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Take Note: Historian David Witwer on labor union corruption and the disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa

David Witwer
David Witwer

As we approach the 50th anniversary of the mysterious disappearance of Teamsters Union President Jimmy Hoffa the case remains unsolved. WPSU's Carolyn Donaldson recently talked with Penn State Professor David Witwer about the life of Jimmy Hoffa and union corruption perceptions.

David Witwer is also an upcoming guest for Penn State Forum Speaker Series at The Penn Stater Hotel in State College on April 5 at noon. Tickets and additional information can be found at the event page.

Here's the conversation:

Carolyn Donaldson
Welcome to Take Note on WPSU. I'm Carolyn Donaldson. Today, we're joined by Dr. David Witwer, Professor of American Studies in Penn State Harrisburg School of Humanities, Penn State Laureate for the 2020-2021 academic year, author and historian. His three previous books focused on corruption in the US marketplace and labor racketeering. Witwer's current book project "Searching for Jimmy Hoffa" traces the history of what is known about the Teamsters president's disappearance, his involvement with organized crime, and what his career reveals about working class attitudes towards corruption. David, thanks so much for joining us.

David Witwer
Thank you.

Carolyn Donaldson
Well, let’s start by telling us a little bit about Hoffa’s life and his work building the biggest union movement in US history?

David Witwer
Yeah, so. So that's a good point. So he...the teamsters union is the union that he becomes the leader of. So the Teamsters union is one of the mainstream unions in the US, it goes back to the late 1890s. And so when it first formed, it was the union of people who drove horses and wagons. So a Teamster is a guy that drives horses and wagons. And they really are, you know, pivotal if you think of an urban industrial economy. They come to play that central role early on. So as we get manufactured goods that move from city to city, the Teamsters are that last endpoint connection, right moving from, from the railroad freight yards to the final destination. Or moving from the initial production to the railroad freight yards, or the ports. And for that reason, their growth as like a kind of distinct occupational working-class group, is very much tied to that history of industrialization and urbanization. And then, in the 20s, as we move from horse drawn vehicles to motor freight, then they become the truck drivers. And then in the 30s, and 40s, they expand their jurisdiction. This is what unions always talk about, jurisdiction. So they expand who they organize from being just people who drive to people who are in I guess, the fancy word for it is "ancillary enterprises." But things that are connected to that. So warehouse workers or people who unload at freight yards. Or people then like, because the teamsters work as people who deliver milk and bread and food goods, then they tend to also organize food processing companies. Super exciting, I know. But the gist of it is that by the time we get to the 1940s, they are the largest union in the US. And so when people think of the growth of unions in the 1930s, like if they think of what they learned in their US history survey class, right? They think unions that grew in the 30s were like the factory workers and the Congress of Industrial Organization, right, like the US United Steelworkers. But in fact, the largest union, the largest union growth was the Teamsters. So they come out of World War II as quite large. Now Hoffa is not involved in that growth at that period, right. When all this is occurring, he's really just a kid. So he's like 18, or 19 years old, in a Great Depression era, Detroit, scrambling to get by. And he's unloading freight at a, if you know, the grocery store chain in the Midwest, Kroger's. He's unloading freight there. And this is kind of a common story in the 30s. Like, conditions were horrible. But the way it typically works in American history is, if working conditions are bad, what most people do rather than lead a strike or an uprising, which is actually kind of hard to do, you can try it after this interview, it's actually really pretty tough, is they just go find a different job. But in the Great Depression, there weren't other jobs. And so for the first time, that's part of why unions grow is people like Hoffa were like, "I can't move, but I'm not taking this anymore." And so he leads a strike. And it's kind of a classic moment. He's 18, or he's 19 years old. But they strike at the strategic moment where there's a load of strawberries coming in. And they know that if Kroger's doesn't settle, then those strawberries will rot, and they'll lose that money. And, and they succeed. And that becomes the beginning of his union career. By the time he's 22, just three years later, he's made an official of his first Teamsters union in Detroit. And by the time we get to say, 39, or 40, he's the head of all the union in Detroit. And then he's organizing unions throughout Michigan, in the Midwest. And he's the kind of guy who just...he's the kind of person who in any setting is the one who takes charge. And the one that people tend to listen to. And so he moves up the ranks that way, so that he becomes he becomes really sort of a viable next potential candidate to be the president of the National Union. He could have maybe won in '52 but somebody else takes office instead of him. A guy Dave Beck, who's very similar, but who's from Seattle. And then Hoffa wins election in 1957. That's very much tied to the story of corruption in the investigation of corruption.

