LABOR: Down with Integrity

In Miami Beach Auditorium one day last week, a band bugled out a rousing version of When the Saints Go Marching In, and in marched nearly 2,000 delegates to the quinquennial convention of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, as unsaintly a crew as U.S. labor has to offer. They were there to elect—or rather, ratify —a president. The man they wanted was a man they loved: James Riddle Hoffa, 44, pal of gangsters, target of national scorn and innumerable investigations, soon to appear in New York to defend himself on charges of wiretapping and perjury.

Before Hoffa would accept the crown, he insisted that the Teamsters run through a charade designed to show that the Teamsters believe in fair play. Even the burliest of the delegates knew that the convention stood in the grim glare of public opinion, thanks to disclosures of Teamster corruption by John McClellan’s Senate labor-rackets committee. With supreme cynicism, Jimmy and his boys pretended to clean their fingernails.

Beck v. Beck. First was a gentle coup de grâce to be administered to outgoing President Dave Beck. Fat Dave, once the unchallenged Teamster baron who patted little Jimmy Hoffa on the head, was to be booted into retirement (with an annual $50,000 pension) because of his outsize financial shenanigans, because he had been accused of fleecing a Teamster’s widow, and because he had stood in the way of ambitious Jimmy. Bellowed Beck, in an hour-long swan song: “To thine own self be true! I would like to see the man who can stand up—who is without sin—and cast that first stone. God never created me in the crucible of infallibility.”

With Beck out of the way, Hoffa coped with credentials troubles. One group of insurgents had claimed in court that more than half the delegates had been illegally chosen. Hoffa saw to it that the credentials committee, headed by Kansas City Teamster Roy Williams, scratched 139 of the more doubtful delegates, and stamped the rest approved. (Williams’ reward for loyal service: promise of chairmanship of the Central States Conference.) This thumping pretense served only to prove Hoffa’s confidence of victory. “Are you running scared?” asked a newsman. Snapped Jimmy in a steely voice: “I never run scared at nothin’, and I don’t intend to start at this late date.”

Integrity v. Thirst. Jimmy had some actual opponents for the job, but they were feeble and halfhearted. Chief among them: Chicago Teamsters Tom Haggerty and Bill Lee. Trying at first to campaign on moral grounds, Haggerty opened campaign headquarters in the gargantuan Fontainebleau Hotel, dispensed several cases of liquor before he discovered that the Teamster delegates were less morally indignant over Hoffa’s actions than they were thirsty. “We got a new slogan,” rasped one Hoffaman: ” ‘Haggerty for integrity. Hoffa for president.’ ” Bill Lee, too, ran a losing battle, for among other things, he boasted the doubtful backing of Western Conference Teamster Boss Frank Brewster, a corruption-stained baron who had long fought Hoffa’s climb to power. Didn’t everybody know that Jimmy was going to sacrifice Brewster to the wolves before convention’s end? (He did.)

But cagey Jimmy did not let overconfidence weaken his campaigning. He and his boys ranged the Miami Beach spas in search of teetering delegates. In the smoke-filled cabanas the word was passed: You’re either with Jimmy or against him. The boys got the message while running the gauntlet of B-girls in Miami dives, and amid the thick décor of plush hotel dining rooms while slugging down Scotch and bourbon and gorging on fiendishly concocted flaming-sword delights. Hoffa’s big persuader was St. Louis Teamster Harold Gibbons, 47, the closest thing to an egghead in the Hoffa coop. Fingering a card file of information on delegates, Gibbons delivered for Jimmy—and Jimmy delivered for Gibbons by naming his crony as his nominee for a vice-presidency and executive assistant.

Teamsters v. Hoffa. While the maneuvering went on, Hoffa made ready for his first big onstage splash. It came when the news tickers reported that U.S. Chief Justice Warren had declined to hold up election proceedings on the plea of the 13 rank-and-file New York Teamsters who claimed that the whole show was contrary to the Teamsters’ constitution. Hoffa slipped down to the convention floor and passed the word of Warren’s decision. There was a roar from the delegates, and Jimmy—still just one of the candidates—took the rostrum and the bow. “Let’s go,

Jimmy!” they yelled. Hoffa grinned, held up two fingers, V-style, before the cheering throng. “Jimmy,” cried one pal, overcome with emotion, “is the greatest little bastard who ever put on shoes.”

On the heels of the tumult came Hoffa’s most inspired strategic move. He insisted that the convention hear a reading of the 13,000-word “indictment” drawn by the A.F.L.-C.I.O. Ethical Practices Committee, damning Hoffa, Beck and Brewster and warning in effect that the Teamsters would be ousted from the A.F.L.-C.I.O. if Hoffa were elected. “I’m the only guy who answered every goddam charge,” Jimmy told newsmen. “I ain’t ducking nothin’.” Once the report was read, a Hoffa delegate moved that it be stricken from the record of the convention, and so it was. (An editorial in the A.F.L.-C.I.O. News compared the action to Lady Macbeth’s “Out, damned spot!”) It was all over but the vote. Hoffa put up his slate of officers: his friends got the spoils, his enemies got the gate. The vote: Hoffa 1,208, Lee 313, Haggerty 140.

Power v. Everybody. When the count was over, the delegates whooped it up. Stomping, shouting, backslapping, handshaking, whistling and cheering, they carried on for more than half an hour. “Jimmy,” cried one partisan, “is a stand-up guy!” Hoffa brought his wife to the rostrum, gave her a businesslike kiss, then faced the quieting crowd. Now openly the boss of 1,400,000 Teamsters, where once he had only coached from the sidelines, Hoffa read off the U.S. labor movement. “We will do everything in our power,” he announced, “to remain within the united labor movement. But if these people [the A.F.L.-C.I.O. hierarchy] succeed in forcing the Teamsters out of the federation, and attempt to raid our organization . . . we will be ready to defend ourselves with every ounce of strength we possess.”

At week’s end, as the Teamsters trooped happily home, Hoffa made it clear that “every ounce of strength” meant the sinews of his own newly gained personal power. His first project was to centralize the power of the Teamsters’ four loose-knit sectional baronies so that no one can question henceforth who might be the boss of the Teamsters. It’s Jimmy Hoffa.