ABSTRACT
The Department of Labor began an investigation of the Teamsters Union Central States Pension Fund in late 1975. The Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations examined the Labor Department’s inquiry in public hearings held on August 25 and 26 and September 29 and 30, 1980. Equally important, the statute gave the Labor Department unprecedented access to and authority over employee benefit trusts such as the Central States pension fund. The Department of Labor’s first investigation of the Central States pension fund began in 1975 with the creation of the Special Investigations Staff whose initial assignment was to make inquiry into the fund. The Labor Department investigation would be the first ever undertaken under the recently passed pension reform act the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. The Internal Revenue Service, whose cooperation James D. Hutchinson had called essential and necessary if the inquiry was to succeed, declined to join the Labor Department inquiry.
