The Persuader

In its 30 months of poking through the scandals of Top Teamster Jimmy Hoffa and his pals, the Senate rackets committee thought it had uncovered all possible varieties of union rough stuff and muscle flexing from A (for assault with a deadly weapon) down to Y (for yelling from the witness stand--see Investigations). But it missed the last letter, until Z turned up around the House of Representatives recently in the form of a hard-boiled Hoffa lobbyist. His name: Sidney Zagri.

Zagri's job is to kill the labor-reform bill inspired by the Hoffa scandals, or at the least to eliminate the parts Hoffa does not like. Though not ready for action when the Kennedy-Ervin bill passed the Senate, Zagri made his hefty presence (6 ft., 216 lbs.) felt soon after the bill landed last April in the House Education and Labor Committee. By the time the committee got around last week to key votes, sore-boned members realized that Zagri had adapted for the lobbying craft the bullyboy methods that Teamsters made famous in trade unionism.

Little Black Book. The Teamster assault on the bill began with a grand gesture: invitations to all 435 House members to come, two dozen at a time, for breakfast at the Congressional Hotel. The host: Harold Gibbons, hard-boiled Hoffa deputy from St. Louis, who made his breakfasts politically tasty by flying in union leaders from the home regions of each day's new group of House guests. No fewer than 245 Congressmen heard Host Gibbons introduce Persuader Zagri as his own "community relations" expert from St. Louis. "We are not against legislation," said Zagri smoothly, "but this bill is so defective . . ." Zagri's precise speech and trained legal mind (U.C.L.A., Harvard, University of Wisconsin) sent the guests away impressed; for his part, Zagri methodically rated each Congressman from A to E in his little black book according to the degree of agreement with the Teamster position.

In the followup, Zagri concentrated on the Labor Committee's 30 members, developed an easy ally in Chicago Democrat Roman Pucinski (A in the book) and half a dozen others. Zagri also appeared before the committee as an expert witness, and offered no fewer than 59 pages of bill-gutting amendments. Teamster-touting Democrat Jimmy Roosevelt (A) of California introduced the Zagri proposals as a substitute bill.

"We'll Fix You." Zagri got down to more serious work when the committee began its voting. In the first critical vote, a ten-man "swing" group of Democrats rejected a union-made plan to bury the bill in subcommittee. Less than an hour later, one of Zagri's ever-busy committee leaks supplied him with a tally on each member's vote. That same day he telephoned union leaders in each swing man's home district, urged protests against the Congressman's "betrayal" of labor. Commanding one A.F.L.-C.I.O. Steelworker official to put the heat on a New Jersey Congressman, Zagri spoke like a crusader on a trailer-truck parking lot: "Get a delegation down here tomorrow morning and tear his door down." He provided his agents with sample form letters to send in, urged wires, calls and protest meetings, brought non-Teamster unionists to Washington to badger Congressmen, and did most of the talking.

This campaign of intimidation ran for only a few days before Arizona's Stewart Udall, Democratic leader of the swing group, told Zagri off. "You've got a nerve to go calling my state and telling people I'm voting wrong," he snapped. Zagri brazened it out: ''I'm going to get you in line." Udall exploded as never before in Congress, raked Zagri over until the lobbyist obsequiously agreed that he had voted right. Another Congressman was treated to anonymous threats ("We're going to fix you") on his home and office phones. Oregon's Democratic Edith Green took her own Zagri-inspired protests awhile, burst out in rare anger: "He can go to hell.''

"A Damn Lie." The Teamsters' power plant began to backfire. Speaker Sam Rayburn, told that Jimmy Roosevelt and Zagri were claiming that Rayburn was in favor of their bill, sent out a plain comment: "It's a damn lie." Mr. Sam called in the hardest-pressed of the committee members, particularly freshmen, to assure them that the Speaker himself would campaign for any man put in serious trouble by Zagri's efforts. Labor Committee Chairman Graham Harden of North Carolina growled threats about investigating "brazen outside influences."

Near week's end the committee adopted the only practical defense against the tormentor: it would go on with its work. Members voted 17-13 to keep in the bill most of the provisions Zagri opposed, even revised the hot-cargo section to make sure that it would control Teamsters without forcing legitimate strikers to go through picket lines. Scheduled for final committee vote this week--and near enough to the Senate version to have a good chance of becoming law--the labor reform bill was a stronger piece of legislation than it would have been without Zagri's efforts. By sending in his persuader, Hoffa gave Congressmen a personal taste of his tactics, apparently firmed up their resolve to do something about them.

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