After receiving his bachelor's degree, Paff began a Ph.D. program in physics at UC Berkeley, but quickly abandoned his studies to focus on movement activism.
At their founding convention at Kent State University outside of Cleveland in September 1976, TDC formally changed their name to Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU).
By 1978, the movement was too big to run on a purely volunteer basis, and the TDU Steering Committee voted to hire Paff as its full-time National Organizer.
[13][14] As TDU's National Organizer, Paff has been a central force behind TDU's many accomplishments in the years since its founding, including defeating concessionary agreements such as the notorious freight "relief rider" that Presser attempted to foist on the membership in 1983, overturning the so-called "two-thirds" rule, which allowed contracts to be ratified with as little as one-third of the membership voting to approve, protecting Teamster members' pensions, and helping countless numbers of rank and file Teamsters learn their rights, run campaigns to reform their local union bylaws, run for shop steward, and win office to reform their locals.
After extensive internal debate, TDU decided to endorse Ron Carey, head of New York Local 804, for Teamster General President at their 1989 convention.
In the ensuing two years, Paff was the acknowledged "field general" of the grassroots operation that led dark horse reform candidate Carey to be elected to the top office in the IBT.
In response, TDU helped Teamster members organize to pressure their recalcitrant local leaders to get on board with Carey's mobilizing strategies, particularly surrounding national contract negotiations in carhaul, freight, and at UPS.
Although difficult at first, that so-called "pincer" strategy—with a mobilized rank and file uniting with a reform leadership at the top to pressure the mid-level leadership—paid off, as evidenced by the landmark 1997 strike against UPS.
[22][23][24] Soon after the UPS victory, however, TDU faced yet another, far more serious challenge, as Carey was removed from office when his campaign manager was caught laundering union money.
While the 2008 financial crisis was partly to blame, a bigger problem was that Teamster leaders had let key contributing employers walk away from their pension obligations, leaving the funds in dire shape.
[34] Adding to the crisis were the Wall Street financial firms that lost billions of dollars for Teamster funds while collecting large management fees.
[35] Faced with drastic cuts to promised benefits, Teamster members and retirees organized a pension protection committees with help from TDU.
They successfully blocked Central States administrators' proposal to cut benefits in 2015, and built support for the Butch Lewis Act, named for a TDU leader and pension activist who died in 2015.
Concerns about eroding wages, contract standards, and pension security fed into the 2016 election campaign, which pitted Hoffa against reform candidate Fred Zuckerman, head of Louisville, Kentucky Local 89.
[44] Now into his fifth decade as National Organizer of TDU, Paff continues to help rank and file Teamsters defend their rights, speak out for greater democracy, and prod reluctant union leaders to protect wages, benefits, and working standards.
"[48] Many analysts have credited TDU's model of mobilizing tactics and its long tradition of rank and file organizing as being key factors behind the successful 1997 strike at UPS.
[49][50] In 1988 Paff received the Nat Weinberg Award, given to "men and women who ... stubbornly refus[e] to accept defeat and...assert the right of working people to address and solve the problems that confront them.
In 2003, the late Studs Terkel published an interview he conducted with Paff as a chapter in his book Hope Dies Last: Keeping the Faith in Difficult Times.