TEAMSTER FREEDOM FIGHTER JO HOFFA

The October 1963 issue of the International Teamster magazine had this to say about Mrs. Josephine Hoffa: “To the Teamsters movement, she symbolizes the woman in politics to protect economic gains her husband has won at the bargaining table and on the picket line…Jo Hoffa symbolizes the wife of the working man who stepped forward to meet the political challenge of the times and to put DRIVE into ACTION.”  Yes it is true, we could also say, she was a GIANT FREEDOM FIGHTER who inspired thousands of women & men, even to this day, to get involved and organize, to learn from mistakes & successes and become stronger in the process, to get a sense of their own power to make change, fight for justice and affect the world around them.

This is part 2 of  a series on The Teamsters DRIVE Ladies Auxiliaries (DLA's).  " It was the DRIVE Ladies Auxiliaries who took the time to nurture true solidarity, using grassroots organizing skills & labor, that gave birth to the power and strength of the program."  Senator Hubert Humphrey said "he had never seen a more effective political action program."  Please read part 1 TEAMSTER WOMEN WARRIORS FOR FREEDOM!

Josephine Hoffa 1918-1980

1918 Michigan male voters approve a state constitutional amendment granting suffrage to Michigan women.

1920 The 19th Amendment to the Constitution, granting the vote to women, becomes law. Women vote for the first time in the presidential election on November 2.

1923 The Equal Rights Amendment is introduced in the U.S. Congress.

1930 The Detroit Housewives League, the first such league in the nation, is formed to encourage African-American women to use their economic power to improve their own community. Founder Fannie Peck* of Detroit later becomes the first president of the National Housewives League formed in 1933.

Josephine Poszywak or Jo as she preferred, grew up during "The Great Depression" a severe worldwide economic depression that took place mostly during the 1930's, originating in the United States. It was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. Her parents Phillip and Anna came to the United States from Poland and lived in Detroit.  Stated in an article about The 1932 Ford Hunger March massacre that took place when Jo was 15 yrs. old "No city in the United States was hit harder by the Great Depression than Detroit. By 1932, some 10,000 children huddled every day in Detroit’s bread lines. Eighty percent of the auto-building capacity lay idle. Wages had dropped 37 percent for those lucky enough to have a job. The average monthly caseload of the city’s welfare department had increased almost 10 times – from 5,000 cases in 1929 to nearly 50,000 in 1932."

In 1936, at 18, Jo sorted & packaged for the Durable Laundry Company in Detroit making 17cents an hour.  It was a sizable plant with many women sorting, bleaching, washing, drying, packaging and billing.  Tired of the abuse from the boss one day, before Myra Wolfgang nicknamed the "battling belle of Detroit" planned a sit-down strike at Woolworth's five and dime stores and the infamous Women's Emergency Brigade and UAW Women's Auxiliary, led by Genora Dollinger, supported the sit-down strike for union organizing at General Motors Corporation in Flint, Jo and her coworkers just sat down and refused to work.  The boss had a short fuse, got a shotgun, aimed at the women and told them to get out. 

To seek that woman's voice in history, though it may not be written in a book somewhere, we must ask ourselves, "What is she thinking, doing, saying etc...?"  

#Neverthelessshepersisted!  She and her coworkers got up and started picketing.  Several social historians suggest that female workers challenging authority of management and even the police, risking arrest for their activism may be more militant strikers than male workers.  The Durable drivers were Teamsters and while Jo was picketing she met James R. Hoffa(Future General President of the Teamsters) and a few months later they married.  

Also during this time the wife of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt changed the role of the first lady through her active participation in American politics. In 1937 Eleanor Roosevelt wrote in her syndicated My Day column that the only way to improve wages and working conditions was through legislation and unionization.

1938 Jo gives birth to her daughter Barbara Ann Hoffa.

1941 Jo gives birth to her son James Phillip Hoffa(Current General President of the Teamsters).

1941 The United States enters World War II, Rosie the Riveter would become the star of a campaign aimed at recruiting female workers for defense industries, and she became perhaps the most iconic image of working women.

1943 The All American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed while players on men's baseball teams are in military service, includes the Grand Rapids Chicks, the Battle Creek Belles, and the Muskegon Lassies; the League is active until the mid-1950's.

1940 - 1945, the female percentage of the U.S. workforce increased from 27 percent to nearly 37 percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of every four married women worked outside the home.

1946 James R Hoffa becomes General President of the Teamsters.

1950 The Salt of the Earth Strike was a major strike conducted by women and children when the predominantly Mexican, Mine‐Mill Workers Union struck the mines in southern New Mexico.

Women’s auxiliaries were an innovation in the labor movement. At their peak in the 1950's, there were more women in labor auxiliaries than labor unions. One of the best resources the union has is wives and women members, as women had been proven to be outstanding political organizers. But as Karen Sacks reminds us in her study of hospital organizing in the 1950's and 1960's, the absence of women in formal, publicly visible leadership roles should not necessarily be taken as an indication of female powerlessness or lack of influence.  Sacks uncovered an informal and hidden structure of power that differed from the formal and more obvious one. In the organizing committees and unions she observed, the male union "leaders" and "spokesmen" took positions only after consulting with and gaining the approval of key women on the shop floor-women who never held formal positions.

