Michael Rudy Tham
American labor unionist
Michael Rudolph Tham (May 30, 1923 – October 5, 1998), sometimes known as Rudy Michael Tham or Rudy Tham, was a San Francisco Teamsters Union leader with alleged mafia connections.
Early life
Tham was born in May 1923. He was a native of California, and an accomplished boxer who won an amateur welterweight title in 1941.
During World War II, Tham sailed the world as a merchant marine, before returning to the Bay area to join the International Brotherhood of Teamsters in 1946.
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
Tham began life in the Teamsters as an organiser of wholesale grocery sales workers, going on to found the Freight Checkers, Clerical Employees and Helpers Local 856 in San Francisco in 1949. Local 856 went on to become, under Tham, the first San Francisco Union since the 1930s to sign contracts in Chinatown, and went on to have thousands of members.
San Francisco Fire Commission
In 1966, Mayor John Shelley appointed Tham to the San Francisco Fire Commission. He was reappointed to this position in 1970 by Mayor Joseph Alioto and, again, in 1974.
Allegations of organised crime influence
Throughout his career, Tham was dogged by allegations of misconduct. Numerous accounts also say that he was associated with James Fratianno, a known Mafia member.
“Michael Rudy Tham” enters the record as american labor unionist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Michael, Rudy and Tham can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Michael Rudy Tham” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.