New reform group shaping up in DC 37, New York

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The campaign to restructure District Council 37 may be taking on new life in a new form. DC 37, with 56 locals and 120,000 members ---mostly of New York City public employees --- is affiliated with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees [AFSCME].

Back in 1998, when DC 37 was emerging from a trusteeship imposed after council officers were found guilty, and some went to jail, for stealing millions of dollars and rigging contract votes, some local officers formed the Committee for Real Change to campaign for basic reform. Council officers, now like then, are elected by votes of delegates from the locals. This system permits a few presidents of big locals, with overwhelming delegate representation on the council, to select officers and dominate the union after wheeling and dealing among themselves. The reformers, campaigning on the slogan: one member, one vote, called for the election of officers by direct membership referendum, a constitutional change that would have required endorsement by 2/3 of the council delegates. Subsequent elections left DC 37 in limbo, thwarted the reform campaign, and led to the dissolution of the reform caucus. Now Lillian Roberts, DC 37 executive director, and her team of top officers, who are hostile to the proposed change, dominate the union and control a majority of council delegates. Because of an odd constitutional rule, the opponents of Roberts control a majority on the DC 37 executive board. But Roberts runs the union; the executive board can limit her authority but it has little real power.

So it remained until September last year when council delegates met to vote. The defeat of direct elections was predetermined, because a clear majority of the delegates was against it. But that defeat gave an impulse to the formation and invigoration of a new reform movement. A rank and file group called for a picket demonstration demanding one-person one vote as the council met. About 100 DC members, including a few local officers, responded to the call. Those who organized the picket line have formed a new caucus. Unlike the former Committee for Real Change which apparently had hoped to win by convincing the incumbent local presidents, the new group proposes to change the district by campaigning for change in the locals. It plans its own district-wide newsletter. The man selected to edit the new publication is Tony Ferina, who has been a shop steward in Local 372 for six years. Since December, he has edited an independent newsletter, the Union Advocate, for Local 372 members. Local 372 would seem to be an instructive arena for reform activity. It offers a textbook illustration of the DC 37 problem.

Back around 1998, when DC 37 was immersed in scandal, Charles Hughes, the Local 372 longtime president, was convicted of stealing money, sent to jail, and expelled from the union. In 1999, Veronica Montgomery Costa, running as an insurgent, was elected president and holds the job today. With 26,000 members, Board of Education employees, it is one of the DC 37's largest, with enough clout to make her a formidable political power. She now serves as DC 37 president, one of the three top officers elected on the Lillian Roberts slate; she chairs executive board meetings. At council meetings, the 27 Local 372 delegates she controls cast 26,000 weighted votes. (They went unanimously against direct elections.)

But all that power derives from a few of the local's 26,000 members! Last July, when she was reelected Local 372 president, she got a total of only 417 votes. (Larry Davis, her challenger got 122. He ran the September insurgent picket line.) Under the current DC 37 system, those 417 votes made her local president; it propelled her into the DC presidency; it gives her 26,000 votes on the council toward the election of top officers and the defeat of direct elections. Such is the system that the new reformers hope to change.