It is good for Michigan’s Democratic leadership to abolish the “right-to-work” law in the Great Lakes State. The decade-old scheme was instituted by Republican legislators in a lame-duck session in 2012 to damage unions in a state that once backed workers’ rights.
The debate brought back memories of my first conversation about “right-to-work.” It was with none other than Jimmy Hoffa, who stood next to me off camera at the studios of WTVS, Channel 56.
This was back when metro Detroit’s public television station was headquartered at Second and Bethune in the New Center and labor unions were much stronger than they are today. Truth be told, some union damage has been self-inflicted.
So, this was September of 1972. Hoffa, recently deposed as the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was about to appear on Firing Line, with William F. Buckley, the conservative intellectual talk show host who passed through the Motor City to record a couple shows.
Hoffa was less than a year out of federal prison for a variety of felonies and he had less than three years to live. I was a 21-year-old, wet-behind-the-ears, newlywed journalism student at Wayne State University, trying to report a feature for the student newspaper, The South End.
Before the show, Buckley stood on the other side of the big room, talking with a producer. Hoffa nodded his head in Buckley’s direction and spoke to me in a confidential tone of voice.
“Don’t trust this guy,” Hoffa said of Buckley. “He’s a right-to-worker.”
In that my Dad was an automotive patternmaker and a Labor-Day-parade kind of guy, I vaguely recognized the term “right-to-work” and I sort of knew it wasn’t good for unions. So I nodded sagely and kept my mouth shut.
I probably should have remained silent moments later, when Hoffa changed the subject and I asked a question, a real rookie mistake. More on this to come.
First, though, a round of applause for the Michigan House of Representatives and Senate, who have passed the bill to abolish “right-to-work,” which allows freeloaders to enjoy union benefits and protection without paying union dues.
After differences are ironed out between chambers, the bill will go soon to Governor Gretchen Whitmer for a signature. The only way Republicans and right-wingers can destroy it is by amending the state constitution by ballot measure in 2024.
To do this, they will need more than 400,000 signatures on a petition. Judging by the way Republican gubernatorial candidates got scammed last year by collectors of fake signatures, it seems safe to say the Michigan Republicans are not likely to accomplish this.
The current local GOP would be hard-pressed to organize a two-car funeral. But it will take more than one mere bill to restore Michigan’s labor unions to the power and prestige they enjoyed several decades ago.
At present, an era of corruption in the United Auto Workers union may soon give way to a reform movement and new leadership. On Thursday, March 16, a federal monitor at the Westin Hotel will resume the international vote count for the union’s presidential election.
At the moment, reformer Shawn Fain leads incumbent Ray Curry by 50.2% to 49.8% with 1,608 disputed ballots to be counted.
Truth be told, some union damage has been self-inflicted.
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Along with loss of membership, that union has tarnished its image, with 13 union officials convicted in the federal probe that began in 2017.
What would Walter Reuther think? The UAW founder and president was the good angel on one big shoulder of the local labor movement.
Hoffa, by contrast, was the bad angel on the other side. He left the federal penitentiary quicker than expected in 1971 in one of President Richard Nixon’s more sinister deals.
Before trying to wrest back control of the Teamsters — an effort that led to his disappearance in 1975 — Hoffa was touring the country to speak out for the good cause of prison reform.
Some of what he said was dramatic.
“Men get raped in prison,” Hoffa told me. “Prison turns men into homosexuals.”
Perhaps I should have paused and thought things through before blurting the obvious follow-up question to Hoffa.
“Anybody bother you in prison?” I asked him, clearly in the context of the conversation.
At this time, more than 50 years ago, Hoffa was 58 years old and physically fit. He had his Hoffa helmet hair — wet and combed directly back, like bristles on a porcupine. He spoke in terse bursts of words and his presence radiated the tense air of a clenched fist.
Suddenly, a light bulb went off over my head — a dim bulb, to be sure. I noticed Hoffa glancing at his bodyguard and the bodyguard glancing back to Hoffa. It occurred to me that my question to such a man (essentially, “Did you get raped in prison?”) might have been a trifle indelicate.
Perhaps these two guys — understandingly and graciously — decided at that very moment that my question was merely the sort of naive inquiry an earnest, young journalist might make if he was in support of Hoffa’s righteous campaign for prison reform.
Or, perhaps they decided it would be bad form to pound a kid reporter to a pulp in the presence of TV cameras.
For whatever reason, Hoffa gave me a polite answer.
“No, kid,” Hoffa said. “Nobody bothered me.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“Yeah,” Hoffa agreed. “That’s good.”
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