The Select Committee focused its attention for most of 1957 on the Teamsters union. Teamsters President Dave Beck fled the country for a month to avoid its subpoenas before returning in March 1957. The Select Committee had a difficult time investigating the Teamsters. Four of the paper locals were dissolved to avoid committee scrutiny, several Teamster staffers provided verbal testimony which differed substantially from their prior written statements (the Select Committee eventually charged six of them with
contempt of Congress), and union records were lost or destroyed (allegedly on purpose). In Oregon,
The Oregonian newspaper ran a series of investigative pieces that earned reporters a
Pulitzer Prize, and prosecutors indicted about 30 people. Working with the FBI, the Select Committee electrified the nation when on February 22, 1957, wiretaps were played in public before a national television audience in which Dio and Hoffa discussed the creation of even more paper locals, including the establishment of a paper local to organize New York City's 30,000 taxi cab drivers and use the charter as a means of extorting money from a wide variety of employers. The 1957 hearings opened with a focus on corruption in Portland, Oregon, and featured the testimony of Portland crime boss
Jim Elkins. With the support of 70 hours of taped conversations, Elkins described being approached by two Seattle gangsters about working with the Teamsters to take over Portland vice operations. The colorful testimony brought the committee's investigations national media attention from the outset. watched on live television, evidence was unearthed over the next few weeks of a mob-sponsored plot in which Oregon Teamsters unions would seize control of the
state legislature,
state police, and
state attorney general's office through bribery, extortion and blackmail. On March 14, 1957, Jimmy Hoffa was arrested for allegedly trying to bribe an aide to the Select Committee. Hoffa denied the charges (and was later acquitted), but the arrest triggered additional investigations and more arrests and indictments over the following weeks. Less than a week later, Beck admitted to receiving an interest-free $300,000 loan from the Teamsters which he had never repaid, and Select Committee investigators claimed that loans to Beck and other union officials (and their businesses) had cost the Teamsters more than $700,000. Beck appeared before the Select Committee for the first time on March 25, 1957, and notoriously invoked his
Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 117 times. Beck was called before the McClellan Committee again in May 1957, and additional interest-free loans and other potentially illegal and unethical financial transactions exposed. Based on these revelations, Beck was indicted for tax evasion on May 2, 1957. The Beck and Hoffa hearings generated strong criticisms of Robert Kennedy. Many liberal critics said he was a brow-beater, badgerer, insolent, overbearing, intolerant, and even vicious. Hoffa and other witnesses often were able to anger Kennedy to the point where he lost control, and would shout and insult them. In the late fall, the committee focused its attention on union-busting, and examined the behavior of companies such as Morton Packing Company,
Continental Baking Company, and
Sears, Roebuck and Company. While continuing to investigate and hold hearings on other unions and corporations, the McClellan Committee also began to examine the behavior of Jimmy Hoffa and other Teamsters officials. Senator McClellan accused Hoffa of attempting to gain control of the nation's economy and set himself up as a sort of private government. The Select Committee also accused Hoffa of instigating the creation of the paper locals, and of arranging for a $400,000 loan to the graft-ridden
International Longshoremen's Association in a bid to take over that union and gain Teamsters control of the waterfront as well as warehouses. Johnny Dio, who by late summer 1957 was in prison serving time on
bribery and
conspiracy charges, was paroled by a federal court in order to testify at the Select Committee's hearings. But in a two-hour appearance before the Select Committee, Dio invoked his
Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination 140 times, and refused to answer any of the committee's questions. But despite the problems encountered in interrogating Dio, the Select Committee developed additional testimony and evidence alleging widespread corruption in Hoffa-controlled Teamster units was presented in public in August 1957. The worsening corruption scandal led the AFL-CIO to eject the Teamsters on December 6, 1957. As the Hoffa hearings occurred in August 1957, the Select Committee met in executive session to restructure its organizations and set its agenda for the future. To guide the Select Committee's investigations in the future, McClellan established a set of eleven areas of investigation for the committee, nine of which involved labor misdeeds and only one of which involved management misbehavior (preventing workers from organizing unions). Under the new guidelines, the Select Committee's schedule of hearings slowed. In January 1958, Chairman McClellan asked for and received permission from the Senate to extend the deadline for completing the committee's work for another year. But the main focus of the committee for the first half of the year was the United Auto Workers. Republicans on the Select Committee, notably Barry Goldwater, had for several months in late 1957 accused Robert Kennedy of covering up extensive corruption in the UAW. A second set of hearings into the UAW in September 1959 lasted just six days, and once more uncovered no evidence of UAW malfeasance. The September 1959 hearings were the last public hearings the embarrassed committee ever held. In February 1959, the Select Committee's attention turned to an investigation of organized crime. McClellan had won yet another one-year extension of the Select Committee's existence in January, giving it additional time for more investigations. Although McClellan wanted to further investigate organized crime, the Select Committee had reached the limits of its jurisdiction and no further investigations were made. By September 1959, it was clear that the Select Committee was not developing additional information to justify continued operation. A second interim report was released in August 1959 once again denouncing the Teamsters and Jimmy Hoffa. Robert F. Kennedy resigned as the Select Committee's chief counsel on September 11, 1959, and joined Senator John F. Kennedy's presidential campaign as campaign manager. Committee members became more involved in passing legislation to deal with the abuses uncovered. Although his committee had already been dissolved by 1960, McClellan began a related three-year investigation in 1963 into the union benefit plans of labor leader
George Barasch, alleging misuse and diversion of $4,000,000 of benefit funds. McClellan's notable failure to find any legal wrongdoing led to his introduction of several pieces of new legislation including McClellan's own bill on October 12, 1965, setting new fiduciary standards for plan trustees. Senator
Jacob K. Javits (R) of New York also introduced bills in 1965 and 1967 increasing regulation on welfare and pension funds to limit the control of plan trustees and administrators. Provisions from all three bills ultimately evolved into the guidelines enacted in the
Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). ==Disbandment and legislative and other outcomes==