PRESSER, JACKIE

born Aug. 6, 1926, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S. died July 9, 1988, Lakewood, Ohio American union leader, president (1983-88) of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, the nation's largest union. Presser quit school after eighth grade, joined the Navy at the age of 17, and served in World War II. He worked for a restaurant workers' union in Cleveland, where he was elected president of the local (1948) and later formed Teamsters Local 507 (1966), which grew from a dozen paint company workers to a union boasting some 6,000 warehousemen. As vice president and president of the Ohio Conference of Teamsters during the 1970s, he attempted to improve the organization's public image by sponsoring charitable activities and supporting government-sponsored job-retraining programs. After succeeding his father as international vice president of the Teamsters in 1976, he used his influence to gain a union endorsement of Ronald Reagan in the 1980 U.S. presidential election and was named labour cochairman for Reagan's inauguration. In 1983 Presser succeeded Roy Williams, who resigned as Teamsters president after being convicted of conspiring to bribe a U.S. senator. A 1986 report issued by the White House Commission on Organized Crime concluded that Presser attained the union presidency with assistance from the New York-based Genovese crime family. In 1987 Presser led the Teamsters back into the AFL-CIO after a 30-year exile. At the time of his death in 1988, Presser, along with other senior leaders of the Teamsters, was facing federal charges of embezzlement and racketeering; the suit was settled out of court in 1989.