Carolyn Donaldson  
You have written and talked about how Hoffa symbolizes the power and the menace that can come from that power. So I guess, as he ascends to this power, there's some not so good stuff that happens along the way, correct?

David Witwer 
Yeah. So here's the thing for the history of the Teamsters union, Hoffa is always associated with the power and the menace of union corruption. And that's because when he becomes president of the Teamsters in 1957, we're right in the middle of a wave of investigations of labor racketeering and union corruption. And those investigations begin really in 1947. They begin, if you know your political history, they begin right when Republicans for the first time, win back control of Congress. So the Republicans had lost power in the 1932 election, because they were blamed for the Great Depression. 1940 is the first time they come back. Unions have been reborn in the in the Great Depression under the New Deal. And they've grown in power during World War II. Republicans are opposed to union power. They're opposed to the Democrats. And they're opposed to a Democratic Party Alliance, with organized labor, with unions. And so they very much promote investigations of union corruption. And it is a thing that exists. There were corrupt unions, there was organized crime. But there's a way in which Republicans in these investigations inflate that as a way to delegitimize the power of organized labor. And as a way to throw into question the alliance between the Democratic Party and these unions. In a way Republicans are saying in these investigations, they're like, "Democrats aren't really protecting working Americans, because they're in cahoots with corrupt union leaders. And so we're going to investigate union corruption. And we're going to demonstrate the danger and the menace of that alliance." And so there's a series of investigations, really over a dozen. And so people tend to think of the 1950s as a time of investigations of communism and internal communism. So they think of like, say, McCarthy, Joseph McCarthy, or the house on American Activities Committee. But really, the investigations of union corruption, which pick up just about as those investigations of communism are fading, they're even bigger in scale. So I think I talked about in one book, but for instance, the house on American Activities Committee had like, say, 20 investigators. The committee that's investigating Hoffa, what's known as the McClellan committee, that has over 100 members on staff. So a much bigger budget, a much bigger investigation, and as a result, much more publicity. And so it really does heighten people's fears about the menace of union corruption in union power. And then they come to focus on Hoffa, who's just been elected as president of the largest, and arguably the most powerful union because Teamsters control like that freight transportation across the US. And it makes them that much more of a menacing figure. But here's what I talked about in my first book, which was on the history of the Teamsters union and corruption, what they're doing in 1957, isn't particularly new. So there had been previous waves of anti-union investigations that looked at corruption. And they often tended to focus on the Teamsters, not because the Teamsters were necessarily more corrupt, although there were issues, but because they were such a powerful and strategic union.

Carolyn Donaldson  
Very interesting.

David Witwer 
And so Hoffa becomes very much identified with that. And then he himself kind of plays into it, because, you know, this is one of the sort of distinctive characteristics about Hoffa. Like, I don't know how you would be but if I was being investigated, and there were allegations that I had ties to organized crime or mobsters, and this was true. There were other union leaders that face these sorts of allegations, I would tend to say, "hmm, I don't really know that person that well, and you may be misinterpreting my connection to them. And I very vaguely have some passing knowledge of them." But Hoffa was a kind of guy that would it dissimulate. And so he would say, "yes, yes, I know, this mobster. I knew him quite well. And I've known him for 20 years. And I would say he's a good friend of mine. This doesn't mean he controls me." It doesn't mean I'm corrupt. Neither of it's true. But I'm not going to pretend that I don't know. And I'm not going to pretend that organized crime doesn't exist and doesn't wield power. It does. It just doesn't control me. And saying that, saying that makes it easier to interpret Hoffa as someone who's controlled by organized crime. Do you know I'm saying? It makes it easier for critics’ charges to stick. And another tactic that he could have done in those hearings, it’s again, why he's quite famous is...If you are investigated by a congressional committee say for communism, or for ties to organized crime, the easiest thing to do to avoid having to having to answer questions that you don't want to answer to avoid possible charges of perjury, or contempt is to simply plead the Fifth Amendment. To say, "I exercise my rights not to incriminate myself by answering that question." The thing is, if you do that one time in a questionable hearing, this was true in the 50s, I'm not sure if it's true today, but it was definitely true in the 50s and the 60s. If you do that on one question, you have to do that on every succeeding question. And so after that, Congressman could ask you for two or three hours, any question. And you'd have to say, "I respectfully decline to answer that question on the grounds that a truthful answer might tend to incriminate." But then what a congressman can do is they can say, "Carolyn, I understand that you hate your country." And you'd have to say, "I respectfully declined to answer that question." It makes it sound like you're guilty of a wider range of crimes. So what Hoffa does is he never takes the fifth. It's a very risky strategy because he knows their stuff in his closet that they could find, but he never takes a fifth. And so that makes him, that makes them in the press, and in the public image, this sort of model of defiance. And you can see that defiance as heroic if you're a Hoffa supporter, or you can see that defiant, as threatening as a guy who sees himself as so powerful, he can defy Congress or the US government.

