The Price of Advice

For 45-year-old Merlyn Stuart Pitzele (pronounced Pit-sell-lee), the rewards of a lifetime in and around the labor movement have been considerable. A natty dresser and nifty talker, Pitzele is Business Week labor editor, was Dwight Eisenhower's labor adviser, served as Tom Dewey's New York State Mediation Board chairman. Last week, appearing in the McClellan committee's investigation of labor-relations Wheeler-Dealer Nathan Shefferman (TIME, Nov. 4), Mel Pitzele owned up to still another reward. While he was editing stories, advising Ike and mediating labor disputes, he was also collecting $5,000 a year as labor adviser to Teamster Boss Dave Beck.

Advice to Beck. Pitzele explained to the committee, took the form of scrutinizing Teamster publications to suggest improvement, thinking up ways of bettering employer relationships and helping Beck root out rotten elements in the massive union he had taken over. But, said Pitzele sadly, the more reforms he suggested, the less he saw Beck and the more he had to deal through Nate Shefferman. who was paying Pitzele's Teamster retainer through the infamous Shefferman Labor Relations Associates firm. Pitzele saw nothing wrong in Shefferman's paying him ("This is an unusual union, and these are unusual people"). But as the Teamster crooks grew fatter, he did begin to see something incongruous in Beck's and Shefferman's pious explanation that the Teamster president was "giving them enough rope to hang themselves." Finally, in 1955, Pitzele suspected they would be left unhung, severed his relationship. Said he: "As an adviser, I was a great failure. He took none of my advice."

Pitzele steadfastly denied to the McClellan committee that there could be impropriety in advising Beck at the same time he was working for both Business Week and mediating labor disputes for New York State. "It never even occurred to me," said he, to mention his Beck bucks to the magazine or to Governor Dewey. But there were others at the hearing who were less satisfied with the ethics of the situation. Across the committee table New York's Senator Irving Ives shook his head in disbelief. Said Ives to Mel Pitzele: "You and I know each other pretty well, and I am a little surprised."

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