Hoffa Steps Down-- For Now

For weeks, top Teamsters had been nervously waiting. Would their tough little boss Jimmy Hoffa run for the presidency of the union again, even though he is still serving a 13-year sentence for jury tampering and pension-fund fraud in Lewisburg (Pa.) Penitentiary? Last week the word finally came down: he would not. Making the announcement in the Teamsters' ornate Washington headquarters, Hoffa's son James, a Teamster lawyer, said that his father was bowing out in favor of the union's acting president, Frank Fitzsimmons.

Plainly relieved, the Teamster executive board voted unanimously to support Hoffa's choice, who will have no trouble getting elected at the union convention that begins July 5 in Miami Beach. After Hoffa's latest bid for parole was turned down in March, some of the Teamster leadership begged him not to try to run for office from prison.

The union had been slowly recovering from its bad publicity, and did not want to see it start all over again.

Hoffa, however, did not base his decision on any such selfless consideration as the welfare of his union. The Washington Post alleged that the Teamsters offered him $100,000 a year for the rest of his life if he would give up the presidency. Payments will begin when he is released from jail. As part of the deal, his ailing wife Josephine will keep her $40,000-a-year job directing political activities among Teamster women; young Jimmy reportedly will be named general counsel of the union at $50,000 a year. A Teamster official denied all.

Hoffa was also convinced by his lawyers that he would have a much better chance to be paroled if he surrendered the presidency. All sorts of people have been angling for his release, offering to make bizarre deals in his behalf. Last December a petition seeking his parole was sent to the White House with some 250,000 names. Probably no one has worked for him harder than William Loeb, archconservative publisher of the coincidentally titled Manchester (N.H.) Union Leader, which once received a $2,000,000 loan from the Teamsters' pension fund. Only last month the Union Leader broke a murky story that Edward Partin, the Louisiana Teamster whose testimony helped convict Hoffa of jury tampering, had repudiated what he said in court. But there has been no confirmation of the story from either the Justice Department or Partin.

An Arrangement. The day before Hoffa's decision was announced, Loeb met with U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell. The timing was purely accidental, the Justice Department insisted; Loeb had asked for the meeting a month ago. But it gave rise to the conjecture that the Administration was making some sort of arrangement with Hoffa.

An ardent supporter of Nixon in 1960, Hoffa could be useful to the President if he were released before the 1972 election. Despite his imprisonment, he is still worshiped by the rank-and-file of the Teamsters, which has become the nation's largest union with some 2,000,000 members. What Hoffa says still counts with the Teamsters. The decision about whether or not to release him rests, of course, with the Federal Parole Board, which has a Nixon-appointed majority. The board said that it would not review Hoffa's case until next spring, but it can reopen a case within 90 days after rejecting an applicant. That means that Hoffa might just possibly be released this month.

Fair Game. The man nominally in charge of the Teamsters is the opposite of Hoffa. Where the stocky Hoffa was brusque and imperious, the portly Fitzsimmons is amiable and accommodating.

Serving 30 years in Hoffa's shadow, Fitzsimmons learned how not to offend --so much so that he has allowed Hoffa's highly centralized power to slip back into the hands of the district vice presidents. At the same time, the union has grown faster than ever. While other U.S. unions have had trouble maintaining membership, the Teamsters have continued to recruit not only truckers but also office workers and airline stewardesses.

It is hard to imagine that Hoffa, now 58, will keep hands off this flourishing empire when he gets out of prison. He is not the kind to take orders from the man who was once his protege. Hoffa, in fact, will still retain a Teamster title or two. While in prison, he was elected head of the Michigan Conference of Teamsters as well as president of his home-town local in Detroit. No law bars him from assuming these posts once he is out of prison. From there, it might be only a short sprint back to the summit.

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