Hoffa.

• Author: Beall, James S.

The food at Machus Red Fox May not be famous, but the parking lot is. There, on July 30, 1975, Jimmy Hoffa kept his Int appointment with some mafia thugs, thus bringing a quick end to his campaign to regain the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hoffa was a key figure in building the modern American labor movement, but he also bears much of the blame for solidifying the ties between one of America's largest unions and organized crime.

Arthur Sloane's recent biography, entitled simply Hoffa, explores the rise and fall of this intriguing character. Professor Sloane follows a chronological sequence of events. Hoffa came from humble surroundings in rural Indiana, and he later lived in Detroit (pp. 3-7). His introduction to labor organizing came when he led a successful strike at a Kroger warehouse at the age of eighteen (pp. 7-9). The warehouse bargaining unit affiliated with the Teamsters, and Hoffa soon found himself as a full-time organizer for the union (pp. 13-14).

Professor Sloane carefully follows Hoffa's rise in the Teamster ranks. An important moment in Hoffa's education as a labor leader occurred in 1937 when he assisted Farrell Dobbs and other communists leading the Minneapolis Teamster Local 574 (pp. 18-22). Dobbs had perfected the secondary boycott and hot cargo tactics which became the hallmark of Teamster labor relatidns.(1) He also was instrumental in expanding the scope of Teamster contracts from localities to multistate regions. Dobbs and his colleagues, however, fell victim to a Teamster purge led by none other than his former pupil, Jimmy Hoffa (pp. 29-31). Dobbs sided with the new Congress of International Organizations (CIO), which was trying to win over Teamster members to its ranks. The Teamster union, remaining with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), sent Hoffa to preserve its gains in the upper Midwest. After months of street fighting in 1941, Hoffa and the AFL won. His reputation for ruthlessness in the face of challenges was now firmly in place.

Hoffa returned to Detroit only to find the CIO waging a more successful recruiting effort there. This conflict, Professor Sloane writes, prompted Hoffa to turn to organized crime for the first time in his career (pp. 32-34). With the aid of the mob's pool of toughs, Hoffa threw the CIO out of the trucker organizing business in Michigan. Established now as the key Teamster in the Midwest, Hoffa continued to expand his power and mob ties.

Hoffa's...