Dave Beck, one of the most powerful and outspoken labor leaders spanning the middle of this century and the first of a series of Teamster presidents to go to prison in the 1960s, died Sunday in Northwest Hospital. He was 99.
Beck was the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from 1952 to 1957, when he defied a U.S. Senate hearing on union corruption by invoking the Fifth Amendment protection against self-incrimination 117 times.Built almost of the same tough metal as James R. Hoffa, who succeeded him as the unchallenged head of the Teamsters, Beck was convicted in 1959 of federal income-tax evasion and state embezzlement charges for stealing $1,900 from the sale of a union-owned Cadillac. He served 30
months in prison before being paroled in 1964.
"A certain number of people will say labor leaders are crooks," he said in 1986, when he was 92. "They'll say it more about the Teamsters because we are the largest union in the world."
After his release, Beck won a full pardon in 1975 from President Gerald R. Ford and was warmly received every time he appeared at Teamster conventions and union halls.
Beck, a millionaire, lived comfortably on a $50,000-a-year Teamster pension and the lucrative income from real estate investments.