Wealth & Money Quote by James P. Hoffa

Hoffa’s line lands like a shrug, but it’s really a mission statement: unions are power-multipliers. The repetition of “they can get” is doing the rhetorical heavy lifting, turning collective bargaining into a kind of logistics operation. Not ideals, not solidarity posters, not romantic labor history - procurement. Money. Support. Manpower. Three nouns that sound less like a picket line and more like a political war room.

The subtext is strategic, almost transactional. Hoffa isn’t defending unions as moral goods; he’s positioning them as effective institutions in an economy that already runs on leverage. In that sense, the quote carries a quiet rebuke to the polite version of labor discourse where unions are tolerated as long as they stay “reasonable.” Hoffa’s framing suggests the point is precisely to be unreasonable when needed: to mobilize resources at scale and force employers (and politicians) to respond.

The context matters because “Hoffa” is a surname that arrives preloaded - Teamsters muscle, backroom dealmaking, the long American suspicion that organized labor is just another interest group with sharper elbows. By calling out “money” and “manpower” so plainly, he leans into that reputation rather than laundering it. It’s a pragmatic pitch to an audience that understands politics and business as contests of capacity. If you want to win, you don’t show up with a feeling. You show up with an organization.