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In the 1930's, one of the most brilliant and effective organizers for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) was Farrell Dobbs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Farrell_Dobbs of the Trotskyist-dominated Local 544 (Minneapolis). Basing himself in Local 544 and the Minneapolis Joint Council of the Teamsters, Dobbs began to undertake the unionization of the over-the-road truckers. Until then, these long-distance drivers had largely been ignored by the IBT; IBT President Dan Tobin doubted whether they could be organized. Dobbs argued that they were the key to the expansion of the size and power of the Brotherhood, not only because of their own considerable numbers but because they could serve as "missionaries" for the union in unorganized cities and towns, since they had contacts all over the country.

Dobbs first succeeded in creating the North Central District Drivers Council (later the Central States Drivers Council) which sought to establish a pattern of regional bargaining for over-the-road drivers. When the employers refused to negotiate on this basis, Dobbs succeeded in getting an agreement with IBT locals in Chicago, the hub of over-the-road trucking in the Midwest, to refuse to handle the trucks belonging to employers who would not join in the regional collective bargaining process. This strategy soon brought victory to the Teamsters. Tobin was so impressed that he offered Dobbs the position of International Organizer for the IBT. However, by late 1939 Dobbs and other leaders of the Socialist Workers Party concluded that it was time for Dobbs to resign his post in the IBT and to work full-time for the SWP. A clash between Dobbs and Tobin seemed inevitable; Tobin was indicating his support for FDR's pro-Allied foreign policy, while the Trotskyists were of course vehemently opposed to the "imperialist war"--and unlike the Communist Party, did not reverse their position after June 22, 1941. (Eventually, the power of the Trotskyists in the Minneapolis Teamsters would be broken by Tobin--with Hoffa's help [1]--and by a Smith Act prosecution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smith_Act which may have been FDR's payoff to Tobin for supporting his foreign policy.)

Now, one of the organizers assigned by the IBT to help Dobbs in his campaign was young James Hoffa, who had some experience with similar campaigns on a smaller scale in Michigan. Hoffa was many years later to express the following judgment on Dobbs (*The Trials of Jimmy Hoffa* [1970], pp. 91, 108):

"I wouldn't agree with Farrell Dobbs' political philosophy or economic ideology, but that man had a vision that was enormously beneficial to the labor movement. Beyond any doubt, he was the master architect of the Teamsters' over-the-road operations."

"As a fellow labor organizer, I view Farrell Dobbs subjectively. He was one heck of a fine labor organizer. Period. On this matter only am I qualified to speak."

Suppose that Hoffa had concluded that if Farrell Dobbs was so brilliant, maybe there was something to his "political philosophy or economic ideology". (Incidentally, Hoffa also had formed personal friendships with Vincent Dunne and other Local 544 Trotskyist leaders.) He therefore would decide to join Dobbs in becoming an activist for the SWP even at the cost of forfeiting his future with the Teamsters. This is more plausible than it may seem at first sight; quite a few hard-boiled "practical" trade unionists became Marxist ideologues of one sort or another. The effect on American Trotskyism would probably not be very important--it was likely to be a marginal movement in any case. (Hoffa would most likely side with "proletarians" like James Cannon against "petty bourgeois intellectuals" like Max Shachtman in inter-Trotskyist quarrels.) But how would this affect the future of the Teamsters and American labor in general? Would the union's ties with organized crime be less than in OTL? (I know they already existed under Beck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Beck but they were certainly expanded under Hoffa.) Of course if you accept some (IMO dubious) conspiracy theories about the Teamsters and organized crime being behind JFK's assassination, the effect on general political history could have been considerable...

[1] Hoffa was later to say that he had initially defied Tobin's order to go to Minneapolis to break the power of the Trotskyists in Local 544: "I think that he [Tobin] used our relationship with me because I had refused to go on a request, or on an order. When he ordered me to go to Minneapolis, I said I wouldn't go and it was none of my business. And then he put it on a personal basis, as a request, and brought up what he'd done for me and so forth, and what he was gonna do for me. And once the old man made a personal request at his age [Tobin was sixty-six years old at the time], you couldn't very well turn him down. Recognizing he was the General President, I went...into Minneapolis, went over, took over the office, brought in a hundred crack guys, had the war. We won every battle. And we finally took the union over and then Farrell left and went with the Socialist Party [actually the Socialist Workers Party--DT]"

Dobbs' own recollection was somewhjat different:

"Now it is true that Hoffa was among the IBT (International Brotherhood of Teamsters) goon squads that Tobin sent into Minneapolis against Local 544 in 1941. That's actually true. But Hoffa says, he says that he whipped us. Now, it's a little more complicated than that. Hoffa got just a little help, if he thinks he whipped us. For instance, he was helped by the Minneapolis Police Department, the courts of the city, the county, and the state... the Mayor, the Governor and an anti-labor law that had been rigged and put through by the Republican Governor of the State [Harold Stassen--DT]--and by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the United States Department of Justice and Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who then happened to be President of the United States...

"Under those circumstances, you got to admit Hoffa had just a little help, didn't he? The man exaggerates on this point. He exaggerates."
http://www.marxmail.org/hoffa_dobbs.htm
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