Labor: Breaking Out in Boils

“Hoffa’s got boils,” cried a happy A.F.L.-C.I.O. executive. “There is dissatisfaction throughout the Teamsters, and it’s popping out like boils. All over.”

For weeks now, Teamster President James Riddle Hoffa has been working hard to lance the most painful of the infections—but the old surgical methods are not what they used to be. Jimmy’s main target is Cincinnati, where Dairy Driver James Luken, 39, former president of the city’s Joint Teamster Council, last month led four dissident locals out of the union (TIME, Aug. 25). Hoffa at first sent in a team of 30 lawyers, organizers and well-muscled workers from loyal locals—headed by Harold Gibbons of St. Louis, his national second-in-command—to bring the dissidents into line. After Luken boldly called for a second election to confirm his victory, Hoffa gave the situation his personal, on-the-scene attention.

That was clearly a mistake. At a recent press-conference debate with Luken, Hoffa seemed nervous and unsure in argument. And despite bales of advance TV and newspaper publicity, a monster rally of loyal Teamsters, with Hoffa as featured speaker, filled less than half the 3,800-capacity Cincinnati Music Hall. Last week, as the National Labor Relations Board began hearings on the new election that Luken wants, Hoffa and his handymen as much as admitted that the operation would take longer than expected: Gibbons set up a new regional office for the Cincinnati Teamsters—and took out a two-year lease on a suite in a downtown building. But Luken was confident that his dissidents would remain in dissent. Said he: “Jimmy Hoffa is not ten feet tall. I think he’s about five foot three.* Hoffa can send in his pros from here till doomsday and he won’t get anywhere.”

Hoffa’s pros may soon have a bit more work than they can handle. Last week, Jimmy’s Teamster empire had revolts brewing in a number of provinces:>In St. Louis, drivers at one of the city’s largest cab companies have voted 100 to 97 to leave Teamster Local 405 and join an independent union. The NLRB has not certified the result because of a challenge to six ballots, but rebel leaders are confident that the vote will stand.> In Chicago, where cab drivers and mechanics recently voted out a Hoffa pal, Hoodlum Joey Glimco, and his Teamster Local 777 as their bargaining agent in favor of a new independent union (TIME, July 28), two other Teamster locals are on the verge of revolt.

For all the evidence of dissension in the ranks, Jimmy Hoffa is obviously still in command of the nation’s largest union. But his power may be eroding, partly because there just are not as many Teamsters as there used to be. Hoffa likes to claim that his union is 1,700,000 strong, but Labor Department records now show only 1,481,000 Teamsters. Significantly, the union boasted 1,565,000 members before it was booted out of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. in 1957 for corruption. Thus, despite four years of trying to organize anything that walks or moves on wheels,* Jimmy Hoffa has actually had a net loss of 84,000 potential contributors to his million-dollar slush funds.

* Actually, 5 ft. 5½ in.* Jimmy is still trying. The latest issue of the magazine International Teamster announces a big push for membership in DRIVE (a lobbying subsidiary of the union), offers an aromatic inducement. New members will receive free “a handsome, goldplated, perfume-filled spray atomizer, with choice of one or two highly desired perfumes, comparable to Chanel or Arpège.”