Jimmy Hoffa Jimmy Hoffa James Riddle Hoffa (February 14, 1913 – disappeared July 30, 1975) was an American labor union leader who served as the President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) union from 1957 until 1971. He vanished in late July 1975, at age 62. From an early age, Hoffa was a union activist and became an important regional figure with the IBT by his mid-20s. By 1952 he was national vice-president of the IBT, and was its general president between 1957 and 1971. He secured the first national agreement for teamsters' rates in 1964 with the National Master Freight
Trade unions in the Soviet Union demanded that trade unions manage the economy through an "All-Union Congress of Producers" and that workers comprise a majority of Communist Party members and leaders. There were several other factions. Eventually, all of them were defeated at the 10th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) by the so-called "Platform of the Ten" headed by Lenin, which called for trade unions to educate workers, under the control of the Communist Party. After that congress, Vladimir Lenin's saying that "Trade Unions are a School of Communism" became an indisputable slogan. Like the Communist Party, the trade unions operated on the principle