Fires in the Backyard

After his steamrollered re-election as president of the powerful Teamsters Union in Miami last month (TIME, July 14), James Riddle Hoffa seemed about as securely in control of his czardom as any tyrant could be. But last week in Cincinnati, 4,000 members of four Teamster locals voted all but unanimously to disaffiliate from Jimmy Hoffa's empire and sign on with unions belonging to the A.F.L.-C.I.O.

The Cincinnati revolt against Hoffa was led by an outspoken ex-milkman named James T. Luken, 39, president of the Teamsters' Cincinnati Joint Council, who has long tried to curb Hoffa's power grab from within the union. But after the Miami convention, where Hoffa showed "the most complete dictatorial control that I have ever witnessed or read of in a free society," Luken decided that enough was enough, went home to persuade his workers to vote out.

Hoffa fought the threat. As soon as the Cincinnati vote was scheduled, he sent in his strong right arm, Vice President Harold Gibbons of St. Louis, to direct strategy. After the vote, Jimmy named Gibbons as "trustee"; Gibbons announced he would challenge the result in court on the ground that Luken had failed to use a secret ballot. To Gibbons' surprise, Luken petitioned the National Labor Relations Board for another election, hopes to have it scheduled by Labor Day. "That will permit Mr. Gibbons to get back to St. Louis," he cried, "and try to turn the hose on the fire that is burning in his own backyard, where the taxicab drivers appear to be bolting the Teamsters."

There was indeed a fire in St. Louis: the cab drivers--who have an election scheduled soon--seem fed up with Jimmy Hoffa's ways, and there are other blazes elsewhere. At least two more Cincinnati locals are thinking about disaffiliation. Happily surveying the ranks of discontent, A.F.L.-C.I.O. scouts estimate that there are at least 25 more locals around the country just itching for the chance to get out from under the gangster-ridden union world of James Riddle Hoffa.

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