UNION DEMOCRACY, THE DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, & THE SADLOWSKI COMPAIGN
Benson, H. W.
How do you get a fair union election? Sometimes it becomes a dizzying experience, as Edward Sadlowski has discovered after running as an insurgent candidate for president of the huge United...
...Ironically, then, the law, which should be a potent weapon against authoritarians who steal elections, can become instead a nagging annoyance to fair-minded union leaders who sincerely endeavor to run honest elections...
...He enters the world of union election appeals, a shadowy universe unfamiliar to any broad public...
...But if this kind of sustenance were to be cut off, prospects again would be gloomy indeed...
...The answer is implicit in the long experience of reformers in the Painters Union...
...What is unobtrusive in a single local— say, 15 for McBride and zero for Sadlowskibecomes spectacular when we take all 451 locals together...
...7, 1976): "I know how to run elections...
...Ordinarily, these burdens are beyond the resources and talents of union members, so that the benefits of federal law for union elections remain an unattainable luxury...
...He understated his case...
...It took three killings to shake public officials into the realization that something had gone wrong...
...Yet one simple discovery is possible for the first time...
...Sadlowski, however, is able to make a stand because he can count on a few liberals and civil libertarians, who support him just as they have supported other movements for social justice...
...they would, in fact, go on to kill Yablonski...
...Yablonski ran against Boyle...
...In these locals, if we believe the official count, not a single vote—zero—was cast for Sadlowski...
...The 800 full-time staff representatives, who maintain close ties with locals all over the United States and Canada, are appointed and removed by the international president...
...Some were perhaps innocent technical oversights or minor transgressions...
...Under political pressure to conciliate the labor movement's officialdom, the Labor Department can hardly defend wholeheartedly the rights of their internal union critics and oppositions...
...The law puts it plainly: the D of L is supposed to decide only whether the law was violated, while the judge decides whether these violations may have affected the outcome...
...The Department's key policy-making personnel, with the Secretary of Labor at the summit, are political appointees...
...The average was 24...
...Suppose somehow he could find reasonable proof that the election violations might have affected that balance...
...The Impossible Burden of Proof HOW CAN you prove that you might have won a fair, legal election, when what you got was unfair and illegal...
...But how can he possibly discover what happened at 4,200 other sites where no one was watching for him...
...I: In The Union 0 n February 8, 1977, Steelworkers voted for national officers of their union...
...If we rolled 11 for 32 times in a row, the dice would seem to be loaded...
...Chip Yablonski, a son of the murdered Mine Workers' leader and himself a lawyer for the insurgents, summed up his view of the D of L in his brief to the U.S...
...To cite a few: Local McBride Sadlowski 8249 425 6 6869 498 8 7625 1,282 29 8421 195 2 7593 299 6 14581 700 52 If some future referendum in a Communist country shows a majority of 97 percent for the regime, Mr...
...at the Carpenters Steel plant in Bridgeport, Connecticut...
...Recently, in the Bachowski case, its stance became irrational...
...The killers, hired by the union officials, broke into Yablonski's home and shot him to death along with his wife and daughter...
...After a fraudulent election, Yablonski was declared defeated—and then was murdered...
...Not necessarily...
...Ten years later, sobered by the Labor Department's actual record, the Senator changed his mind drastically...
...Other beatings were charged in Calera, Alabama...
...With so thin a margin for the supposed victor, such a conclusion could be justified only by an intricate set of contorted computations...
...rejected every complaint, District Judge Marvin Frankel concluded: Since at least 1960, probably for a number of years before that, and up to the imposition of the trusteeship on October 19, 1966 (to stop there for a moment), District Council No...
...The Bachowski Case IN 1973, Walter Bachowski ran for director of Steelworkers District 20, Pennsylvania, against the administration-backed candidate...
...In summary, to use the phrase written into federal law, Sadlowski charges that he was denied "adequate safeguards to insure a fair election...
...Once Yablonski was murdered, touching off a national scandal, the D of L hurriedly reversed itself...
