116 Receive More Than $100,000; Presser Gets $588,353 : Report Cites Teamster Officers’ High Pay
More than 100 Teamsters Union officers received more than $100,000 each in salaries and expenses in 1986, topped by union President Jackie Presser, who got $588,353, according to records disclosed Monday by Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a dissident group.
Ken Paff, organizing director of the 8,000-member dissident group, said that the 116 officers who got more than $100,000 each received a total of $17,376,347 for the year. The Teamsters for a Democratic Union spent two months combing through documents filed with the Labor Department in order to compile the report, he said.
$1 Million for Parties
The report disclosed also that two parties honoring Presser at the Teamsters’ convention in Las Vegas last May cost the union more than $1 million.
The Justice Department is contemplating filing suit to remove the union’s top leaders, including Presser, on the grounds that the Teamsters are dominated by organized crime.
Additionally, Presser and two longtime Teamster associates are facing federal criminal charges of siphoning off more than $700,000 of union funds over 10 years to pay men who did no work for the union.
Presser’s $588,353 was derived from payments for four jobs, according to the report. He received $269,616 as general president of the entire union and $230,221 as secretary-treasurer of Cleveland Local 507, where the payroll-padding scheme allegedly occurred. Presser was also paid $59,500 as president of Joint Council 41 of the Teamsters and $29,016 as president of the Ohio Conference of Teamsters.
The Teamsters is the only union in the United States that pays its officers salaries for performing multiple jobs. And Teamster officers, in general, are paid considerably more than those of other unions. For example, Lane Kirkland, president of the 13-million-member AFL-CIO, received a salary of $150,000 and collected $11,772 in expenses last year.
In addition to Presser, 10 Teamster officers collected more than $200,000 in salaries and expenses last year. The second highest paid officer was Harold L. Friedman, one of the other persons indicted in the payroll-padding case. He received a total of $537,919 for five separate positions, including $175,569 as president of Local 507 and $279,895 as president of the affiliated Bakery Workers Local 19. Anthony Hughes, the other Teamster indicted in the case, received $167,248 for four jobs, according to the report.
There were 12 California-based Teamsters on the list, topped by International Vice President Mike Riley at $227,444--derived from four union jobs.
Paff said the number of highly paid Teamster officers had grown markedly in the last two years. He noted that the number receiving in excess of $100,000 rose to 116 from 76 at that level two years ago.
The first of the two parties referred to in the report was a lavish affair held at Caesar’s Palace on Monday night May 19, just three days after Presser was indicted.
As guests were enjoying an open bar and a buffet of caviar, crab claws, hand-carved roast beef and petits fours, the 300-pound Presser was carried in on a modified chariot, as martial music played in the background. It was borne by four mammoth weightlifters dressed as Roman centurions, with togas and red-plumed helmets. That event, sponsored by the Eastern Conference of Teamsters, cost $647,960, according to the report. Another, held by the Central Conference of Teamsters at Bally’s Grand Hotel on the final night of the convention, cost $384,748.
Duke Zeller, public relations director of the union, who received $124,312 last year, according to the report, was away from the union’s Washington, D.C., headquarters Monday and unavailable for comment on the report, an aide said.