Carolyn Donaldson  
So that iconic symbol of Hoffa definitely rings true through those congressional hearings that we often see blips of still today, right? When he comes back. So bring us up to that, leading up to that summer afternoon in 1975. And we'll get to the premise of your most recent book, where is Hoffa right before he quote "disappears"? Can you lead us into that, and then we'll have lots more?

David Witwer 
So he becomes president in 1957. He is defiant before these congressional investigators. And the Congressional investigation is being led by the Chief Counsel Robert F. Kennedy, RFK, John F. Kennedy's brother. And Robert Kennedy makes Hoffa the chief target. He makes him the focus really of the investigation. They look at other union leaders, they do other stuff, but from Kennedy's point of view, and what he conveys to the press and the public is Hoffa is the biggest threat. He's the one that has to be dealt with. But for all the investigations, and there's an enormous amount of time and energy that's done. Kennedy never finds, you know, what I guess we would call the "smoking gun". He never finds evidence that Hoffa was taking a bribe from an employer. He never finds any evidence that Hoffa was embezzling or misusing money. He never finds anything that's a chargeable offense. He can find cases where, you know, there's a union leader who has ties to organized crime, who's in the Teamsters, and Kennedy can say that Hoffa should have taken more direct action against them. But that's actually not a chargeable offense, and Hoffa can argue back, and he does. So the congressional committee comes to an end in 1959, and Hoffa has survived. And in that way, his strategy worked. But then Kennedy, John F. Kennedy wins elections President in 1960, and he appoints Robert Kennedy to be the Attorney General. And when Robert Kennedy becomes Attorney General, he's in charge of the Department of Justice. He creates what's known as the "Get Hoffa Squad." It's a unit of about 50 top investigators and prosecutors, and their sole job is to find a chargeable offense against either Hoffa or his close associates and to put him in jail. There's a series of indictments, a series of acquittals in which Hoffa gets out. And then finally in 1964, there's two convictions, and Hoffa is sentenced to 13 years in jail. He goes to jail in 1967. Ironically, he was just reelected president of the Teamsters in 1966. So when he goes to Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary here in Pennsylvania, in 1967, he's officially the president of the most powerful union in the US. Then, through a deal with the Nixon administration. In 1971-'72. Hoffa gets a commutation from prison, and he's released. But the deal is that he will not run for reelection as president of the Teamsters, again until 1980. But once he's out, he can't accept that. He definitely wants to become president. The person who succeeded him as president of the Teamsters Union, a guy named Frank Fitzsimmons had better relations with organized crime. They found him easier to work with. Which is if you think about it, kind of a vindication of Hoffa, that he wasn't such a patsy of organized crime. And so they tell Hoffa, "Don't run. Don't do this, stop it." And then he refuses to heed their advice. And on that summer day in July 1975, he's supposed to meet with two mobsters that he's known for decades. A guy named Tony Provenzano who was a Teamster official in New Jersey, but also a capo, or a mid-level leader in the Genovese crime family in New York. And a mid-level organized crime leader and Tony Jack Giacalone in Detroit. And he goes that meeting, calls his wife says, "hey, they're not here. I'm going to give him another half hour." People see him in the parking lot. It's a busy sort of middle afternoon. I like to say it's like it's not a restaurant that's a chain now, but it'd be like waiting in the in the parking lot of a Red Lobster restaurant. Like it's busy. Lots of people are there. They see him, they know him and then (snaps fingers) he's not there anymore. And he's never been seen again.

Carolyn Donaldson  
I want to invite all of our listeners if you're just joining us, this is Take Note on WPSU. I'm Carolyn Donaldson. My guest is Dr. David Witwer, a professor of American Studies at Penn State Harrisburg School of Humanities. He's been our Penn State Laureate, author and historian. In his current book project, he offers insight on the compelling topic that has captivated our country for nearly half a century. That disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa. I do want to mention that Dr. Witwer will be a guest speaker at the next Penn State Forum speaker series coming up April 5. I'll get your information at the end of this program. So thanks again, for joining us, Dr. Witwer. We were just at the point where he disappeared. So let me take you back and ask you this because his disappearance, because I'm going to change your pivot point a little bit from all of the different caps you wear, it's part of what you call American folklore. And through that lens of humanities, how is his disappearance and all that has happened since that 1975 event tie into to all of this, David?

