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From the June-July 2004 issue of UDR #151
Court
forces Ironworkers to democratize its constitutions
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.
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