In Steel Local 12-369: A woman, and black, it’s tough to be local president

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Stephanie Green is a woman and one of the few African-Americans in the 1,200-member Steelworkers Local 12-369, mostly white, in the state of Washington. As soon as she was elected local president in November 2005, the executive board began to give her a hard time. They refused to allow her to take office, but she succeeded in getting installed in April 2006 after a successful appeal to the international and the DOL. Still, it's been a hard time ever since. The record is spelled out in the complaint filed on her behalf by attorney Janet Taylor in Federal court in April 2008 which is the main basis for this account:

Her unplanned career of embattlement opened in October 2004 when she criticized the local for failure to process the grievance of racial minority workers who had been assigned to especially dangerous jobs. Shortly afterwards, she was elected job steward, ousting the white incumbent, only to find that the executive board reduced her authority as steward and barred her from meetings ordinarily attended by stewards. Her complaints that E-board members were creating a hostile work environment were ignored.

She was elected local president in November but the E-Board refused to allow her to take office. She was finally installed about five months later, in April 2006, after complaining to the international and the U.S. Labor Department. But her troubles continued. The previous president was paid $103,898 a year. She gets nothing! She was denied the use of office space that had been available to the previous president.

Again according to her complaint in Federal court, Green began to make changes in the operation of the local: increasing membership involvement, reducing expenses, making financial information available, shifting decision making from the E-Board and business reps to the membership. E-Board members filed two separate charges against her.

Charging harassment because of her race and gender, Green filed charges against the local and international before the EEOC, which granted her the right to sue.

With 14 separate collective bargaining agreements and a diversity of employers, most private, some public, this amalgamated local would not be easy to administer under the best conditions. In an added complexity, many local members work at nuclear sites where their formal bargaining agent is not their own Local 12-369 but the area Hanford Atomic Metal Trades Council. Green was only one of the many delegates to HAMTC, a representative body of locals from several internationals.

When Green took office as local president in 2006, she was dismayed to discover that some 200 grievances of her members at nuclear sites were languishing unprocessed in HAMTC's files. But when she tried to revive them, she hit a stone wall of opposition from the top HAMTC officials who, she suspected, were averse to irritating management. (One thing led to another until they finally stripped her of all related authority.)

On August 13, 2007, the international imposed a trusteeship over Green's Local 12-369. It is difficult to fight trusteeships, which are presumed valid for 18 months. [See story in this issue on the IAM trusteeship in Bath, Maine.] Less than a month later, in an unusual turn, Federal Judge Robert H. Whaley issued an injunction that abolished the trusteeship and restored the elected local officers.

In April this year, despite all her troubles with the E-board, the international, and HAMTC, Green was reelected local president. It is not clear yet where the new E-board majority stands.

Meanwhile, represented by attorney Taylor, Green is back in federal court in a suit against the international, HAMTC, and some members of the old local executive board. She asks the judge to end the curbs on her powers in the local and restore her rights as the local's representative at HAMTC.