Fitz

Fitz, the union leader who replaced Jimmy Hoffa when Hoffa went to prison, occupied a role shaped by both succession rules and personal loyalty. Hoffa arranged for him to wield the union’s authority in his absence, yet expected to take it back. The resulting contest exposed a deeper divide over who would control the Teamsters and how its immense pension fund would be used.

Identity and Place in the Union

In the book’s account, Fitz is not introduced as an independent rival from the outset but as Hoffa’s chosen successor. Hoffa installed him as general vice president at the July 1966 Teamsters convention, after amending the union constitution to create an office with enough authority to run the organization if its president went to jail. Hoffa’s design was a form of continuity: the union would remain under a trusted deputy while its president served time.

That continuity was conditional. Hoffa expected to remain president in effect, even behind bars, and to resume direct control when he got out. Fitz’s appointment therefore placed him at the center of a succession arrangement that protected Hoffa’s position but also gave his deputy a route to the presidency if Hoffa could not return.

Hoffa’s Successor and the Union’s Work

Fitz had already succeeded Hoffa after Hoffa’s incarceration. The book contrasts their approaches to the pension fund: in the narrator’s account, Hoffa controlled lending on his own terms, while borrowers found Fitz more accommodating. At a meeting with Hoffa and Russell Bufalino before the narrator’s testimonial dinner, Bufalino warned Hoffa that certain people favored Fitz because they could obtain large, easy loans under his leadership. The narrator describes Fitz as weak-minded and says that drinking and golf mattered more to him than exercising Hoffa’s control over those borrowers. These characterizations belong to the narrator’s retrospective account; they are also part of the explanation he gives for why influential borrowers preferred Fitz.

Fitz’s period as a leading union figure also followed a major achievement associated with Hoffa. In 1963, after the National Master Freight Agreement was secured, Hoffa placed Frank Sheeran on the union’s National Negotiating Committee. The agreement brought a 45-cent hourly raise in its first contract and increased pensions; it had been designed to set common wages and benefits across the country through a single negotiation. The episode establishes the scale of the organization Fitz would later lead, though the book credits Hoffa with the agreement and does not attribute its negotiation to Fitz.

A Contested Succession

Hoffa’s first parole application was rejected in November 1969 while his Chicago conviction remained on appeal. His next eligibility date was March 1971. The narrator presents that date as a political turning point: if Hoffa were released, he could return in time for the July Teamsters convention and, in the narrator’s estimation, would easily win reelection. Hoffa still held union offices and, according to the account, the offenses for which he had been convicted did not disqualify him under the Landrum-Griffin Act.

In early 1971, Fitz announced that he would run for president if Hoffa did not receive parole. The announcement challenged Hoffa’s expectation that he could remain the union’s leader from prison and reclaim the office upon release. Fitz then sought a conditional endorsement from the executive board at its January meeting in Palm Springs. The board refused to endorse him, even on the condition that Hoffa fail to win parole. The refusal left Fitz’s candidacy without the institutional backing he had sought, while the possibility of Hoffa’s return continued to dominate the succession question.

The Restriction That Kept Hoffa Out

Hoffa was released on December 23, 1971, after Richard Nixon commuted his sentence. But the commutation barred him from direct or indirect management of any labor organization before March 6, 1980; violating the condition would void the commutation. The narrator describes reading the restriction in the final papers as the discovery of a double-cross. Whatever Hoffa’s hopes of reclaiming the union, the condition kept him from managing it during the period specified.

The book thus frames Fitz’s rise not simply as a deputy taking over during an absence, but as an unsettled transfer of authority. Hoffa created the office that enabled his successor to govern, then pursued a return that Fitz’s 1971 candidacy made explicit. The presidential restriction altered that contest by keeping Hoffa from direct or indirect union management. The pension fund, meanwhile, made the choice of leadership consequential beyond officeholding: in the narrator’s telling, different degrees of control over lending helped explain why powerful borrowers favored one leader over the other.