James P. Hoffa

Jimmy Hoffa was a union leader who demanded results. And it didn't matter too much how he got them. That style of governance carried over to the people who worked for him, some of whom apparently were prepared to knock off a few law enforcement agents. This past April, U.S. District Judge Todd J. Campbell in Nashville, Tennessee unsealed long-dormant grand jury testimony revealing several Hoffa supporters had planned to ambush and murder a group of FBI agents in that city. The plan never came off. But the details, contained in transcripts released to the public late in July, underscore the fanaticism prevalent among the late Teamster president's loyalists.

The ballots for Teamsters general president were mailed out on October 6.  After the November 13 deadline for returning ballots, it will be all down to the waiting.  Not too many people think Tom Leedham, now on his third try, will defeat incumbent James P. Hoffa, having received 40 percent of the total vote in a three-way race in 1998 and only 35 percent in 2001.  But Leedham, 55, thinks this time around Hoffa’s track record will induce a great many among the union’s 1.4 million members to switch sides.  In the meantime, Richard W. Mark, the union’s federally-appointed election supervisor, doesn’t think too much of certain people surrounding Hoffa.  On October 3, Mark, acting on a complaint by Leedham, ruled that Stephen Mack, Hoffa’s director of industrial trades, had laundered $14,000 of member dues into his boss’s campaign coffers.  It’s little coincidence, say Leedham’s people, that Mack’s brother, Chuck Mack, is a Hoffa running mate.  Nor is it a coincidence that this August, supervisor Mark found Steve Mack’s brother-in-law, Rome Aloise, guilty of laundering $15,720 in dues money into Hoffa’s campaign.  Nobody ever said a Teamsters election campaign was boring.

Teamsters for a Democratic Union has been fighting uphill battles since its founding in 1980, alerting fellow union members to corruption occurring within their ranks.  Their workload isn’t likely to get any lighter, given that general elections are set to be held this fall.  TDU has been a steadfast opponent of James P. Hoffa, since 1999 president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.  They’re accusing Hoffa of pulling out the stops to defeat chief rival Tom Leedham and his “Strong Contracts, Good Pensions” slate.

People saw it coming a mile away.  The Teamsters’ James P. Hoffa and the Service Employees’ Andrew Stern each made good on their threats to take their unions out of the AFL-CIO at the start of that labor federation’s 50^th anniversary convention in Chicago.  In the process, they and several other dissenting unions have left observers wondering if the fortunes of organized labor have been irrevocably damaged.  While that’s a possibility, the most likely long-run outcome probably will be the opposite.  Indeed, unions may emerge with more members, revenues and political clout.  As for battling corruption, they don’t seem to view this as a high-priority item.  But this requires some context.   And the context is the convention.