Philadelphia Teamster Chief Retires

Maurice Schurr, the Teamsters Union’s top official in the Philadelphia area for the last decade, retired Wednesday from its executive board amid an effort by new Teamsters President William McCarthy to oust him on charges of corruption.

Schurr, 75, agreed to retire, effective Nov. 1, as the 18-member board was preparing at its meeting in Greenelefe, Fla., to vote on internal union charges brought against him last month by McCarthy, said Duke Zeller, a spokesman for the union.

In July, Schurr had sided against McCarthy in a power fight with Secretary-Treasurer Weldon Mathis of Atlanta over who would succeed Jackie Presser as president of the 1.6 million-member union.

Schurr was convicted in June, 1984, on charges of taking illegal payoffs from wholesale food employers with Teamster contracts in the Philadelphia area. He served a brief prison sentence in 1986.

His conviction was cited repeatedly as an example of Teamster corruption in a civil suit filed by the Justice Department last June in New York to place the entire union under a court-appointed trustee.