by Josh Soffler

As we reported in Union Democracy Review 225 and 222, candidates for union office who file election protests with the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS) of the US Dept. of Labor (DoL), but lose this protest, often wait nearly a year to receive a Statement of Reasons (SoR) from the DoL. The Statement of Reasons is a critical document as it is the only document from the DoL that explains why the complainant’s protest was not acted upon.

AUD has continued to receive calls from some union officer candidates frustrated with the lack of timely information from the DoL. Since 2022, we have reviewed the DoL’s publicly available list of Statements of Reasons every year. We found that complainants, as of 2023, had an average wait of 300 days to get the SoR. This represented a decrease from 2022 in which it took an average wait of 326 days to get the SoR. This average decrease of 26 days was a discovery that we hoped would continue into 2024.

As 2024 has come to an end, we look again at the timeliness of issuance of the Statements of Reasons in Union Election Cases. Unfortunately, the reduction in time seen in 2023 did not continue into 2024.

As the table above shows, the average waiting time for receiving the SoR is up to 332 days. This represents an increase of 32 days compared to 2023. Furthermore, if we exclude two of the 41 SoRs issued in 2024 that had unusually long waits of over 850 days (and exclude five such outliers from 2023) the average wait still increased by 45 days, from 242 to 287.

In UDR 225, we noted that the Dept. cited improved coordination between the OLMS and the DoL’s Office of the Solicitor helped to explain the improvement in 2023 (the latter office writes the statement based on material from OLMS’s investigation). In response to our findings for 2024, a former OLMS regional director commented; “After filing a complaint regarding the election of a union officer, which is investigated and ultimately closed, members should receive a Statement of Reasons (SoR)…The response to members should be prompt. Lawsuits must be filed in federal court within 60 days of submitting an election complaint for action cases; therefore, it should not take an extended amount of time to issue an SoR for a closed case.”

Following the 2024 presidential election and the change in DoL’s adminstration, we have yet to see how the Statements’ timeliness might change in 2025. AUD will continue to monitor and shed light on this important part of DoL’s work, and as a result hope that the DoL can better address this painstaking wait that union members must experience merely to understand why their complaints were denied.
60 days of submitting an election complaint for action cases; therefore, it should not take an extended amount of time to issue an SoR for a closed case.”

Following the 2024 presidential election and the change in DoL’s adminstration, we have yet to see how the Statements’ timeliness might change in 2025. AUD will continue to monitor and shed light on this important part of DoL’s work, and as a result hope that the DoL can better address this painstaking wait that union members must experience merely to understand why their complaints were denied.