Presser Cancer Report Sets Off Power Struggle
Teamsters Union President Jackie Presser has been diagnosed as having brain cancer, touching off a power struggle over who will run the 1.7-million-member union, sources inside the organization said Saturday.
A special meeting of the Teamster executive board was called for Monday in Scottsdale, Ariz., near Phoenix, where Presser is undergoing tests to determine whether it is feasible to operate on the up to four brain tumors that have been discovered, a union source said.
But some possible Presser successors who are opposed to assumption of command by Weldon L. Mathis, the union’s secretary-treasurer and Presser’s personal choice, are planning to boycott the session, a union official said.
Federal Trial May End
Presser’s deteriorating condition appears to assure that his trial on federal labor fraud charges, previously postponed to July 12 in Cleveland, now will not take place.
On May 4, Presser, 61, then at the Cleveland Clinic undergoing tests and radiation therapy, told the executive board that he was taking a four-month leave of absence because clinic doctors had advised him to avoid all forms of stress during the radiation treatment. Presser had a malignant tumor removed from his lung in January, 1987, and then underwent radiation treatment that doctors said left him in a weakened condition and mentally confused.
But the doctors said there had been no recurrence of cancer.
Communicating with the board by way of an internal union computer hookup, Presser said Mathis would serve as president during his leave of absence as provided by the Teamsters’ constitution.
On Thursday, however, Presser checked into the Barrows Neurological Institute of St. Joseph’s Hospital in Phoenix after the brain tumors were discovered. Officials at the institute declined Saturday to release any information on Presser or to relay calls to his doctors there.
Mathis called the special meeting of the executive board to tell the other 16 members of the board of Presser’s condition. But then at least six international vice presidents on the board, led by Joseph Trerotola, sent word that they would boycott the session, although they initially had urged that the meeting be held.
None of the six could be reached Saturday, and the purpose of the anticipated boycott could not be learned. Under the union’s constitution, Mathis as secretary-treasurer fills in for Presser if he is temporarily unavailable for up to six months. After that period, the board members convene to decide if the disability is permanent and, if so, to choose a successor from among themselves.
‘Final Hurrah’
“It’s probably the final hurrah of the old guard,” said one union source, referring to the boycott plan. “The problem is too many of that group want the (top) position.”
In addition to Trerotola, those said to be planning to boycott the Scottsdale meeting include Joseph W. Morgan of Hallandale, Fla.; William J. McCarthy of Boston; T. R. Cozza of Pittsburgh, Pa.; Donald Peters of Chicago, and Walter Shea of Washington.
Morgan and Peters were vying to become president when the executive conference selected Presser in 1983 to replace Roy L. Williams, who was convicted of conspiring to bribe former Sen. Howard W. Cannon (D-Nev.). Cannon was not charged with accepting any bribes.
Trerotola, known as “Joe T,” would have preferred that “Jackie just resign,” said one union source familiar with the power struggle now under way. Noting that Trerotola, who is in his late 70s, is “too old” to succeed Presser, the source said that “Joe T is making his play as a power broker.”
Trerotola, as head of the Teamsters Eastern Conference, was the official host of the $675,000 party at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas in May, 1986, where Presser was carried around the hall in a sedan chair by four muscular men dressed as Roman centurions.
Emergence of Shea Seen
An official of Teamsters for a Democratic Union, a dissident group that has been fighting to make the union more democratic, predicted Saturday that Shea would emerge as the anointed candidate of Teamster board members seeking to block Mathis.
Shea, who has been with the union since 1957, served as executive assistant to the late Frank E. Fitzsimmons when he headed the union and to Williams.
Harold Friedman, an international vice president, is making a separate effort to succeed Presser, a Teamster official said, noting that Friedman had called other executive board members Saturday and asserted that he had the votes on the panel to replace Presser.
Friedman is a co-defendant with Presser and Anthony Hughes in the labor fraud case, in which they are accused of siphoning $700,000 from Presser and Friedman’s home local in Cleveland to pay the salaries of mob-related “ghost employees” who did no work.
U.S. District Judge George White has set a June 3 pretrial hearing in that case and has indicated he will proceed with trying Friedman and Hughes if Presser cannot go on.
Mathis announced to members of Local 728 in Atlanta on Saturday that he is resigning as president of the local, a post he has held for many years. Members at the meeting quoted Mathis as saying there was “too much pressure” generated by serving as local president and heading the international union.
Offers Apologies
“He apologized two or three times for not being able to run the local properly for the past year,” said Doug Mims, a 728 member who attended the meeting. Mims said Mathis left the meeting, saying he had to catch a plane for Phoenix.
After Mathis left, his son, Lamar, who has been secretary-treasurer of the local and its second-ranking officer, announced that the local would be split in two, and that half of the 10,000 members would be placed in the newly formed Local 928.
The move, sources at the local said, could be linked to a Labor Department investigation of Local 728’s elections last year. The split in the local could remove Lamar Mathis and his brother, Tony, a business agent who also is moving to the new local from 728 at a time when the Labor Department might file suit challenging election practices.
Mims and others have alleged that there were numerous irregularities in the way elections in statewide Local 728 had been conducted. Labor Department officials could not be reached for comment Saturday.
According to 1987 Labor Department records, Weldon Mathis drew $51,459 in salary, allowances and expenses for serving as local president in 1986. Lamar Mathis drew $60,893 and Tony Mathis received $37,048 from the local posts.
Ronald J. Ostrow reported from Washington and Henry Weinstein from Los Angeles. Staff writer Robert L. Jackson in St. Louis also contributed to this story.