Teamsters Reportedly Would Back Dukakis

CHICAGO — The executive board of the 1.6-million-member Teamsters Union is set to endorse presidential hopeful Michael S. Dukakis, which would be its first endorsement of a Democratic presidential contender in two decades, a published report said Sunday.

Sources close to the union’s 21-member executive board said Teamsters officials like Dukakis’ views on boosting employment and his support of legislation requiring employers to give 60 days’ notice of plant closings, the Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday.

If the board does endorse Dukakis, it would come once he has won his party’s nomination and would mark the first endorsement by the Teamsters of a Democratic presidential contender since the union’s executive board backed Hubert H. Humphrey in 1968.

Teamsters members voted overwhelmingly in favor of President Reagan’s 1984 reelection bid.

Support for Dukakis might be an indication of the waning influence of Teamsters President Jackie Presser, who has taken a four-month leave of absence because of poor health. Presser, who suffers from brain and lung cancer, also faces a July 12 trial in Cleveland on embezzlement and racketeering charges.

Presser was expected to push for union backing of Vice President George Bush, the expected Republican nominee. However, Weldon Mathis, 62, the union’s more liberal secretary-treasurer and acting head, appeared to have succeeded in steering support to Dukakis, the newspaper said.

“This is disappointing news,” said Stephen Hart, Bush’s acting press secretary. “No team has done more for the labor force than President Reagan and Vice President Bush. The work force has increased considerably. Interest rates have gone down to 9%. The economy is in great shape.”

Hart said Bush agrees employers should give their workers advance notice of plant closings but believes that such notice should not be written into federal law.

Bush, who is spending the week at his vacation retreat in Kennebunkport, Me., met with his close advisers Sunday to continue mapping his strategy for the November election.

The likely Republican nominee’s showing in recent opinion polls, in which he trails Dukakis in a one-on-one match-up--in double digits in some surveys--has advisers worried about his prospects.

Bush met with Republican Govs. John H. Sununu of New Hampshire and James R. Thompson of Illinois to plan how to depart from some Reagan Administration policies.

“The vice president is a man firmly committed to setting his own agenda,” Thompson said after the meeting. “I don’t think there was any doubt about that at all.”

Sununu said that “the domestic side is going to be one of the strong points of the Bush campaign and the Bush presidency” in contrast with what he said were “management failures of the Dukakis Administration” as governor of Massachusetts.