New Teamsters Chief to Inherit Many Problems
Whomever the national executive board of the troubled Teamsters Union selects to succeed its late president, Jackie Presser, he will face not only an unprecedented federal suit to take control of the scandal-ridden union, but also a host of other difficult problems.
Presser’s death over the weekend will have no immediate impact on the Justice Department’s suit, the federal prosecutor in charge of the case said Sunday.
Rudolph W. Giuliani, the U.S. attorney in New York, who late last month filed the massive suit under the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO), told The Times that when the government charged the union with ties to organized crime, it was making “institutional allegations,” not accusations against one man.
‘Now There Are 17’
“There were 18 Teamsters defendants; now there are 17,” Giuliani said in an interview.
Meanwhile, Teamsters insiders say Weldon L. Mathis, the union’s secretary-treasurer, who served as interim president for two months during Presser’s illness, has the inside track to succeed him. However, William J. McCarthy, a Teamsters vice president in Boston, is making a serious bid for the job, and at least two other Teamsters vice presidents--Joseph Morgan of Hallandale, Fla., and Walter Shea of Washington, have expressed interest in the position.
Some sources said Mathis already has the support of a majority of the union’s board. Others said, however, that he has only eight solid votes but acknowledged there is a good chance he could pick up the necessary ninth vote. The Teamsters’ constitution provides that the successor must be picked by the board within 15 days.
The new president will have his hands full with a myriad of problems, said Charles Craypo, chairman of the University of Notre Dame economics department and a labor relations expert. He said the union has been in a state of decline since its then-President Jimmy Hoffa was convicted of jury tampering and sent to prison in 1967. In fact, the union’s membership peaked at 2.1 million in 1974.
Besides battling the government’s suit, the new president will have to deal with “growing internal dissent” and the fallout from federal deregulation of interstate trucking, which has put hundreds of companies out of business and thousands of drivers out of work, Craypo said. “Deregulation really pulled the rug out from under them in their key industry--interstate trucking,” he added.
Membership Decline
Leo Troy, a professor of economics at Rutgers University, said Presser had not been able to arrest the union’s membership decline “in the face of the competitive forces that affected the Teamsters and virtually every other union” since deregulation.
Michael J. Riley, a Teamsters vice president in Los Angeles, said the RICO suit, now scheduled for trial in late February, will dominate the new president’s agenda. “That will impede us in other efforts,” such as organizing, Riley said.
He also said the leaders of the 1.6-million-member union “will have to re-examine” a controversial Teamsters rule that permits a contract to go into effect unless it is rejected by two-thirds or more of the members voting on it. Last month, 64% of the members who voted cast ballots against the union’s new national master freight agreement but it went into effect anyhow because of the rule.
Controversy May Erupt
The controversy over the rule may erupt again later this month, when members vote on a new contract covering the nation’s 20,000 Teamsters car-haulers. A tentative agreement was signed earlier this month. But the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a Detroit-based dissident faction with 8,000 members, has come out against the pact, as have some of the leaders of a Detroit local that has twice as many car-hauling members as any other local.
Ken Paff, the chief organizer of the Teamsters for a Democratic Union, said another key test for the new president will be providing aid to 1,000 Teamsters drivers and warehousemen on strike against Flemming Foods in Northern California. “The Teamsters are very big in the food distribution industry and this strike has national significance,” Paff said.
He said he hopes the new president will put economic pressure on Flemming facilities in other parts of the country. Paff said the union’s top leader needs to “get back to basic trade union stuff that Presser wasn’t interested in.”
Rites for Presser
Presser will be buried in Cleveland on Tuesday, but labor experts may be debating his legacy for some time. It is riddled with ironies. Perhaps foremost among them is that while he had served as an FBI informant for the last decade, it was during his presidency that the government sued to take over the union because of its alleged corruption.
John Climaco, Presser’s long-time attorney and the union’s general counsel, said in a recent interview that Presser had cleared all of his top appointments with the FBI ever since becoming president of the Teamsters. That would include Mathis, whom Presser tapped as secretary-treasurer, the union’s second highest position, in 1985. Now, Mathis is one of 17 Teamsters board members whom the Justice Department is seeking to oust from office on grounds that they have either committed crimes or have allowed crimes to be committed while serving as union officials.
“What was the point of having these people cleared by the FBI?” Climaco asked.
Ties to AFL-CIO
Perhaps Presser’s principal achievement was bringing the Teamsters back into the AFL-CIO, ending the union’s 30-year exile from America’s principal labor federation because of alleged corruption.
The reaffiliation came just five months after the possibility of the RICO suit came to light. Initially, some observers thought the prospect of the suit would drive a further wedge between the Teamsters and the AFL-CIO leadership, but it brought them closer together. Even union leaders who have been critical of the Teamsters were fearful that if the RICO law was used to take over the Teamsters, it might also be used against other unions--particularly three other AFL-CIO affiliates which, in 1986, were tagged by the President’s Organized Crime Commission as having ties to the mob.
Another significant element of the Presser legacy, said Carmen Parise, director of the Teamsters’ newspaper division, is the growth of the union’s political fund called DRIVE, which he spearheaded. It is now the largest such fund in the country.
Union Backed Reagan
The Teamsters Union was the only major union to support Ronald Reagan in his two successful presidential campaigns. Presser repeatedly refused to criticize Reagan while lashing out at the Justice Department for indicting him on payroll-padding and racketeering charges in 1986 and for leaking word last year that it planned to file the RICO case.
However, Riley said Presser had told him recently that “he was not happy with his endorsements of the Reagan, Bush, Meese Administration. . . . I think he felt he could influence the Administration. When he found he couldn’t, when he found out how right-wing it was, he really soured.”
Mathis said in May that he expected the union to endorse Massachusetts Gov. Michael S. Dukakis for President, as virtually all unions are expected to do after the Democratic convention nominates him for President.
Active Since 1950
Mathis, 62, has been an active Teamster since 1950, when he became a business agent for Local 728 in Atlanta. The Justice Department has not charged that he has personal ties to organized crime. The recently filed RICO suit alleged that Mathis “used his control over Teamsters Local 728” to appoint three members of his family to union jobs.
The suit also alleges that Mathis unlawfully received “things of value” from a businessman who intended to influence Mathis’ actions relating to employee welfare benefits. Climaco, the Teamsters’ counsel, said: “Those are old, false allegations that are without merit.” The Labor Department also has been investigating charges that there were irregularities in the conduct of elections in Local 728, but no action has been taken.
Sources said Mathis has support for the presidency from board members in all four regions of the country. Most of McCarthy’s support appears to be in the East, sources said.
McCarthy, 69, is third in seniority on the Teamsters executive board, having been appointed to fill a vacancy in 1969. He has been a member of Local 25 in Charlestown, Mass., for 50 years and an officer for more than 40 years. “He’s the last of the no-rubber-stamp people in the world,” said another Teamsters leader, referring to McCarthy’s highly visible opposition to the master freight agreement earlier this year.
McCarthy, like the other members of the Teamsters board, is also accused of numerous violations of federal law in the Justice Department suit.