That process, which took several years starting in the early 1930s, eventually brought the Teamsters to a position of being one of the most powerful unions in the United States. Hoffa played a major role in the union's skillful use of 'quickie strikes,' secondary boycotts, and other means of leveraging union strength at one company, then to move to organize workers, and finally to win contract demands at other companies.

The Teamsters organized truck drivers and warehousemen throughout the Midwest and then nationwide. The number grew steadily during World War II and in the postwar boom to top a million members by 1951. As a result of Hoffa's work with other union leaders to consolidate local union trucker groups into regional sections and then into a national body, which Hoffa ultimately completed over two decades, membership grew to 170,000 members by 1936, and three years later, there were 420,000. The Teamsters, founded in 1903, had 75,000 members in 1933. He was then invited to become an organizer with Local 299 of the Teamsters in Detroit. By 1932, after refusing to work for an abusive shift foreman, Hoffa left the grocery chain, partly because of his union activities. Although Hoffa was young, his courage and approachability in that role impressed fellow workers, and he rose to a leadership position. The workers were displeased with that situation and tried to organize a union to better their lot. Hoffa began union organizational work at the grassroots level as a teenager through his job with a grocery chain, which paid substandard wages and offered poor working conditions with minimal job security. The family later owned a simple summer lakefront cottage in Orion Township, Michigan, north of Detroit. The Hoffas paid $6,800 in 1939 for a modest home in northwestern Detroit. They had two children: a daughter, Barbara Ann Crancer, and a son, James P.

The couple had met six months earlier during a nonunionized laundry workers' strike action. Hoffa married Josephine Poszywak, an 18-year-old Detroit laundry worker of Polish heritage, in Bowling Green, Ohio, on September 25, 1937. He left school at the age of 14 and began working in full-time manual labor jobs to help support his family. The family moved to Detroit in 1924, where Hoffa was raised and lived for the rest of his life. His father, who was of German descent from what is now referred to as the Pennsylvania Dutch, died in 1920 from lung disease when Hoffa was seven years old. Hoffa was born in Brazil, Indiana, on February 14, 1913, to John and Viola (née Riddle) Hoffa.

Hoffa's legacy and the circumstances of his disappearance continue to stir debate. It is generally accepted that he was murdered by the Mafia, and in 1982 he was declared legally dead. Hoping to regain support and to return to IBT leadership, he unsuccessfully tried to overturn the order. president Richard Nixon and was released later that year, but Hoffa was barred from union activities until 1980. In mid-1971, he resigned as president of the union as part of a commutation agreement with U.S. He was imprisoned in 1967 and sentenced to 13 years. He was convicted of jury tampering, attempted bribery, conspiracy, and mail and wire fraud in 1964 in two separate trials. Hoffa became involved with organized crime from the early years of his Teamsters work, a connection that continued until his disappearance in 1975. He played a major role in the growth and the development of the union, which eventually became the largest by membership in the United States, with over 2.3 million members at its peak, during his terms as its leader. He secured the first national agreement for teamsters' rates in 1964 with the National Master Freight Agreement. By 1952, he was the national vice-president of the IBT and between 19 he was its general president. James Riddle Hoffa (Febru– disappeared Jdeclared dead July 30, 1982) was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971.įrom an early age, Hoffa was a union activist, and he became an important regional figure with the IBT by his mid-twenties. Attempted bribery and jury tampering (1964)Īggregate of 13 years' imprisonment (eight years for bribery, five years for fraud 1967).

Jimmy hoppa