David Witwer 
Yeah, so I would argue, right, because he disappears. And he's never been found, right? So the assumption is that he was murdered. And the assumption is that the body was disposed of, by the mafia. But that body never been found and in in fact the case has never been solved. And the FBI put over 100 investigators on it and worked on it for a couple of decades. No one's ever been charged with the murder, much less convicted. So officially, it's unsolved. In a way, what we get is a story, right, that's very compelling. Here's this famous person who disappears. And yet, we never really know for sure what happens. And partly because we don't know the story remains compelling. I mean, there have been other union leaders who have been murdered, but they're not that well known. And the story doesn't continue. And so there's a way in which, when someone famous like this, or a famous thing like this exists, and yet we don't know the end of it, it moves from the category of being a historical persona to being mythic. Like Amelia Earhart, if you want, or The Last Colony of Roanoke, right? These are both instances where because we don't know the end of the story, everyone gets to tell the story and provide their own ending. And so Hoffa's case, right, there's been a series of true crime books. So sometimes these are like Frank Sheeran, the guy who's the main character in the Irishman, who come forward and they say, "I was there I did it, I'm now willing to tell all because I'll be dead by the time this is published." Or you get hitmen like the Iceman Kuklinski. Like whom was convicted for a series of murders but claimed to have committed many more. And says among the people that he murdered was Hoffa. Or we get Hoffa associates like the Hammer who, who said, you know, I was there the day he disappeared. And the thing about it is, all of these accounts carry an added kind of weight, because we really don't have anything to disprove them. For all we know, Frank Sheeran was telling the truth. I don't think he was, but for all we know, he was. And so in a way, all stories have a certain amount of validity. In many ways, these stories sort of tap into a wider range of concerns or issues in American history. Like Hoffa as a mythic character, right, comes to stand for if you want to...this notion of an all-powerful, organized crime presence, right. That notion that organized crimes is like an invisible government can achieve whatever it wants. And so it can make this guy disappear. And we'll never hear from him again. And so it could also have done almost anything, right. So it could have been behind the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It could have been behind any number of series. And so he stands for that, that sort of power. But the fact that he becomes recycled in movies like, of course, the Irishman, but there was the earlier movie on Hoffa in the 1990s. And there was a Sylvester Stallone movie that was based about Hoffa's story in the 1970s. These also kind of celebrate a kind of mythic history of the American working class. A kind of rise and fall of organized labor that it becomes powerful, but then too powerful. And then it's tempted and corrupted. Or some people have seen Hoffa as this mythic character who stands for the average working person up against a Robert F. Kennedy who stands for the organizational power of the government. And so he comes to play this representative role in the stories we like to tell about our history and how it's changed or declined if you will.

Carolyn Donaldson  
Very interesting. Now with your research, David, in this most recent book scholarship said that you actually work on the focus of that impact of the Union corruption scandals with the modern American politics. And then you talk about intersections, right of historical fields of labor, politics, journalism and organized crime. So talk about those intersections and where they've gone since that disappearance and the folklore continues, or the story continues. And the premise of your book kind of searches at that facet?

David Witwer 
So a lot of what I work on is, well, there's two ways to think about it. So one is the intersection of politics and the issue of union corruption. And so I've kind of hinted at it before, but union corruption functioned in American political history in the 20th century, as I would say, it's a wedge issue. So it's an issue that's been used to defied organized labor or unions from their otherwise loyal, liberal supporters in the Democratic Party. So, you know, most Democrats since the 1930s, most liberals, if you ask them, they would say they support the growth of unions and union representation. But when you make union corruption scandals prominent, it becomes a justification or rationale for otherwise ardent supporters of unions to vote against or to oppose the growth of union power. Because the notion is, when unions become powerful, this is the fear that's depicted for scandals like Hoffa, then you get people like Hoffa, who are too powerful. And they become a menace to society. And so the classic example is in 1959, legislation was passed in Congress to weaken unions. It's known as the Landrum Griffin act but basically it weakened the ability of unions to wage a kind of strike called an organizational strike. And it weakened the ability of unions to do what's called secondary picketing, to picket a company that they didn't represent. And these had been pivotal to the growth of unions in the 30s and 40s. Now, that legislation couldn't have passed without the support of a certain proportion of Democrats in Congress. And those congressmen had been elected with a wave of labor support in 1958. But they still voted against unions in this union power, because they were responding to the Union corruption scandals that were associated with Hoffa. And so John F. Kennedy, for instance, supported this legislation. And what he said was, this is a bill to get Jimmy Hoffa. And so it's a way in which that resonate. So things change, right, 1975, Hoffa disappears. Very true. When Hoffa disappears, unions are still you know, they're not as strong as they were in the late 50s. But they're still much stronger than they are today. In the decade that follows right, you go to the early 1980s. It's a massive employer counterattack to undercut organized labor. And that's when unions in the US really see their most dramatic decline in numbers. It's right when Hoffa is at this peak of his fame. That disappearance of Hoffa makes the issue of union corruption and this notion of organized crimes dominant, quite significant, because he represents the alliance of organized crime and unions. And so to the extent that he justifies a counterattack on unions makes perfect sense. And from unions point of views, efforts to win legislation that would make it easier for them to resist the employer counterattack. Those legislative efforts always fail. And there's a way in which they fail, right? Because corruption is that wedge issue. That means that when push comes down to shove, they don't get the support from their allies in Congress that they might have otherwise.

