Called a Moses : For Presser, Adulation, 5 More Years

Teamsters Union President Jackie Presser is facing federal racketeering and embezzlement charges, but at the union’s convention here this week he has been treated more like a reigning sultan than a potential prison inmate.

As one sign of this esteem, Presser, 59, was overwhelmingly elected to a new five-year term as president of the 1.6-million-member organization Wednesday, brushing aside a token challenge from C. Sam Theodus, president of a Teamsters local in Cleveland, Presser’s hometown.

Presser has been lavishly praised by a score of speakers throughout the convention. “He’s given our union a fresh spirit and greater enthusiasm than it’s had in many years,” said delegate Donald Sawochka of Gary, Ind., in a nominating speech Wednesday.

Other delegates have been even more effusive.

“You’ve got a Moses, you’ve got a Martin Luther King,” Teamster Moses Jackson of New Jersey told his follow delegates in describing Presser.

The Presser personality cult has been well nurtured here in other ways. Sales of the $35 “Official Jackie Presser Quartz Analog Watch,” featuring Presser’s photo and signature and billed in a flyer as a “True Collector’s Item,” were brisk.

Presser was feted at several evening social events, perhaps the most extravagant of which was hosted by Joseph Trerotola, director of the union’s Eastern Conference, at Caesars Palace Monday night.

As guests partook of an open bar and a sumptuous buffet of caviar, crab claws, shrimp, hand-carved roast beef, petits fours and other delectables, the “General President,” as many union staffers refer to him, made his entrance.

The 300-pound Presser was carried in on a modified chariot borne by four mammoth local weightlifters dressed as Roman centurions, with togas and red-plummed gold helmets.

“When Joe T. invited me here, he didn’t tell me I was going to be carried by four gorillas,” Presser said from the bandstand as martial music played in the background. He then was lifted back into the chariot and carried out as he shook the hands of delighted admirers.

This was the closest look that reporters at the convention have been able to get of Presser, who has given no press conferences.

Television cameras were admitted into the auditorium where the delegates are gathered for the first time Wednesday afternoon for Presser’s election. Previously, television personnel had to wait until late in the afternoon to get selected video feeds from the union. Reporters also have been prohibited from using tape recorders in the auditorium.

Most Teamster delegates approached by reporters have praised Presser for bringing “new ideas” to the union, being a good negotiator, improving the union’s image with charity work, installing a more sophisticated public relations operation and for supporting them during strikes.

Jerry Vercruse, chief executive of Teamsters Local 630 in Los Angeles, said Presser had been “very supportive” during the Southern California supermarket strike last year.

When Presser was nominated Wednesday morning he strongly urged all the delegates to return to vote in the afternoon even though there was no doubt about the outcome. “Today is the day to show the American people we’re not only the No. 1 one union in North America (in membership), but that we’re also the No. 1 union in democracy as well.”

In speeches before the vote, Presser was hailed as the union’s best president since James R. Hoffa, who led the Teamsters from 1957 to 1971. Hoffa’s helmsmanship of the union was ended by a federal criminal conviction, as was that of his predecessor, Dave Beck.

The voting started at 1 p.m. At 2:30, the vote count stood at 615 for Presser and 13 for Theodus and Theodus conceded. The final vote count was 1,729 for Presser and 24 for Theodus.

After the voting was completed, Presser was joined on the podium by his wife of 2 1/2 weeks, the former Cynthia Jarabek, his former secretary.

Addressing the delegates, Presser noted that the Teamsters Union now represents a wide variety of workers. “We’re the most diversified union in North America,” he said. “. . . Teamster members have our confidence because we have not let them down.”

It marked the second time in five years that the Teamsters have elected as president a man under indictment by the federal government, a move apparently unprecedented in American labor history.

Presser’s predecessor, Roy L. Williams, was elected president in 1981, just after he was indicted for attempting to bribe a U.S. senator. Williams was convicted in 1983 and is currently in a federal prison. Presser was appointed to succeed Williams by the union’s 17-member executive board at a special meeting April 21, 1983.

Presser’s Teamsters career began in 1952, when he became organizer for Joint Council 41 in Cleveland, according to his official union biography.

His progress up the union ladder got a substantial boost in 1966 when his father, William Presser, then president of the Ohio Conference of Teamsters, created a new local, number 507, and installed his son as chief executive.

In 1976, Presser succeeded his father as international vice president of the Teamsters, and in 1981 became president of both Joint Council 41 and the Ohio Conference of Teamsters.

He still holds three union jobs in Ohio in addition to the union presidency, drawing a combined salary of $550,000.

As union president, Presser has built up the union’s political operation by hiring more lobbyists and increasing contributions to candidates; expanded its computer network for communication with virtually all 700 locals; opened an office in Taiwan to deal with international trade issues; and continued the high-profile role he played in charitable organizations in Cleveland. He currently is national vice president of the Muscular Dystrophy Assn.

Presser also makes frequent public appearances as a speaker. Earlier this year he addressed the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania.

Presser’s opponent, Theodus, announced his candidacy less than a month ago and acknowledged from the start that he had no chance of winning. Theodus said he was running “as a matter of principle” in an effort to challenge union voting procedures that provide that no officer above the level of local president be directly elected by rank-and-file vote.

Attempts on Tuesday to change those procedures were vanquished by voice votes. .

Theodus also said he objected to Presser’s style and the fact that Presser has boasted that he is a millionaire.

“He’s a businessman, not a union man,” said Theodus, whose local formally asked Presser to resign in the fall of 1983.

The local made that move after Presser had negotiated a controversial “relief rider” to the National Freight Agreement, the master contract for interstate trucking. The rider created a two-tier wage scale that provided lower pay and fewer fringe benefits for newly hired drivers and Teamsters recalled from layoff.

Presser defended the agreement by saying it would create new Teamster jobs and “save” the unionized sector of the trucking business, which shrank considerably after deregulation of the trucking industry in 1980.

Nonetheless in an unprecedented action, rank-and-file truck drivers in September, 1983, voted down the relief rider by 94,000 to 13,000. Last year, however, Teamster truck drivers approved by a 52% margin a new Master Freight Agreement that does include a two-tier wage system.

Presser was indicted by a federal grand jury in Cleveland last Friday on charges that he and two longtime union associates siphoned off more than $700,000 over 10 years from the Teamsters and the Bakery Workers Union in a payroll-padding scheme. He has declared his innocence. In a related action, an FBI supervisor was indicted for alleging making false statements to the FBI and Justice Department about Presser’s role as a “top echelon” informant for the FBI.

The other union officials indicted Friday were Harold Friedman, 64, a vice president of the international union who was easily reelected (as were the union’s other top officers) Wednesday, and Anthony Hughes, 50, recording secretary for Teamsters Local 507 in Cleveland and a business agent for Bakery Workers Local 19.

At a federal trial in Kansas City last year, Presser’s predecessor, Williams, testified that he had been beholden to organized crime while in office and accused Presser of similar links to the mob. Presser has denied the charge.

None of this has had much effect here. Delegates questioned by reporters often said they either had not heard about Williams’ remarks or did not believe them. They also said they did not give any credence to a recent report by President Reagan’s Organized Crime Commission that the union had longtime ties to the underworld.

“I don’t pay it any mind because I know what it (the union) has done for me and my family,” said John B. Allen, an Atlanta delegate. “It doesn’t bother me in the least.”