2 Top Teamster Officials Linked to Mob, Court Investigator Says

Teamsters Union President William J. McCarthy and Joseph (Joe T) Trerotola, head of the union’s Eastern Conference, have continued to associate with known members of organized crime in violation of a federal court agreement, according to a court-appointed investigator in charge of enforcing the agreement.

The charges were filed by Charles Carberry, an attorney who acts as the union’s special investigations officer as part of a consent order signed by the Teamsters and the Justice Department two years ago to settle the government’s massive civil racketeering suit against the union.

The union’s attorney on Friday dismissed the accusations--which could lead to McCarthy being expelled from the union--as a minor misunderstanding.

However, regardless of how the accusations are settled, they figure to cause major ripples in the increasingly turbulent political struggle for leadership of the nation’s largest trade union.

Under the 1989 court settlement, the Teamsters this year will elect a president by direct rank-and-file balloting for the first time in the union’s history. Ever since McCarthy announced last fall that he would not seek reelection, the leadership of the union has split into several factions, each eager to suggest that their rivals are tarnished by the Teamsters’ well-publicized legacy of corruption.

McCarthy has endorsed a slate headed by R. V. Durham, a North Carolina Teamster. Trerotola, of New York, a powerful East Coast figure in the union, has thrown his weight behind Walter Shea, a union vice president from Washington. Other candidates include Ron Carey, a reform candidate from New York, and William Genoese, former head of the Teamster airline division.

A recent poll commissioned by Shea found rank-and-file support split between Carey, Durham and Shea, and indicated surprising strength in Carey’s grass-roots campaign. Many Teamster observers have begun suggesting that Durham, once the early favorite, faces a tough race.

The union’s nominating convention is scheduled to convene in Orlando, Fla., on June 24.

Carberry accused McCarthy of bringing “reproach” upon the union by appointing three Teamster officials who had been ordered expelled from the union to a convention committee on the union’s constitution.

Carberry said Trerotola had “deliberately failed” to investigate the known mob ties of three union officers in New York.

Last week, Carberry accused Michael Riley, president of the Teamsters’ Southern California joint council and a member of Durham’s political slate, of covering up corruption in a Los Angeles union local.

Those accused face punishment ranging from fines to expulsion, to be determined by Frederick B. Lacey, the court-appointed administrator overseeing the union.

The three men appointed as committee members by McCarthy--Jack Yager, Theodore Cozza and George Vitale--had been ordered out of the Teamsters by Lacey. He accused Yager and Cozza of having known associations with mob figures, while Vitale was ordered removed for past embezzlement convictions.

James T. Grady, Teamsters general counsel, said McCarthy had already pledged to retract the Yager, Cozza and Vitale appointments if Lacey requested it.