Jimmy Hoffa (1913 – 1975)
American labor union leader and author.
In the ten years I was president of the Teamsters, I had raised the membership from eight hundred thousand to more than 2 million and made it the largest single labor union the world.
But to hear Kennedy when he was grandstanding in front of the McClellan Committee you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey.
From 1955 until 1965 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as Elvis Presley. From 1965 until 1975 Jimmy Hoffa was as famous as the Beatles.
We never had any silk sheets in our family...
But because we are financially solid, because we do have an organization that is equipped to handle any situation that comes in front of us, we are successful in getting from the employers what are members want and need without strikes.
They all know I'm back, very much back, and that I will be the general president again come hell or high water.
"He's not just the most powerful man in labor," Robert Kennedy had said in the wake of Hoffa's announcement; "he's the most powerful man in the country, next to the President."
There are simply no public figures today who so challenge the elite business and government establishment and so champion the working class as Jimmy Hoffa did almost daily and with arrogance.
Nobody in this country respects what's weak. You believe me!
If you see a beggar on a corner, with his hat in his hand, nobody respects him.
Dress the same man up, give him an air of dignity, and he can command respect.
The same thing applies to this union.
I do to others what they do to me, only worse.
I let him strain for a couple of seconds. Then like taking candy from a baby, I flipped his arm over and cracked his knuckles on the top of the table. It was strictly no contest and he knew it. But he had to try again. Same results.
When you run an organization like the Teamsters one man has to be the boss and run things.
Power leads to more power, no matter what your racket, and not only were they rich and influential but they were smart as hell, too.
At least one time in adulthood, on the other hand, Hoffa claimed just seven school grades.
No more than one third of his working time, indeed, was spent in his office.
Sure, we loaned money to build hotels and casinos in Las Vegas. So what? Las Vegas borrowers were good customers.
You almost had to live through it to really know the gut ripping misery of the depression during the early thirties which led to labor's bloodiest and most violent days.
I've said consistently that no employer ever really accepts a union. They tolerate the unions. The very minute they can get a pool of unemployment they'll challenge the unions and try to get back what they call managements prerogatives, meaning hire, fire, pay what you want.
It has to be considered damned unusual that no other union was ever investigated.