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From the January-February 2007 issue of Union Democracy Review #166
How the Ironworkers and Pipefitters rig trusteeships
Before the LMRDA, union-imposed trusteeships over recalcitrant locals could be forever. Under John L. Lewis, trusteeships over Miners' districts dragged out for twenty years with no end in sight. Internationals could loot the treasuries of rich trusteed locals. The federal law adopted in 1959 gave locals some protection against retaliation. Trusteeships lost any presumption of validity after 18 months. Legislators may have imagined that the law corrected most abuses, but they did not count upon the ingenious ability of top leaders to invent devices to circumvent the law. Here come the Ironworkers and the Plumbers-Pipefitters unions.
Ironworkers Local 387: This 900-member local in Atlanta, Georgia, has been under trusteeship intermittently for over 30 years. According to our records, the first dated from 1974. Then again in 1993. And again in 1998. One trusteeship would expire. After an interlude, came another. During this period the international signed contracts (denounced by some members as concessionary) without membership ratification; it put over a dues increase, and it weakened the local's control over job referrals.
But that's not all. In 2004, during one period of freedom, while the local was under scrutiny by the Labor Department, an independent-minded insurgent, James Odom, was elected to the top post of business manager. He didn't survive long. After he charged that some of the local's money had been mishandled, the local was put under trusteeship again in July 2005; Odum was removed. The trusteeship's 18 months of grace expired in January 2007. Odum says that the international wants to renew it for at least another year.
Back in 2001, when Carl Bishop and Oscar Ingram, two Local 387 members, complained about the misuse of union funds, they were charged with slander, fined, and ordered to apologize. Represented by Arthur Fox, an AUD Director, they were reinstated by order of a federal judge who voided the union charges and ordered the international to remove from its constitution the charges under which they had been charged.
This was not the first rebuke suffered by the Ironworkers union in federal court on union democracy issues. In 1987 the union constitution forbade one local union from communicating with another on union business without permission of the international executive board. After suit in federal court by two Seattle Ironworkers, who were represented by attorney Paul Levy, an AUD Director, a federal court voided the repressive provision.
Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 250:
This California local was trusteed by the international back in February 2003. The trusteeship appeared to have been "voluntarily" lifted in June 2004. But the international utilized its peremptory powers during the trusteeship period to impose new bylaws on the local: business agents, as in many other Pipefitter locals, had been elected by the membership, but the new bylaws erased that membership right and provided for the appointment of all BA's. However, the local had presumably regained its autonomy. In accordance with the provisions of the new bylaws, Loran Forbes collected the required number of signatures on a petition for a membership referendum on his proposal to restore the membership right to elect.
It was not to be. When Forbes tried to present the petition to a membership meeting, the president ruled it out of order. In defense of his ruling, he read a letter from the new international president, William P. Hite, who explained that the local did not exactly enjoy autonomy; in lifting the trusteeship, the international had imposed five years of "probation." And so no major bylaw change was permissible. Forbes charges that the "probation" is an illegal extension of the trusteeship. He faces one practical difficulty in documenting his case: his request for an actual copy of the Hite letter has been denied.
Other articles on the UA:
UA Local
375 hiring hall rule provides for member recourse
How
the Ironworkers and Pipefitters rig trusteeships
Hiring
hall procedures in the construction trades
The
eternal quest for fair hiring in construction
Last
year's scandal hangs over next Plumbers convention
Top
Plumbers international officers expelled
UA's
Maddaloni and Patchell ousted after disastrous pension investments in Florida
hotel
Interview
with UA reformer Frank Natalie
New voices at AUD construction
trades conference
Court orders Plumbers
and Fitters to remove anti-democratic rule
Pipefitters win
points in battle for democracy.
Links to UA member sites.
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