Govt aims to remove Teamsters’ leaders

Press, 12 June 1987, Page 6

Govt aims to remove Teamsters’ leaders

NZPA-Reuter Washington The United States Justice Department has prepared an unprecedented lawsuit to oust the leaders of the scandal-ridden Teamsters, putting the nation’s largest trade union under Government trusteeship. = Department officials said the planned lawsuit would be the most dramatic move ever taken by the United States Government. in its effort to rid the 1.6-million-member union of alleged criminal influence. ’ Law enforcement authorities have linked the powerful Teamsters to the Mafia for more than 30 years. They said the civil suit would be aimed at forcing the Teamster’s President Jackie Presser — already under indictment on racketeering and embezzlement charges — and the 20 other members of the union’s hierarchy from office. An entire national union

has never been placed under a court-supervised trusteeship on the ground that it was controlled by organised crime. Three out of four previous Teamster presidents have been convicted of crimes and one of them, James Hoffa, mysteriously disappeared in 1975 in what authorities believe was a murder ordered by the Mafia. The officials said the suit would not be filed until after the completion of the racketeering trial in New York of an alleged “mob” chieftain, Anthony “Fat Tony” Salerno, and 11 others. An underworld informant testified at the trial that reputed Mafia bosses in New York and Chicago helped choose Presser and his predecessor, Roy Williams, who was convicted of bribing a United States senator. The officials said the Justice Department may hold off on the civil racketeering suit until the cripiinal trial in Cleveland

of Presser involving an alleged payroll-padding scheme that covered 10 years. “A corruption conviction of Presser would be more icing on the cake. We’re in no hurry,” a Justice Department official told Reuters. The Teamsters, the only major union to support President Reagan in the 1980 and 1984 elections, denounced* the planned Government takeover as a “calculated political ploy designed to take the pressure of numerous problems off the Administration.

"Organised crime has never, does not today and never will control the international union,” a Teamster spokesman, Duke Zeller, said In a statement.

“This Is nothing but an obviously -’ specious attempt to interfere with the free . trade union movement It is insulting to us that the Government wotd|l even consider such litigation,” he said. j