Seattle had a starring role in the corruption scandal that engulfed the Teamsters union in the late 1950s. That’s when it became clear that Dave Beck, the Seattle-based Teamster president, was stealing money from the organization.
Notorious labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, known for his close ties to mobsters, rose to power after Beck, even after coming under federal scrutiny himself. Robert F. Kennedy, chief counsel for a Senate investigating committee, led the charge to bring him to justice.
James Neff, investigations editor at the Seattle Times, chronicled the story in his new book, Vendetta: Bobby Kennedy Versus Jimmy Hoffa. He'll read from his book at Third Place Books in Lake Forest Park on Sept. 16th at 7 pm.
KPLU: Democrats are traditionally pro-labor. Why did Kennedy choose to go after Hoffa and the Teamsters?
Neff: At the time, Democrats were pro-labor, but there was also labor racketeering and corruption in pockets of different unions, and reporters had been digging into this, and one of them, Clark Mollenhoff, a very aggressive reporter from Iowa, convinced Kennedy to take on labor rackets. Kennedy didn’t want to do it, his father did not want him to do it because he thought going after labor would hurt his brother John F. Kennedy’s chances in the 1960 election, but Bobby Kennedy wanted something of his own, to achieve some sort of social good, and he was intrigued by the problem and he wanted to dig into it.
KPLU: But Kennedy didn’t even understand organized labor, right? He came from an upper crust New England background.
Neff: Bobby Kennedy was very naïve about how labor unions worked, why someone would join it, what it was like to be working class, so it was really a journey of discovery for him. And Hoffa, who came up in Detroit in the bloody 1930s, he just thought Kennedy was a punk, didn’t understand how things worked in the real world, and so they had great personal animosity because there was a clash of class as well as good versus bad.
KPLU: Was Hoffa ever a true believer in the labor cause?
Neff: Hoffa truly believed in the labor cause if it meant getting the highest dollar for your labor. He very sneeringly dismissed labor leaders like Walter Reuther who saw it as part of a broader movement for social justice and fairness. Hoffa was a Republican. Everybody had his price, whether it was the businessman on the other side of the table in bargaining, or the cop on the picket line or the judge who was hearing a case against a teamster. Everybody had a price, he said. What’s yours?
KPLU: Of interest to people in the Pacific Northwest, of course, is the role of Dave Beck. How did he rise to the top of the Teamsters union?
Neff: Dave Beck was a very savvy, far-seeing labor leader. He came up in Seattle as a very poor kid; his father was a carpet installer. Beck made money catching rats on the wharves and, if they had bubonic plague, the county department of health would give him a $5 bounty. So he started out much like Hoffa did as a labor leader with a local but he expanded his powers and he became president of the Teamsters in 1952.
KPLU: What did he do wrong that caused him to get sent to prison?
Neff: Beck was, as Bobby Kennedy called him, a thief. So, for example, he got the Teamsters to purchase his home up on the shores of Lake Washington. He was a wealthy man, and he was very powerful. Eisenhower made him his labor ambassador, and at the time the Teamsters were becoming the toughest, most powerful labor union in the United States.
KPLU: Bobby Kennedy had a laser-like fixation on bringing down Hoffa. Where did that come from?
Neff: Bobby Kennedy couldn’t pin down Hoffa when he dragged him before the Senate Rackets Committee hearings in 1957, 1958 and 1959, and Hoffa, who was a master of intimidation, would humiliate Kennedy publicly, so that really got under Kennedy’s craw. In addition, the Senate Rackets Committee hearings took down Dave Beck relatively easy. Kennedy felt guilty – he realized he knocked out Beck and then Hoffa climbed over Beck’s back and became president [of the Teamsters]. Kennedy thought he could take down Hoffa relatively easy as well but he couldn’t.
KPLU: You write that when Jimmy Hoffa heard that John F. Kennedy had been shot, he stood on a chair in a Miami restaurant and cheered. That’s amazing.
Neff: He hated the Kennedys, so when he heard that Kennedy was assassinated, out of his own self-interest, he was excited. As he said when asked by reporters for reaction, `Bobby Kennedy is just another lawyer now.’
KPLU: But Hoffa was convicted of jury-tampering after the assassination, correct?
Neff: In early 1964, Kennedy’s Justice Department had brought two cases against Hoffa, one in Tennessee and one in Chicago, and the end result was convictions in both of those. So finally after all these indictments and all these acquittals and hung juries, Hoffa got his comeuppance.
