Hoffa Movie Review

The 1992 film, Hoffa, gave me a lot of information on the labor organization through the years. When the movie first started the Teamsters were introduced by Hoffa to Ciaro, a truck driver. He is against the union and teamsters all together because he didn’t want to lose his job and have a bad reputation. This seemed to be true for a lot of truck drivers in these times. A job was a job and the workers did not want to risk it and lose everything. Jimmy Hoffa ended up telling people that Ciaro and him spoke in his truck about the Union and ended up resulting in Chiaro getting fired. This was interesting and ironic because unions were trying to be enforced so the workers could be protected but talk of them would result in companies firing pro-union workers. In order to get somewhere people had to risk losing jobs and reputations. Strike, boycotts and riots would eventually leave companies with no choice but to hire union workers.
Since he lost his job over the union anyways, Ciaro decided to learn more about Hoffa and what his teamsters were all about. After Hoffa’s right hand man died doing a job for the teamsters, Chiaro took his place. The rest of the movie revolves around these two men trying to make truckers become unionized. They were highly effective. In this time the CIO was created. All of Hoffa’s work eventually led to contracts being formed by organizations for workers. Also in the 1930’s the Teamsters were defined as the most powerful union group in the country. All in all I believe that this was a great movie to portray what life was like for union workers and how, although companies were anti-union, the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa were able to create a movement in order to get these workers contracts to work under and a better life at work.