...Abel's staff work was obviously superior to McDonald's...
...On the other hand, only 21 locals were reported to have voted unanimously for Sadlowski...
...Against this background, we must assess the recent attacks by the Steelworkers leadership and other labor leaders against intervention by "outsiders...
...therefore encourage officials who intend to engage in malpractices to act with abandon, to engage in fraud on so vast a scale that a complainant is overwhelmed by an impossible burden of proof...
...Sadlowski's own firsthand experience in an earlier contest, still fresh in mind, is enough to make him leery of Steelworkers elections...
...Sadlowski is now challenging the 1977 election...
...When Schonfeld sued in federal court, the judge tossed out the D of L's arithmetical absurdity and ordered a full trial on the facts...
...Later, many months after Yablonski had been murdered, his main charges were sustained in federal court where the election was voided and a new one ordered...
...Whom does he believe and why...
...DESPITE THE COMPLEXITIES, despite the politically implanted bias of the Labor Department and its lackadaisical enforcement record, Ed Sadlowski is far better off with the federal law on union democracy than without it...
...To challenge the February 8 election, he had to speed an appeal to the tellers' committee by— February 18...
...that in some locals there were more ballots cast than there were members...
...This kind of proof can be virtually impossible unless you ran in a small local where you lost by, say, 100 votes to 90...
...The Test of Zero IT WOULD REQUIRE a massive staff, the kind that could be assembled only by the federal govern ment, to go back and uncover what actually happened at 5,400 voting sites...
...There were some 5,400 separate voting sites...
...With one major exception, this is what passes for due process in the labor movement...
...Nevertheless, based on current facts and recent history, Sadlowski has a strong case that is cogently presented in his internal union election appeal...
...The outstanding honorable exception is the United Auto Workers' union, which has established a Public Review Board of eminent persons outside its power structure to act as a last court of appeals—a kind of Supreme Court that is authorized to overturn decisions of the union's highest bodies and has done so many times...
...If, upon preponderance of the evidence after trial upon the merits, the court finds...
...some just over 100...
...Some Background BACK IN 1965, when David McDonald faced a challenge from I. W. Abel for Steelworkers president, both candidates were backed by rival sections of the paid staff...
...Their LMRDA assignment puts them uncomfortably in the middle of conflict between powerless union insurgents and politically influential labor officials...
...Meanwhile, four years passed...
...But that is a myth...
...Before LandrumGriffin, insurgents like Sadlowski were at the mercy of the officialdom and could quickly and quietly be dispatched...
...National headquarters and the Internationals play footsies at the complainant's expense") Three Compliance Officers who felt very keenly that their duty is to represent rank-and-file members' rights contended that, because of the close relationship between the National Office and top union leaders, the Area Offices and National Office work "at cross purposes...
...Before Landrum-Griffin, the Steelworkers, like most unions, simply published overall figures that concealed local tallies in one massive total...
...remedies, no...
...If they could not have affected the outcome, he surely will not...
...it has been determined after consultation with the Solicitor of Labor, that there is no probable cause to believe that the violation found in this case may have affected the election outcome...
...Bachowski was declared defeated, but by only 907 votes...
...Not every case is butchered as clumsily as that of the Painters...
...Did it actually happen...
...When the D of L, now required to go back to a district court, presented its rationale to the judge, he threw out its explanation, arithmetic and all, suggesting that it might be irrational...
...He called for help from the Labor Department, appealing for an investigation of continuing threats against his supporters that prevented him from electioneering in wide sections of the union...
...Too often, union reformers have found the Department of Labor allied with the union incumbents against their interests...
...In the spotlight of a horrible murder, under pressure from a congressional investigation of events in the miners' union, the Department of Labor finally upheld the Yablonski complaint and sued in federal court...
...Or was it...
...When Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act back in the days of the New Deal, and needed an enforcement agency that could adjudicate disputes between unions and employers and remain independent of both, it chose not the Labor Department but a new agency, the National Labor Relations Board...
