Paul Hall

Paul Hall is presented in Frank Sheeran’s account as a forceful labor leader whose conflicts with Jimmy Hoffa turned jurisdictional disputes into a wider battle between the Seafarers International Union and the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. Hall’s role spans contests in Puerto Rico, Chicago, and Philadelphia: he backed organizing efforts that threatened Teamsters control, and his clashes with Hoffa became entangled with factional warfare and physical retaliation.

Union Rivalry and Jurisdiction

Hall enters the account through a dispute in Puerto Rico over dockside cargo drivers. Hall’s Seafarers International Union sought to represent them because their work took place on the waterfront; Frank Chavez, a Teamsters ally of Hoffa, argued that they belonged with the Teamsters because they were drivers. The disagreement was not simply about workplace geography. It concerned which union would organize the workers and extend its reach over the docks.

Hall was also identified with the AFL-CIO, which had expelled the Teamsters. Sheeran describes Hoffa and Hall as bitter opponents and says Hoffa believed Hall was trying to bring him and the Teamsters down. In Sheeran’s telling, the conflict had become a bloody contest in which both sides had their own hit squads. That account connects the local jurisdictional dispute to a larger confrontation between labor organizations, while also showing how Sheeran’s narrative presents union rivalry as inseparable from coercion.

The Chicago Local 777 Campaign

Before and immediately after a Teamsters convention, Hoffa sent Sheeran to Chicago to work under Joey Glimco. A group of dissidents wanted to separate Teamsters Local 777, a taxicab local, and make it independent. The rebel leader, Dominic Abata, had gathered enough signatures to bring the question to an election. Sheeran says the rebels had their own reasons for leaving Glimco, but the contest also carried stakes for Glimco’s wider network: he controlled fifteen Chicago cab locals outright and had influence in other trades and unions. In Sheeran’s account, allowing Local 777 to leave without consequence might encourage others to follow.

The dissidents won the election in the summer of 1961. Hall then appeared at an AFL-CIO convention, took the microphone, and called Hoffa a “fink.” He gave Abata’s rebels a Seafarers charter, formally bringing them into the AFL-CIO. The charter transformed the local dispute into a public organizational victory for Hall’s side: the rebels had not merely broken away but gained affiliation with a rival labor federation.

Sheeran portrays Hall as a formidable presence at the convention, describing him as a fighter whose physical toughness was apparent. He also interprets the Chicago move as part of a coordinated campaign rather than a solitary action by Hall. In his view, Hall could not have acted without support from the AFL-CIO executive board, of which Hall was a member. The Teamsters response, as Sheeran frames it, was to meet pressure with pressure.

Confrontation at the Hamilton Hotel

After Hall gave the rebels their charter, he and Abata celebrated in the cocktail lounge of Chicago’s Hamilton Hotel. Glimco arranged an informational picket outside, where Teamsters chanted “unfair.” A man went inside, shouted insults at Hall and Abata, and struck one of the police officers guarding Abata. The officers arrested him and brought him outside, followed by Hall and Abata.

Sheeran describes the disturbance as a trap: Glimco had arranged events to draw Hall and Abata out of the hotel, where Glimco’s people then attacked them and the police. The confrontation lasted only a few minutes before squad cars arrived, but it gives the union dispute a concrete and violent form. Hall is not described as planning the ambush; rather, he becomes one of its targets after his public success in securing a charter for the rebels.

The Philadelphia Muscle Crew

The struggle reached Philadelphia when a faction at Teamsters Local 107 formed the Voice of Teamsters Local 107, known as the Voice. The rebels were attempting a breakaway like the one in Chicago, and Hoffa suspected Hall and the AFL-CIO of backing them. Hall brought a muscle crew into Philadelphia, where they stayed at a Seafarers International Union hall at Oregon Avenue and Fourth Street. Their presence made the inter-union contest visible on the ground, not only in elections and charters.

Hoffa sent Sheeran back to Philadelphia with several members of the Chicago crew. Sheeran first surveyed the hall, whose locked front door and plate-glass wall exposed rows of bunk beds inside. At 6:30 one morning, he drove a borrowed panel truck over the sidewalk hedge and through the glass between two trees. Eight or nine men rode in the truck; each had been given a white hat so Sheeran could distinguish his own side. They attacked the sleeping crew with their fists as its members climbed out of their bunks. Police arrived from around the area. The truck got away, and the others escaped on foot.

The episode shows the consequences of the conflict Hall had helped intensify, but the account keeps the actions distinct: Hall brought the crew to Philadelphia, while Sheeran and the men sent with him carried out the attack. Sheeran’s narrative depicts the Teamsters’ resistance as an organized retaliatory operation, not as a confrontation between Hall and Hoffa in person.

Narrative Role

Hall functions as a recurring opponent in Sheeran’s account of Hoffa’s labor battles. His presence links the Puerto Rico jurisdiction fight, the Local 777 election in Chicago, and the Voice faction in Philadelphia. Across these episodes, the contest moves from a question of which union could represent particular workers to rival charters, muscle crews, and assaults. Hall’s importance in the narrative lies in that widening pattern: union authority is pursued through formal affiliation and elections, but the struggle around it is repeatedly rendered in the language and practice of force.