Jimmy Hoffa a result of Hoffa's work with other union leaders to consolidate local union trucker groups into regional sections, and then into a national body — work that Hoffa ultimately completed over a period of two decades — membership grew to 170,000 members by 1936. Three years later, there were 420,000. The number grew steadily during World War II and through the post-war boom to top a million members by 1951. The Teamsters organized truck drivers and warehousemen, first throughout the Midwest, then nationwide. Hoffa played a major role in the union's skillful use of "quickie strikes", secondary boycotts, and other
Trade union early 1979, when a significant percentage of the nation's public sector workers went on strike. By this stage, some 12,000,000 workers in the United Kingdom were trade union members. However, the election of the Conservative Party led by Margaret Thatcher at the general election in May 1979, at the expense of Labour's James Callaghan, saw substantial trade union reform which saw the level of strikes fall. The level of trade union membership also fell sharply in the 1980s, and continued falling for most of the 1990s. The long decline of most of the industries in which manual trade unions were