Weldon Lamar Mathis (April 2, 1926 – October 20, 2001) was an American labor leader. He was secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters from 1985 to 1991. After Teamsters president Jackie Presser took a leave of absence for health reasons, Mathis was interim president from May 5, 1988 - July 18, 1988. He was defeated for the presidency in an executive council vote, and served out the rest of his term as secretary-treasurer before retiring. Early career Weldon Mathis was born in Sylvester, Georgia in 1926. He served in the United States Army in World War II. Mathis joined the Teamsters in 1946. Mathis' Teamster career began when he was elected business agent for Local 728 in Atlanta, Georgia, in 1950. He was elected the local's secretary-treasurer in 1953 and its president in 1956. He remained the local's president, even though he held additional national offices as well, until 1976. In 1957 he was hired by the Teamsters' Southern Conference to be an organizer. He left that post in 1967 when he was hired as an organizer for the international union. Mathis was appointed a vice president of the international union in 1972 to fill an empty seat. He was elected 1976 and re-elected in 1981. In 1967, president Frank Fitzsimmons appointed Mathis as his executive assistant. In 1978, Fitzsimmons appointed him director of the union's Building Material and Construction Department. Secretary-treasurer In 1985, Mathis was elected secretary-treasurer of the Teamsters. In 1986, Presser won an amendment to the Teamsters' constitution so that the secretary-treasurer rather than the First Vice President would become interim president. Presser secretly consulted the Federal Bureau of Investigation about Mathis before making him secretary-treasurer. The FBI said he was not involved with organized crime. Ten days after he was named interim president, Mathis resigned as president of Local 728. The United States Department of Labor was investigating him at the time due to allegations of vote fraud in his last re-election bid. Interim president When Teamster president Jackie Presser was diagnosed with cancer and took a four-month leave of absence on May 5, 1988, Mathis was named interim president. Presser was subsequently diagnosed with brain cancer, setting off a power struggle within the union. The members of the union's freight and warehouse and its air freight divisions voted overwhelmingly against their respective three-year national contracts after Mathis took over. But Mathis declared each contract "ratified" because the