(The following story by Thomas Olson appeared on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review website on June 11.)
PITTSBURGH, Pa. — James P. Hoffa spat out the answer before the question was finished.
“John Kerry. Absolutely,” said the general president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters on Thursday. “It will be a close election, but he’ll win.”
Hoffa spoke to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review at the Wyndam Pittsburgh Airport Hotel, Coraopolis, before addressing a meeting of Teamsters Joint Council 40, which represents the western half of Pennsylvania.
The Teamsters leader also predicted the presumptive Democratic nominee would carry Pennsylvania and Ohio. The Teamsters endorsed Kerry, despite his support of the North American Free Trade Agreement and other free-trade initiatives that the union abhors. But Hoffa said Kerry scored 95 percent on Teamsters’ labor issues, such as a minimum wage hike.
The union represents roughly 1.4 million workers through about 500 locals in North America. There are about 89,000 members in Pennsylvania. Members include truck drivers, warehouse and dock workers, tradesmen and government workers. The union turned 100 last year.
Hoffa, 63, was elected general president in 1999. He is the only son of James R. “Jimmy” Hoffa, who led the union for 14 years and mysteriously disappeared in 1975.
The labor leader wants the next U.S. president to stop corporations from shipping “millions of jobs to Mexico and third-world countries.” The government should end corporate expensing of plant relocations to Mexico and abroad, while it gives incentives to companies to retain or build factories in America.
“Companies move because they have cheap labor (overseas), and then lay off all the Americans,” said Hoffa. “That’s devastating to people that have worked hard and been loyal to their companies.”
Hoffa also described as “terrible” Monday’s Supreme Court ruling that will allow Mexican trucks to cross the U.S. border without added safety and environmental inspections. The issue had see-sawed in courts since NAFTA’s passage in 1994.
“You’re going to have unsafe Mexican trucks coming across our borders with untrained drivers,” he said. It will produce “terrible accidents and terrible pollution” in southern border states, he said.
Hoffa describes Teamsters organization and finances in Pennsylvania as “very good.” He also said a steep dues increase in 2002 produced “an adequate strike fund, which we never had before.”
The union remains under a federal consent decree imposed in 1989 to monitor its activities. The union has long been plagued by ties to organized crime. The head of the so-called Independent Review Board, former federal prosecutor Ed Stier, resigned on April 20, claiming the Teamsters stymied his efforts to root out organized crime.
Hoffa said Stier resigned — “We never fired him” — after the union sought “more supervision” over his activities. The union has since hired a former New York prosecutor to analyze Stier’s allegations, but he has not yet been replaced.