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Local union elections

UDR Story

  • DOL Rules on IUOE Local Election Complaints

    As we reported in the July/August 2010 issue of Union Democracy Review (UDR 186), Finn Pette the former financial secretary of Local 501 of the International Union of Operating Engineers, had launched a campaign for local business manager. However, he was not allowed to run because he had earlier been "convicted" on trumped up charges.  In a recent decision, the DOL has filed suit to void the election and conduct a rerun under its supervision.

  • Court Orders NYSNA Winners Seated

    In August 2011, the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) conducted an election for a number of its officers and directors at large. The anti-incumbent slate won every contested seat, thereby gaining control of the Board of Directors.  According to NYSNA bylaws, they were supposed to be declared elected at the union's annual membership meeting in September and their terms were to commence at the meeting adjournment.  But they were not seated until October 27, and it took a federal lawsuit to do it.  What happened?  According to the Judge Richard J.

  • Shorts: voting machines, L.A. Operating Engineers, New Mexico Machinists

    Electronic voting machines: Their use still creates problems and raises questions. The New York Times, June 28, reports on some of the latest. Represented by the NYU Brennan Center for Justice, the NAACP and the Working Families Party are in court challenging the use of new machines scheduled for the coming elections in New York State. They charge that thousands of votes could be disqualified because of ambiguous instructions on overvoting.

  • Test case in Hawaii: More respect for members’ rights in IBEW?

    Just when it seemed that the air was lightening up inside the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers and there might be a budding new tolerance for the give and take of dissent, along comes Local 1357, the 1,200-member local in Honolulu. Liane Miwa, shop steward back in the 90s and later a unit chairperson, now faces charges in the local for her e-mail message addressed to "working members of the IBEW" asking for their "help" in posing various questions to the union.

  • In Painters DC 7: Almost wins top job but barred for 5 years

    Steve Schreiner did not begin his career as a painter in 1994 with the intent of being a union democracy reformer. It just seems to be the way it turned out. But then, after organizing hundreds of new members into the local, he never expected to be fined $1,500 in 2009 and suspended for five years.

  • Engineers L. 98 disqualifies rivals, avoids elections

    The business manager of the 1,200-member Local 98 of the International Union of Operating Engineers in Massachusetts glided in easily to a second term this year because there was no one on the ballot against him. Todd Downey tried to run but was disqualified. No election necessary. Ken Moulton, a critic of business manager Eugene Melville, tried to run for president, the second highest spot, but he too was disqualified. Grounds for Moulton's disqualification? He was disqualified because he had been nominated by Todd Downey who was disqualified.

  • Appeals court backs union curbs on the internet

    The U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia has upheld a union rule that places new burdens on candidates who want to use their own independent web sites to campaign for union office. The court's decision gives the green light to those nervous union officials who hope to develop new ways to limit the potential of the internet as an instrument for union democracy.

  • Steelworker battles for democracy in ILA L. 2038

    At 25, Kensey Alsman was a millwright at Bethlehem Steel serving as an observer to get a fair election for Ed Sadlowski in his 1976 insurgent run for international president of the Steelworkers union. Now at 59, having retired, only to see his health care and pension go down with the bankrupted company, Alsman is back in a mill, this time at Beta Steel in Indiana where he is a member of the International Longshoremen's Association, battling for fair elections and democracy in ILA Local 2038.

  • Quest for democracy persists inside SEIU

    While attention is riveted on the bitter battle in California between the Service Employees International Union and the new National Union of Healthcare Workers, many SEIU members who are not involved in that conflict are convinced that their road to union reform remains inside the SEIU in a continuing campaign to democratize the union. And they can report some successes, notably in Massachusetts Local 888 and in California Local 521.At the SEIU convention in June last year, rank and filers from several locals came together in a reform caucus, SMART --- for SEIU Members Active for Reform Today. The caucus organized as a permanent body after the convention.

Book page

  • How to Get an Honest Union Election (excerpt)

    "How can we get a fair and square election in our local?" We hear that question more and more at the Association for Union Democracy; and it is not easy to answer, which is why we have decided to print this little booklet. If your union's constitution and bylaws already provide reasonably democratic election rules, and if your leadership is fair-minded enough to enforce them impartially, your troubles are mostly over. But, then you wouldn't be asking the question.

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