Hoffa on the Horn

Sitting in the driver's seat of his rough-and-ready Teamsters Union, Jimmy Hoffa last week set out full blast to run down the mild-reforming Kennedy labor bill, which rolled through the Senate (TIME, May 4) and is due up soon in the House. While Hoffa's aides in Washington were buttonholing Congressmen in an effort to kill or soften the bill--aimed principally at the Teamsters' own flagrant abuses of power--Boss Hoffa popped into Nashville to blow the horn not only on the legislation but on his archenemy, A.F.L.-C.I.O. President George Meany. There, before a surprisingly thin crowd of Teamster members, Hoffa called Meany a "traitor" for supporting the Kennedy bill, cockily challenged him to a Hoffa-Meany vote of confidence throughout organized labor with the loser to resign from office.

This in itself could be labeled just so much horn blowing in a traffic jam, but the effect of Hoffa's campaign, both in Washington and the field, was to embarrass the A.F.L.-C.I.O., which kicked Hoffa out a year and a half ago. Meany is on record in favor of the Kennedy bill's restrictions against Hoffa's hoodlum unionism, but at the same time he opposes the minor "Bill of Rights" amendments, which would also curb activities of unions in general. Result: if he continues to support the bill, some of his A.F.L.-C.I.O. supporters may rebel, thus clearing the driveway for Hoffa's onslaught against A.F.L. power; but if he fights the bill, he will be helping Hoffa to save his own neck.

At a convention of the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union in Miami, Massachusetts' Presidential Aspirant John Kennedy got a big hand and a pat on the back when he explained that his legislation was "the best bill we could get by the U.S. Senate." Said I.L.G.W.U. Boss Dave Dubinsky, in an introduction that all but stitched the I.L.G.W.U. label on Democrat Kennedy: "There has been considerable talk in informed circles about the possibilities of his holding the highest post in the nation ... If this should happen, we will have a better America and better legislation for the working people of America."

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