In 1975, the most notorious union leader in the United States disappeared, the presumed victim of organized crime. Hoffa’s disappearance transformed him into a mythic figure whose story is invoked to highlight the problem of corruption in American unions. This talk examines how the issue of corruption has delegitimized union power in the U.S. by comparing Hoffa’s story to a Finnish labor leader, Niilo Wälläri, whose career followed a parallel path to Hoffa’s, but which did so in a country reputed to be among the least corrupt in the world.