James Riddle Hoffa was an American labor union leader who served as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) from 1957 until 1971. He is notorious for his alleged ties to organized crime and for his disappearance under mysterious circumstances in 1975.
The United Auto Workers (UAW), fully named International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States and southern Ontario, Canada. It was founded as part of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s and grew rapidly from 1936 to the 1950s. The union played a major role in the liberal wing of the Democratic Party under the leadership of Walter Reuther. It was known for gaining high wages and pensions for automotive manufacturing workers, but it was unable to unionize auto plants built by foreign-based car makers in the South after the 1970s, and it went into a steady decline in membership; reasons for this included increased automation, decreased use of labor, mismanagement, movements of manufacturing, and increased globalization. After a successful strike at the Big Three in 2023, the union organized its first foreign plant (VW) in 2024.
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) is a labor union in the United States and Canada. Formed in 1903 by the merger of the Team Drivers International Union and the Teamsters National Union, the union now represents a diverse membership of blue- and white-collar workers in both the public and private sectors, totalling about 1.3 million members in 2015. The union was formerly called the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, Chauffeurs, Warehousemen and Helpers of America.
James Phillip Hoffa, also known as James Hoffa Jr. or Jim Hoffa, is an American labor leader and attorney who was the tenth General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He is the son of Jimmy Hoffa. Hoffa was first elected in 1998, and re-elected in 2001, 2006, 2011, and 2016 to five-year terms. In 2018, Hoffa was elected chair of the Road Transport Section of the International Transport Workers' Federation at its quadrennial Congress in Singapore. Hoffa is the second-longest serving General President of the Teamsters Union, after Dan Tobin, who served from 1907 to 1952. Hoffa's final term as General President ended in 2022.
John Joseph Sweeney was an American labor leader who served as president of the AFL–CIO from 1995 to 2009.
The Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) is a labor union founded in Marshall, Michigan, on 8 May 1863 as the Brotherhood of the Footboard. It was the first permanent trade organization for railroad workers in the US. A year later it was renamed the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers. The B of LE took its present name in 2004 when it became a division of the Rail Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).
Frank Edward Fitzsimmons was an American labor leader. He was acting president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1967 to 1971, and president from 1971 to 1981.
Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) is a grassroots rank and file organization whose goal is to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), or Teamsters Union. The organization has chapters nationwide in the United States and Canada.
The International Typographical Union (ITU) was a North American trade union for the printing trade of newspapers and other media. It was founded on May 3, 1852, in the United States as the National Typographical Union. It changed its name to the International Typographical Union at its Albany, New York, convention in 1869 after it began organizing members in Canada. The ITU was one of the first unions to admit female members, admitting women members such as Augusta Lewis, Mary Moore and Eva Howard in 1869.
Weldon Lamar Mathis was an American labor leader. He was secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters from 1985 to 1991. After Teamsters president Jackie Presser took a leave of absence for health reasons, Mathis was interim president from May 5, 1988, to July 18, 1988. He was defeated for the presidency in an executive council vote, and served out the rest of his term as secretary-treasurer before retiring.
Cornelius P. Shea was an American labor leader and organized crime figure. He was the founding president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, holding the position from 1903 until 1907. He became involved with the Chicago Outfit, and although he was indicted many times, he usually escaped conviction. After a short prison term for attempted murder removed him from union affairs, Shea was appointed secretary-treasurer of the Mafia-dominated Theatrical Janitors' Union in Chicago.
Leon E. Bates Sr. was an American labor union leader with the United Auto Workers union (UAW) from 1937 to 1964 when he retired as an "International Representative" of the UAW. He was one of the first African-American union organizers to work for the "UAW-CIO".
Richard Webster Cordtz was an American labor leader. From 1980 to 1995, he was the International Secretary-Treasurer of the Service Employees International Union under John Sweeney, and was president of the union himself from October 1995 to May 1996.
Kenneth T. Paff is one of the founders and current National Organizer of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a rank-and-file union democracy movement organizing to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), or Teamsters.
The Alliance for Labor Action (ALA) was an American and Canadian national trade union center which existed from July 1968 until January 1972. Its two main members were the United Auto Workers (UAW) and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, although it had some smaller affiliates.
Workers Power was a short lived Trotskyist faction in the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Wyndham Mortimer was an American trade union organizer and functionary active in the United Auto Workers union (UAW). Mortimer is best remembered as a key union organizer in the 1937 Flint Sit-Down Strike. Mortimer was the First Vice President of the UAW from 1936 to 1939. A member of the Communist Party USA from about 1932, Mortimer was a critic of the efforts of the conservative American Federation of Labor to control the union and was a leader of a so-called "Unity Caucus" which led the UAW to join forces with the more aggressive Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO).
The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, located on the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan, contains millions of primary source documents related to the labor history of the United States, urban affairs, and the Wayne State University Archives. The building is named for UAW President and Congress of Industrial Organizations President Walter Reuther.
Sean M. O'Brien is an American labor leader who is the General President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. He formerly served as the Vice President Eastern Region of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).
