The union mafioso that the Mafia itself killed

The last Josephine Hoffa heard from her husband were the words, "I'm going home now.

The union mafioso that the Mafia itself killed

The last Josephine Hoffa heard from her husband were the words, "I'm going home now." Jimmy Hoffa had waited half an hour at Machus Red Fox restaurant in the north Detroit suburbs of Bloomfield Hills for his date, two known Members of the American Mafia. But they didn't come on July 30, 1975.

Jimmy Hoffa didn't come either, at least not home. Neither this Wednesday afternoon nor later. The following evening Josephine reported him missing. By that time, Jimmy was very likely not only dead, but already gone without a trace. Perhaps buried somewhere in a landfill, concreted into the foundation of a new building, or sunk in a cement block in Lake Erie south of Detroit. Nobody knows - except his killers.

The disappearance of Jimmy Hoffa is one of the great unsolved mysteries in US history. Because he was not only probably the most powerful union boss that has ever existed in North America. At the same time, he was deeply involved in organized crime and was sentenced to 13 years in prison. The "American way of life" in a different way.

Jimmy Hoffa came downstairs. Born in Pennsylvania in 1913 to a miner's son, he had been orphaned since the age of eight. At the age of 14 he left school in Detroit to earn money as a warehouse worker. But he was a "carer" and as such popular with his colleagues.

In 1932, when he was just 19, he organized the first strike of his life and, in the middle of the Great Depression and despite millions of unemployed, achieved an increase in wages from 32 to 45 cents an hour. Hoffa had found the right leverage: fruit spoiled quickly and became worthless. So the employer had to give in to the demand for a 40 percent increase in wages.

Four years later, Hoffa was released on a pretext. But by now he had so many workers behind him that he was hired by the transport workers' union. Hoffa organized a troop that called itself “the strawberry boys”: thugs who grabbed wage earners on the one hand and wage earners on the other in the labor disputes between employers and police, which were hard at the time, and often even attacked scabs and others.

His union was the Teamsters, officially "International Brotherhood of Teamsters", which were mainly joined by warehouse workers and truck drivers. The logistics of the US economy depended on them - and Hoffa was instrumental in growing membership from 75,000 in 1933 to 420,000 six years later to more than a million in 1951. From 1952 he was the vice president and maker of the Teamsters, five years later he formally took over the function of the chairman.

He had avoided conscription in World War II by making sure that armaments and other war-related material was transported smoothly. In fact, not a single significant strike in 1941-45 slowed US society's war effort.

Organized crime was strong in the US transportation industry from the 1930s to the 1970s. Hoffa also often relied on mafiosi: they broke the will of workers who did not want to join the Teamster brotherhood. They organized - mostly with criminal means - the protection of trade union officials and their events. And they offered Hoffa

One of Jimmy Hoffa's methods was bribery: he offered large sums of money to men who could help or harm him if they acted on his behalf. In the summer of 1957, Hoffa was accused of bribing a lawyer that was only accepted in appearance - but to the astonishment of the public he was acquitted.

It was primarily Robert F. Kennedy who took offense at this. President John F. Kennedy's younger brother, confidante and Attorney General (i.e. Attorney General) made the overthrow of the union mafioso a top priority. Incidentally, this operation is one of the reasons for the still circulating, albeit disproved, speculation that JFK could have been shot by a mafia hit squad in Dallas.

In any case, Jimmy Hoffa achieved his greatest success in 1964: The Teamsters fraternity forced a collective bargaining agreement on employers in the transportation industry in the United States. While it brought members more wages, it also cemented the influence of organized crime in the legitimate economy.

In 1962 there had been a second trial against Hoffa, this time for misappropriation of union funds. It was also dropped because several jurors had each received $10,000. But this bribery leaked out and gave rise to a new charge, this time much easier to prove; this time he was convicted. Hoffa was able to delay the start of his sentence with legal tricks. But in March 1967 he was finally arrested.

"It took the American judiciary ten years before they finally managed to put the dreaded boss of the country's largest union under lock and key," reported WELT at the time: "The fear of Hoffa was so great that the New York police on guarded the office of Robert Kennedy, who, as his brother's Attorney General six years ago, had the courage to force a criminal case against the controversial union leader."

After just four and a half years in prison, a third of his sentence, US President Richard Nixon pardoned Hoffa at Christmas 1971. The rumor circulated that Hoffa's deputy at the head of the Brotherhood had provided the US President's election campaign coffers with a sum in the millions. However, there were conditions: Hoffa had to give up the office of chairman for life that the team stars had bestowed on him “honorarily” and promise not to be active in the union for at least the next ten years. Because his successor did not want to see his own position endangered.

Soon a power struggle broke out between Hoffa supporters and Hoffa opponents; in this context, violence up to and including car bombs was used; the mafia played along on both sides. The meeting in the Machus Red Fox restaurant was supposed to serve an understanding - and was probably just a deadly trap. Jimmy Hoffa was formally pronounced dead seven years after his disappearance.

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