Hoffa, James Riddle

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HOFFA, JAMES RIDDLE

During the mid-twentieth century James Riddle Hoffa (1913–1975) rose to become one of the most powerful figures in the U.S. labor movement. In 1932 Hoffa began his involvement in the unions. He organized for the Teamsters during the Great Depression and by 1935 was president of the local Detroit, Michigan, chapter of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT). During the ten years that followed he brought many smaller unions into the IBT through his organizing skills, "street smarts," and personal charisma. Hoffa was elected president of the IBT in 1959, becoming the head of the largest, richest, and most powerful labor union in the United States. At the time the IBT represented a membership of two million blue-collar truckers and transportation workers. While historians have disagreed about his contributions to the labor movement, none have questioned his legacy of power and influence, or his status as a legend.

Jimmy Hoffa was born in 1913 in the small town of Brazil, Indiana, one of four children. His father was a coal miner who labored long hours to support his family and died young of a lung disease associated with working conditions in the mines. Hoffa's mother was employed as a domestic worker and a cook, and took in washing to make ends meet. She moved the family to Detroit, Michigan, four years after the death of her husband.

Jimmy Hoffa attended school until the tenth grade, when he dropped out to help his family meet the severe economic conditions of the Great Depression. He took a full-time job as a stock boy at Kroger's, a Detroit grocery store chain. The low pay, poor working conditions, and the impact of the Great Depression all contributed to making the young Hoffa conscious of workers' problems.

Hoffa began to demonstrate his organizing skills as a young man. At age seventeen he led four of his coworkers in a successful strike against the Kroger Company. Hoffa's synchronized the strike with the delivery of a large trailer of fresh strawberries to the Kroger loading docks. Kroger's business managers knew it would not take long for the strawberries to spoil and they desperately needed the loading dockworkers to unload the shipment. Within one hour a new union contract was reached and within one year Jimmy Hoffa's "Strawberry Boys" joined Teamsters Local 674, which later merged with Truck Drivers Local 299. Hoffa transformed the local from a 40-member unit with $400 in its coffers to a 5000 member unit with $50,000 in the bank.

The early U.S. labor movement was volatile and Hoffa's involvement with the IBT during the late 1930s resulted in many threats to his life. Hoffa's car was bombed, his office was searched, and he was once arrested eighteen times in a single day. Hoffa once recalled, "When you went out on strike in those days, you got your head broken. The cops would beat your brains out if you even got caught talking about unions." Undeterred, at the age of twenty-eight Hoffa became vice president and chief negotiator for the IBT.

During the 1950s the federal government began promoting strong attacks against organized crime such as the Mafia. Hoffa had never made a secret of his relationship with the Mafia and the federal government's intense focus on organized crime, combined with the resistance of business to his unionizing, squeezed Hoffa at both ends. The government, for criminal reasons, and business, for labor reasons, both sought Hoffa's downfall.

During the 1960s, after numerous charges of corruption in the Teamsters, Hoffa faced several felony trials. He was convicted of jury tampering and fraud in two separate trials in 1964, and was sentenced to a 15-year prison term. President Richard Nixon (1969–1974) commuted Hoffa's sentence in 1971, but banned him from any union activity. Hoffa had remained president of the Teamsters Union throughout the five years he served in jail, but upon his release from prison he stepped down.

Hoffa appealed to the courts to regain his union presidency but the Supreme Court denied his motion. Hoffa continued to be unofficially involved with the Teamsters union, and with organized crime. On a July afternoon in 1975, Hoffa disappeared after a luncheon meeting. He was never seen again. His colorful life and mysterious disappearance have created an enduring historical legend about the man who served at the forefront of the U.S. labor movement in the mid-twentieth century.

See also: Labor Movement, Labor Unionism