Carolyn Donaldson  
And yet today, we still have calls for unionization, right? The Amazon warehouses Alabama, New York. I mean, it's still active just in a different way?

David Witwer 
Yeah. If you were talk to union today about trying to organize Amazon or these others, they would say what they need are the legislative changes that have been proposed, really since the 1960s, that would make it easier for them to organize, easier for them to resist pressure from employers to get workers not to vote for unionization. And yet that legislation always stalls out.

Carolyn Donaldson  
Very interesting. What do you want to have readers take away from this upcoming book? And when is the timing of it and the mystery that still surrounds Jimmy Hoffa? Again, I was doing some research, I saw what New Jersey they say he's under a bridge....and all sorts of things. So is that part of what you're still working on? And what's the timing? I understand we're running up to 50 years here coming up soon.

David Witwer 
The goal is to get the book out before the 50-year anniversary. And I definitely want to talk about the mystery of where he is. I guess I want to talk about that in the sense that that's that compelling hook that keeps people interested that keeps the mythic Hoffa alive. I'd be very curious you know, what happens if in fact they do find that Hoffa in that landfill in New Jersey? Like I wonder if the myth fades away then? I don't know if you know, the history of searches for Hoffa, this is really the last in a long string of seemingly really good evidence about where he would be and people who would say this. And so...

Carolyn Donaldson  
This last one was what a deathbed confession? From a son of the one who dug the grave or something?

David Witwer 
Yeah. And there's been a series of these deathbed confessions. And, you know, but now they have the ground penetrating radar. And so theoretically, they could find it. And that might resolve the mystery. But I guess, I want people to see through this book, I want people to see the role that, that this mythic Hoffa has played in shaping our perception of organized labor and of unions, and really of the working class. But I also want them to see, I've got a series of chapters about the way in which, and this is that intersection between my work and journalism, the way in which the Hoffa that people respond to. The Hoffa who's become this public figure, is what you could say, is a constructed figure. So he emerged from journalism. And so the Hoffa that people respond to is a guy that's depicted by journalistic accounts as this menacing Napoleonic figure. And that partly reflects the priorities of the investigating committees like Robert F. Kennedy. But I want to, I mean, I call it the "Searching for Jimmy Hoffa", because I really am sort of searching for who is who is the Hoffa behind that constructed image, right. I mean, the heart of Hoffa really is this paradox, which is partly why his compelling figure even before he disappeared, right? Which is this guy who is represented by Robert F. Kennedy, and by most mainstream magazines, as the menace of organized labor, and tied to organized crime is super popular with his union. Right? And he is the guy then that is massively reelected by his membership. And so the question is, who is that real Hoffa? Is he the menace? Or is he the working-class hero?

Carolyn Donaldson  
Wow. And we're gonna have to leave it at that. Dr. David Witwer thank you so much for talking with us. We hope today's conversation generate some ideas about what those past confrontations with corruption can teach us today. And Dr. Witwer does talk regularly with students in the academic search of this topic as well. So thank you so much. You know, David, once again, we'll be guest speaker at the Penn State Forum Speaker Series coming up April 5 at the Penn Stater. The public's invited and will include much more of a question-and-answer session. So come and join us for that. David's current book project "Searching for Jimmy Hoffa" is scheduled for publication in time for that 50th anniversary of Hoffa's disappearance. You can find links about David's research and information about his talk on April 5 at the Penn State Forum Speaker Series on our website at wpsu.org/takenote. For Take Note, I'm Carolyn Donaldson, WPSU.