"IT SHAKES YOUR CONFIDENCE"

What kind of man was Frank Kierdorf, Jimmy Hoffa's friend and business agent for Teamster Local 332 in Flint, Mich.? For a reading, a TIME correspondent tracked down a Flint businessman ("For God's sake, don't mention my name") who had had labor dealings with Kierdorf. The answer raises other questions. What kind of city is Flint? And what kind of nation is the U.S. when it lets Hoffa-type racketeering stand astride U.S. businessmen and workers? The report:

THE first time I met Kierdorf was in 1956. He laid down a union recognition form and asked me to sign. He came right in here and laid it on my desk. We never had had a union before, and we never had been approached. If our employees wanted a union, we had no objections. We asked for a vote.

Kierdorf said there would be no vote. Just like that. Within a week we had a Teamster picket line. All truck deliveries stopped. We had 20 or 30 meetings with the union. Kierdorf was our man. We didn't deal with anyone else.

We took it to the state mediator--we weren't big enough for the National Labor Relations Board--and Kierdorf said no. Just like that. He wouldn't agree.

So he's still picketing. We're using the railroad. We send our men over to the railroad station to pick up pipe. Our men continue to do this, and we continue to be in business. But then the boys start getting run off the road and threatened. They threw two stink bombs in my house. The house still stinks.

They attacked one of our drivers at the station. Our drivers were supposed to go in pairs. That's what I told them to do for protection. They waited until one of our men was in the warehouse. The other was getting in his truck to move the truck over to the dock. Kierdorf's Cadillac pulled up behind the driver just getting in the truck, and four fellows jumped out, beat him over the head with a pipe, beat him to the ground. Twenty-two stitches. The railroad men were up above, and as the Cadillac turned around to leave, they got the license number, and it was Kierdorf's.

That blow licked us. I gave up and we were unionized. First he signed the drivers and the outside men. Then Kierdorf let me rest for three weeks. Then he came back and said, "We want your secretaries." So, finally, we went to George Kamenow [the Detroit bagman for Labor Relations Associates Boss Nate Shefferman, great and good friend to the then Teamster President Dave Beck] and paid off $2,000 and agreed to pay a monthly retainer of $75. That was that; no secretaries were organized. But two weeks after the McClellan committee began sniffing around, Kierdorf came around and organized our secretaries.

The police are afraid. They know Kierdorf's men are bigger than they are. Oh yes, they are too. I'd ask them for help--I've known most of the people around here most of my life--and they'd say, "We can't enter a labor dispute." It shakes your confidence in democracy.

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