Round-Up Time

Most of Detroit's industrial workers had long since been corralled by the C.I.O.'s big industrial unions, but there were still plenty of unbranded mavericks on the range. James Hoffa, chief of Michigan's 13,000 A.F.L. teamsters, prepared a new corral: a local of the teamsters' subsidiary Retail Clerks' Union. Then, walking softly, he set out to round up a herd whose grazing habits he had been studying all during the war--Detroit's 6,400 small, independent grocers, meat dealers and their clerks.

Almost immediately a startled bawling began. Merchants who went to packing houses and wholesale establishments for meat and produce were suddenly asked to pay a $5 initiation fee or get no goods. Gradually the whole herd became restive. Hoffa outlined his strategy candidly. If merchants and their employes did not join the union within 30 days, they would be cut off from their supplies. If wholesalers attempted to succor them, they too would be cut off.

But as he limbered his lariat Hoffa went on talking soothingly. It had cost a fellow teamster chieftain, Dave Beck, endless time, abuse and trouble to round up Seattle's merchants, laundries and dry cleaners, back in the '30s. And Hoffa had learned plenty about trouble himself under the tutorship of Detroit's tough Bert Brennan--a teamster boss he had lately outstripped. Hoffa hoped to prevent a stampede, shoo Detroit's 6,400 into the corral in a body and close the gate as softly as possible.

No Escape? After explaining that escape was cut off, he asked the merchants to let sweet reason prevail. After all, the teamsters had already organized the big chain grocers. By staying open at all hours and paying less wages, the independents were undercutting. It was the union's bounden duty, said Cowboy Hoffa, to remedy this inequity. The union had suffered too: only 150 union men were hauling goods from wholesaler to retailer as compared to a prewar total of 550. Was this fair to the returned veteran? Finally Hoffa held out a handful of alfalfa. Store owners would not be asked to join, just their employes.

Meanwhile Prosecutor Gerald K. O'Brien was unable to discover one instance of threat or intimidation in the teamsters' relations with the merchants. Said Hoffa: "We contributed something around $3,000 ... [to O'Brien's campaign fund]. We don't expect any favors. We ask simply that the law be interpreted as it is written."

But the lowing, trampling and horn-clashing went on. Last week the grocers' and meat dealers' associations decided on complete defiance of the union.

Cried Hoffa: "The strike is on." At week's end, teamsters' pickets ringed the loading docks at the wholesale houses. But Hoffa's organizers now faced the sweaty business of riding after individual, dodging dogies. Republican Mayor Edward J. Jeffries ignored the prosecutor and asked that a charge of extortion be filed against the teamsters on behalf of a butcher named Bonkovitch. Detroit's editors were acting as though they had a burr in their pants. So was many a citizen. Labor baiting was rampant everywhere.

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