Court forces Ironworkers to democratize its constitutions

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After charging the officers of their Atlanta Ironworkers Local 387 with hiring hall abuses and misusing money, member Carl Bishop and elected trustee Oscar Ingram were found guilty and fined in their local on charges of slander, circulating false reports, and causing dissension. But in March, Federal Judge Gladys Kessler, in the District of Columbia, voided the penalties and ordered them reinstated with full rights. Suit on their behalf had been brought by that eminent defender of union democracy and irrepressible scourge of union bureaucracy: Arthur Fox.

The issues were so clear that the judge needed no trial; she granted summary judgment. Not only did she hold for the two Ironworkers, but she ordered the union to clean up the international constitution and forbade it to enforce those repressive provisions which, a relic of the past, clearly violated the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA).

The offending provisions, now void, are:

Three sections of Article XIX which subject members to discipline for "slander," for "attempting to incite dissatisfaction," and for "circulating false reports."

Article XXVI, Section 18, which forbids any member to "reveal any private business or proceeding of this Local Union or of the International Association...."

Article XIX, Section 4, which provides that if members sue the union without devoting at least four months to internal proceedings, they are subject to expulsion and fines "equal to the full amount of the costs incurred in the defense of any such action, together with such additional costs as the court may fix or assess...."

The union was ordered to inform its members that these provisions are now to be removed from the international constitution and are unenforceable. Nothing here breaks any new ground. Judge Kessler needed only to cite the words of many earlier federal court decisions. She writes, for example: "the prohibitions on discussing union matters with outsiders ... are so broad that whenever a union member might exercise the right to free speech guaranteed to him under the LMRDA, he is in peril of violating the provisions."

For Ironworkers, Judge Kessler's decision was a ringing reaffirmation of their rights. For the labor movement, it is a reminder of a persisting family closet scandal. Forty-five years after the adoption of the LMRDA, major unions still retain in their constitutions - and enforce them - provisions which illegally undercut the democratic rights of their members.

Back in 1997 - that's seven years ago and 38 years after the LMRDA - Al Smith, like Bishop and Ingram, had been expelled illegally from Local 387 on similar charges. It was his misfortune not to have known attorney Fox or AUD.