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• Hoffa there
Page 42
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Ever since US Teamsters Union president James Hoffa went to gaol four years ago on a 13-year sentence for pension fraud and jury "fixing", the truck driver members have (like many other people)beenwonderingwhat he would do when his five-year presidency term expired in 1971. It was pretty clear that if he chose to run again the membership would vote him in, even in prison. Now he has announced that he is giving up the presidency and has nominated vice-president Frank Fitzsimmons, who therefore becomes a certainty for leadership of this 2m-strong union.
They are saying in the States that Hoffa's resignation may sufficiently reassure the Government to give him a good chance of getting a parole next year—his 1971 parole application has just been turned down.
The union itself is still out of America's equivalent of the TUC—the AFL-CIO, which expelled Hoffa's organization on charges of corruption—but it seems that the teamsters are not that keen to get back in again, anyway.