Jo knew unions could only hold on against tough odds by active participation and constant vigilance. She was one of the first to see that political action was the best defense against the erosion of workers’ rights in the 1950's. She was quoted as saying, "labor's enemies don’t stop for lunch, so neither can we." 

1959 Sid Zagri(Teamster Political Director) develops a partnership with Jo to create a women's auxiliary political action program. The ultimate goal was to have a major auxiliary in every Joint Council and make each DRIVE unit a political force at the precinct and block level.

Officially launched in 1960 DRIVE which stands for "Democratic Republication Independent Voter Education" has two main objectives:

To elect candidates to public office who are friendly to the interests of Teamster members;  Passage or defeat of legislation of special concern to Teamster families.

Jo knew taking on a task like DRIVE was not for the fainthearted. 

She traveled from city to city in 1960 and early 1961 attending rallies that only a handful of people would attend. She and her family were subjected to negative editorials and editorial cartoons for her actions, but #Neverthelessshepersisted, she did not stop. She said, "Labor unions were not built by men and women who got their feelings hurt or quit after the first disappointment."

Finally, in 1961-62 the tide begins to turn. By 1963 the numbers of attendees at her rallies and luncheons ranged from 1,200 to 5,000 at single events. For example luncheons in Milwaukee had 5,000 attendees; 1,000 in Des Moines; Kansas City 1,800; and 1961 Chicago had 14,000 and 12,000 in Boston. 

1963 Teamsters march with Martin Luther King, Jr.

1965: Arrest of the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and more than 2,600 others in Selma.

1965 Dolores Huerta became the first female leader of the farm worker’s union.  She co‐founded the United Farm Workers with Cesar Chavez and became its contract negotiator.

1965 Public workers win collective bargaining rights. (Right now Janus vs AFSCME is being heard by the U.S. Supreme Court and a decision is expected by summer. This lawsuit aims to take away the freedom of working people to join together in strong unions to speak up for themselves and their communities.  Look for a link to more information in the resources section.)

Charles M. Payne, author of "I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: the Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle" warns us repeatedly to look at the everyday work that builds movements and creates social change and to draw from those experiences in order to learn the lessons for our work today. He writes, "Overemphasizing the movement's more dramatic features, we undervalue the patient and sustained effort, the slow, respectful work, that made the dramatic moments possible."

At those luncheons thousands of women & their husbands were getting educated, radicalized and organized to take action and bring their #PowerToThePolls!  Jo's guiding leadership encouraged thousands of women between 1961-1967, before the internet and social media, through DRIVE Ladies Auxiliaries to donate their time and leadership skills all across the country by hosting thousands of parties, picnics, back yard barbecues & banquets, making thousands of phone calls, passing out thousands of voter ed flyers, registering thousands of voters, organizing motorcades of buses to lobby representatives in Washington, D.C., spent hours picketing the White House, had thousands of conversations with members, family, friends, neighbors & elected leaders, collected & shared with thousands the voting records of those elected representatives, launching the DRIVE program on behalf of the #Teamsters, their families, working people, civil rights, human rights and freedom. 

WHAT THEY SAY ABOUT DRIVE:

"These ladies could make the difference in any congressional election."  Congressman Fulton of Pennsylvania

"You taught me quite a lesson on how to get a point across...and I have learned the power of a woman...all of our Congressmen are very impressed by you."  Congressman Ryan of Michigan

From the DRIVE Ladies Auxiliaries' first victory of electing a Teamster, Lendall Bates as Mayor of Muskogee, Oklahoma to the election of Lyndon B. Johnson as President of the United States who signed the bills that led to Medicare and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 it is clear, there's a whole lot of hidden volunteer work that we should think about and if you're a Teamster, you need to vote!

1966 The National Organization for women (NOW) is founded by activist Betty Friedan to end sexual discrimination.

1968 Shirley Chisholm (D‐NY) becomes the first African American woman U.S. Representative.  Four years later, she becomes the first African‐American person to run for President in the Democratic primaries.

1972 Ruth Bader Ginsburg founded the Women’s Rights Project (WRP) of ACLU, which focuses on assisting and empowering poor women, women of color, and immigrant women, who historically have been deeply victimized by gender bias and continue to face pervasive barriers to equality today. Through litigation, community outreach, advocacy, and public education, WRP pushes for change and systemic reform of those institutions that perpetuate discrimination against women.

Jo is referred to as a guiding force & the "First Lady of the Teamsters" and I must say, as a Teamster woman who volunteers my time, energy & talents to internal organizing, that indeed I wholeheartedly agree!  She is a GIANT FREEDOM FIGHTER on whose shoulders we stand!

The International Teamster magazine August 1966

The International Teamster magazine May 1964

The International Teamster magazine August 1966

In Memoriam We Remember

RESOURCES:

https://teamster.org/about/teamster-history/drive

http://www.pennfedbmwe.org/?zone=/unionactive/view_article.cfm&HomeID=95500

http://mlhs.wayne.edu/files/050823_LaborsLegacy_lo.pdf

https://www.afscme.org/now/janus-for-leaders

https://smlr.rutgers.edu/sites/default/files/documents/faculty_staff_docs/OtherWomenMovement.pdf

Life in the Teamsters The History of DRIVE by David R. Piper

I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: the Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle by Charles M. Payne. University of California Press, 1995.

#ItsAboutFreedom