Jimmy Hoffa means of leveraging union strength at one company, to then move to organize workers, and finally to win contract demands at other companies. This process, which took several years starting in the early 1930s, eventually brought the Teamsters to a position of being one of the most powerful unions in the United States. Trucking unions in that era were heavily influenced by, and in many cases controlled by elements of, organized crime. For Hoffa to unify and expand trucking unions, he had to make accommodations and arrangements with many gangsters, beginning in the Detroit area. Organized crime influence on the
Jimmy Hoffa see." At the time, IBT was bringing in over $750,000 annually to the AFL-CIO. Following his re-election as president in 1961, Hoffa worked to expand the union. In 1964, he succeeded in bringing virtually all over-the-road truck drivers in North America under a single National Master Freight Agreement, in what may have been his biggest achievement in a lifetime of union activity. Hoffa then tried to bring the airline workers and other transport employees into the union, with limited success. During this period, he was facing immense personal strain as he was under investigation, on trial, launching appeals of convictions,