Can someone explain how the Teamsters became associated w the right?

[mod mom]

I'm reading Jeff Sharlet's "The Family" about the elitist cult that preaches that God anoited the powerful and they are above earthly laws. I've just finished a section on Nixon and how the teamsters backed Nixon. It is explained that this occurred because Nixon agreed to pressure the DoJ to stop investigations into corruption. Are the teamsters still aligned w the right despite their anti-labor practices?

[Joanne98]

1. They were pro-war

[LiberalFighter]

2. They have been for a long time on the national level.

The local union leadership will vary from region to region.

[demosincebirth]

3. The teamster leadership tried to align themselves with Nixon and Reagan during...

the 70's and 80's to gain favor and keep the DOJ from from throwing a bunch of them in jail. After the consent decree in the late eighties, the Doj started a cleanup of the union and national election were held. They've come a long way from the days of Beck, Hoffa Sr. and Fitzimmons. They are still under the Consent Decree and are pretty much doing what they're supposed to do...like looking after the members interest and backing pro-labor candidates, like Obama.

[Omaha Steve]

4. According to Time...

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,906865,00.html

Snip

Hoffa then made the ultimate sacrifice. He stepped down as president of the Teamsters in the summer of 1971, throwing his support to sleepy, sluggish Frank Fitzsimmons. Fitz handily won the election at the Teamsters convention in Miami Beach that same summer, and Hoffa became "General President Emeritus" for life, with a consoling pension that he quickly converted into a lump-sum payment worth some $1.7 million.

Open Door. A humble servant to Hoffa all through his labor life, a man whom AFL-CIO President George Meany had called a puppet, Fitz suddenly leaned back in Jimmy's big white chair in the Teamsters' marble palace in Washington and decided that he liked the feel of the job. More important, President Nixon liked Fitz in the job. Seeking labor support for his reelection, the President dropped by a Teamsters executive board meeting in Miami Beach that June of 1971 to pay his respects to the new boss personally. Said Nixon: "My door is always open to President Fitzsimmons."

As a good-will gesture to the Teamsters, Nixon commuted Hoffa's sentence in December 1971—almost six months after Fitz took over—but only on one condition: Hoffa could not "engage in the direct or indirect management of any labor organization" until March 6, 1980.

After this "favor" to Jimmy, Fitz led the Teamsters into a formal endorsement of Nixon for President last year. Nixon nominated him to the board of COMSAT. Mrs. Fitzsimmons was put on the board of an advisory committee at the Kennedy Center. When all the other labor leaders walked off the President's Pay Board, Fitz stayed on. And when Nixon dropped Labor Secretary James Hodgson, Fitz was immediately called and offered the job. He declined.