Made in the wake of the McClellan Committee hearings, this film by the International Brotherhood of Teamsters / Teamsters Union attempts to defend the organization against charges brought against it by Senate investigators including counsel Robert Kennedy (see 4: The film uses the premise of a presentation at the fictitious National Council for Individual Freedom as a device to present outtakes from the hearings. Some of the people seen on camera include Senator Robert Kennedy, Harold J. Gibbons (5:00), James Hoffa known as Jimmy Hoffa (26:00 minutes),
The United States Senate Select Committee on Improper Activities in Labor and Management (also known as the McClellan Committee) was a select committee created by the United States Senate on January 30, 1957, and dissolved on March 31, 1960. The select committee was directed to study the extent of criminal or other improper practices in the field of labor-management relations or in groups of employees or employers, and to suggest changes in the laws of the United States that would provide protection against such practices or activities. It conducted 253 active investigations, served 8,000 subpoenas for witnesses and documents, held 270 days of hearings, took testimony from 1,526 witnesses (343 of whom invoked the Fifth Amendment), and compiled almost 150,000 pages of testimony. At the peak of its activity in 1958, 104 persons worked for the committee.
The select committee’s work led directly to the enactment of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (Public Law 86-257, also known as the Landrum-Griffin Act) on September 14, 1959.
Much of the Permanent Subcommittee’s work focused on a scandal which emerged in 1956 in the powerful trade union, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. In the mid-1950s, Midwestern Teamster leader Jimmy Hoffa began an effort to unseat Dave Beck, the union’s international president. In October 1955, mobster Johnny Dio met with Hoffa in New York City and the two men conspired to create as many as 15 paper locals (fake local unions which existed only on paper) to boost Hoffa’s delegate totals. When the paper locals applied for charters from the international union, Hoffa’s political foes were outraged. A major battle broke out within the Teamsters over whether to charter the locals, and the media attention led to investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.
Beck and other Teamster leaders subsequently challenged the authority of the Permanent Subcommittee to investigate the union by arguing that the Senate’s Labor and Public Welfare Committee had jurisdiction over labor racketeering, not Government Operations. McClellan objected to the transfer of his investigation to the Labor Committee because he felt the Labor chairman, Senator John F. Kennedy, was too close to union leaders and would not thoroughly investigate organized labor
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This film is part of the Periscope Film LLC archive, one of the largest historic military, transportation, and aviation stock footage collections in the USA. Entirely film backed, this material is available for licensing in 24p HD, 2k and 4k. For more information visit http://www.PeriscopeFilm.com
