doesn't smoke, drink or chase women." As a matter of fact, he doesn't even drink coffee.

Chugging along like a twelve-cylinder diesel, Hoffa devotes his bottomless energies to his panoramic job. He paces his office floor in Detroit's Teamsters building, barks orders into one of four telephones, pounds his fist hard in his hand. "The future of labor-management relations," he insists, "is big labor and big business. There is no room for the small business or the small union." Neither, if he had his way, would there be room for education. Snarls Hoffa: "I don't have a man working for me who don't come off a truck or off the dock. I don't have any college boys, and I don't need them."

For his critics, Hoffa claims only contempt. "I don't give a damn what they say," he says. "Jimmy Hoffa can take care of himself. Why don't the newspapers go out and ask my members what they think of Jimmy Hoffa? They can't prove I've misused my union power."

Indifference & Fear. For the most part, rank-and-file Teamsters across the nation --the men who pay their $2-to-$6 monthly dues--are content to keep their eyes on the road and not on union affairs. They roll into the city platforms to unload produce and furniture, autos and chickens. They drive cabs, deliver flowers, department-store merchandise and groceries, cart off garbage. They are strong and competent. But as Teamsters, they are either uninformed, indifferent or scared.

They do not have, and do not expect to have, a voice in union business, which is run by the labor bosses' hand-picked agents. A few, like the driver in Pittsburgh, will blurt out "Hang the son of a bitch." But a more common reaction is that of the Boston milkwagon driver who said: "The court didn't find him guilty [of bribery]. For my dough he's a go-through guy." More ominous and often just beneath the surface was the reaction of a Philadelphia truck driver when asked what he thought of Hoffa: "I'd rather look at that river over there than float in it."

Some knowing assessment of Hoffa comes from his longtime foe, August ("Gus") Scholle, president of the Michigan C.I.O. Council. "Hoffa," says Scholle, "figures he can always buy what he wants." Adds a West Coast lawyer: "Jimmy Hoffa believes that anything can be accomplished and will seize a way to do it. You could count Dave Beck as being tough, but he's an angel alongside of Hoffa. Hoffa is just plain ruthless. Beck rants and snorts. As a last resort, he would use group physical violence, but he wouldn't have anyone bumped off. Hoffa wouldn't stop at anything."

"I Talked and They Listened." Once elected president of the Teamsters, Hoffa declares, he will make many changes for the better in the union's structure. There will, for instance, be token constitutional revisions aimed at transferring presidential powers to the executive board. But with President Hoffa in charge of the board, this modification will be only frilly window dressing. There will be more power over the financial affairs of locals from international headquarters, i.e., Jimmy Hoffa. In deference to the A.F.L.-C.I.O. leadership, Hoffa says that he will rid himself of all his private business interests. But he will defend the right of an accused union official to cringe behind the Fifth Amendment, as Dave Beck did. Far more important is Hoffa's dream of establishing what he calls a "loose-knit council" of all the nation's transportation unions "to exchange ideas." How he would handle this enormous thumbscrew on the U.S. economy, only he can tell.

What is the engine inside Hoffa that keeps him running so hard? The coal biter's son says a lot about it himself. In Detroit's recent newspaper strike, "at 3 a.m. in the morning three editors came to see me, and we worked things out. I talked and they listened. Can you imagine how it feels to have men like that listen to reason? Did you ever hear of confidence? Did you ever hear of people accepting a man on his bond? At a meeting three weeks ago, I put out some pension checks for the first time in the history of the Teamsters. I saw old people cry. I had ladies kiss me. Can you imagine what this means? This is the satisfaction you can't buy."

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