Teamsters Local 326

Teamsters Local 326 was a Delaware branch of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, created by James R. Hoffa when he divided Teamsters Local 107 into three locals in an effort to reduce violence. Hoffa gave Frank Sheeran the charter and made him acting president until the rank and file could elect a president. The local became both a practical test of Sheeran’s union leadership and, in his later account, the union position he valued most. Its story joins workplace representation and pension administration to the factional struggles that could make a local a source of power—and a target for its rivals.

Formation and Hoffa’s Appointment

Hoffa’s division of Teamsters Local 107 was intended to reduce violence by breaking up a large organization. One result was Local 326, based in Wilmington, Delaware. Sheeran initially served as acting president, with a formal election still to come. His authority began with Hoffa’s appointment, but the intended next step was a vote by the local’s members.

Hoffa’s first assignment for Sheeran was to dismiss five disruptive organizers in Philadelphia whom Local 107 president Mike Hession was reluctant to fire. Sheeran drove north on I-95 and dismissed Johnny Sullivan, Stevie Bouras, Big Bobby Marino, and Benny Bedachio, as well as another organizer whose name he later could not recall. The men had friends, and Sheeran expected possible repercussions. He stayed in Philadelphia for a time after the dismissals to make sure there was no backlash before returning to Delaware. The episode shows the new local’s dependence on Hoffa’s direction, while also giving Sheeran a consequential role in enforcing discipline beyond its immediate membership.

Building the Local’s Operation

After returning to Delaware, Sheeran set about learning the position and earning the confidence that Hoffa had placed in him. For two weeks he drove a car hauler for Anchor Motors at the Chrysler automobile plant in Newark, Delaware. Having worked as a freight hauler, he wanted firsthand knowledge of car hauling before handling grievances in a different part of the industry. The short period behind the wheel was preparation for a representative’s work: understanding the members’ jobs well enough to deal with their complaints and contracts.

As president, Sheeran visited the local’s trucking-company barns every morning, checked in with workers, and monitored whether employers were meeting their obligations. He described respect as something a representative had to earn through presence and attention, not something that could simply be bought. A central part of that oversight was ensuring companies paid into the pension fund. If a representative failed to check contributions, the local could face legal consequences. In this account, representing the membership meant staying physically present at workplaces as well as watching the financial terms that supported workers’ retirement.

The pension rules also created room for discretionary arrangements with newly organized employers. Sheeran said a company could receive a contribution waiver for as long as a year, giving it time to adjust to the added expense. He illustrated the scale with a hypothetical company paying one dollar per hour for each employee: for a hundred workers, that would amount to $4,000 a week. A six-month waiver could save the employer more than $100,000, and Sheeran described an arrangement in which the savings were shared under the table. He also noted that pensions were retroactive to the date a worker started, even if the company had not been contributing, so the waiver did not reduce the workers’ stated pension entitlement. His account thus presents pension enforcement and the potential for private benefit as parts of the same local-level system.

Arrest, Election, and Institutional Fallout

Sheeran’s attempt to secure elected leadership was interrupted by an arrest and four months in jail. He said he had to seek help from Russell Bufalino after Fitz refused his request for expenses connected to the matter. The disruption cost him the opportunity to campaign in the Local 326 election; he said he lost by only a few votes. He was eventually allowed to sign his own bail and leave jail. In the related prosecution, Chickie, Johnny West, and Black Pat were tried within six weeks and acquitted, while Sheeran remained jailed during his own case. His account links the arrest not only to a lost election but also to his growing estrangement from Fitz and his reliance on Bufalino for support.

The surrounding labor conflict was unsettled. Around this period, the Teamsters Local 107 hall burned to the ground. Sheeran recalled that people suspected either the Voice of Teamsters Local 107 or a faction associated with McGreal, but the cause was never established. Hession then stepped down as Local 107 president. These events do not establish that Local 326 was involved in the fire; they do place its creation and Sheeran’s early leadership within a wider atmosphere of factional conflict and violence.

A Lasting Base Under Pressure

Sheeran later called the presidency of Local 326 his favorite part of his working life. While he was incarcerated, the local made him honorary president for life. He said its members respected the job he had done, and emphasized that Hoffa had secured the local its own charter rather than leaving it under Philadelphia’s administration. The local had more than 3,000 members when he went to jail, according to his recollection; by the time of his account, membership was closer to 1,000.

The local’s offices reflected its development. Before 1979, it operated from 109 East Front Street, in what Sheeran described as a run-down neighborhood by the railroad station. In 1979 he obtained a new building for the local, which his account identifies as its headquarters to that day. He also recalled handling members’ grievances and contract enforcement as part of his daily responsibility, making the presidency more than a title or a link to Hoffa’s patronage.

Local 326 also became a point of contact in Delaware politics. At the old East Front Street office, a prominent lawyer from the Democratic Party visited Sheeran toward the end of 1972 to discuss the Senate race. Earlier that year, incumbent Caleb Boggs had asked to address the membership. Sheeran and the executive board declined, judging Boggs insufficiently supportive of labor. When Boggs’s opponent, Joe Biden, asked to speak, the board raised no objection. Biden addressed the members, took questions, and delivered a speech Sheeran remembered as strongly pro-labor. The episode shows the local acting as an organized constituency whose leadership could decide which candidates received access to its membership.

That political and organizational importance made Local 326 vulnerable to control from above. At the end of May 1975, Fitz threatened to place it—described in the account as Hoffa’s former local and power base—under trusteeship, with a monitor reporting to Teamsters headquarters in Washington. The threat framed the local as more than a workplace organization: it was an institutional foothold in the wider struggle over union authority. Its history in the book runs from Hoffa’s charter and Sheeran’s hands-on administration to a contested base whose control could be challenged by the union’s national leadership.