...Most of these locals are small...
...Then, as now, the official count went against him...
...In January 1972 a Yale Law Journal survey directed by Professor Clyde W. Summers, entitled "Union Elections and the LMRDA: Thirteen Years of Use and Abuse," reported: There is a common perception among both attorneys for Title IV complainants and union counsel that "political influence" is brought to bear on this decision...
...The complainant says one thing, the union officials deny it, and the Department must decide who is telling the truth...
...Not all staff members can mesmerize themselves into the delusion that they must save the union by falsifying election counts...
...Department of Labor filed suit in federal court to void the results...
...The Steelworkers are not the Miners...
...presumably it decided that once a man was killed, he no longer was required to exhaust his "internal union remedies...
...McBride got 97 percent or better than 32 to 1. If we rolled dice and three times in a row made 11, that could be a lucky accident...
...The answer will be a long time in coming...
...In resigning, he offered no apology, only this explanation: I took an oath to uphold the tenets and doctrines that our Constitution sets forth...
...In February 1977, a new regular election was held in District 20...
...it is simply impossible for any insurgent to round up enough observer-witnesses...
...Was the law violated in the union election...
...Sadlowski was declared defeated by 79,580 votes...
...The judge authorized the union to conduct a new election—surely the first legitimate election of UMW officers in some 50 years...
...which calls upon all of us to preserve, protect, unify, and solidify our International Union...
...Before he could avail himself of the provisions of federal law, Sadlowski had to "exhaust" his "internal remedies...
...When Abel opposed McDonald, the staff split down the middle, so that the efforts of one side were matched by the other...
...Will the Department of Labor do something to enforce his right to a fair election...
...Department of Labor to file an election protest, assuming he has come at the proper time with precisely the right kind of complaint and fulfills other conditions, the Department is obliged to investigate...
...They do not take into account other local results that are almost as incredible...
...This is a type of work best suited to a man young enough to look toward the future, for he must gird himself for the possibility, even likelihood, of years of intricate proceedings, beginning in the union and then shifting to the Labor Department before winding up in federal court...
...We may not be able to detect a single atom, but we can weigh a whole mass...
...The same question might have been posed when Jock Yablonski claimed foul in the United Mine Workers' presidential election of 1969, in which the official returns put him behind Tony Boyle by 80,000 to 45,000...
...But a freewheeling officialdom, ready for most anything, can concoct so wide a margin that it insures itself against challenge...
...That kind of support turns Sadlowski s quest for a fair election into a formidable demand...
...From "The Impact of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 on International Union Organization and Operations," unpublished report in typescript, Department of Labor, page 89.] What's Next...
...To assure an honest election under these conditions would require observers at every local union...
...Who knows...
...Nevertheless, when the Labor Department conducted a new miners' election in 1972, the insurgent, Arnold Miller, defeated Boyle by 70,000 to 56,000...
...The clauses of the Steelworkers' constitution on appeals are not particularly worse than those of most other unions, a depressing footnote on "due process" in the labor movement...
...In contrast to its main function, the responsibility for enforcing Title IV pushes the Department toward conflict with labor leaders...
...According to the tellers' report, 430 locals voted unanimously for McBride...
...By that decision, it cut the heart out of the law's provisions for fair union elections...
...And if, by the test of zero, 451 local unions vote 97 percent for his administration, is there some special ground for credibility because this happens in the United States in the mighty Steelworkers...
...After 40 days of traveling those thousands of miles, the tellers reached their predestined conclusions...
...Would the outcome change, as in 1974, if a new election again were supervised by an impartial outside agency...
...Even then, it would be a formidable and discouraging task to prove that perhaps 9,000 votes had been stolen...
...that Sadlowski was denied timely information on where ballots would be cast and counted...
...To understand the LMRDA, remember Catch 22...
...Notable among them is Joseph Rauh, the splendid civil libertarian attorney who enabled the Miners to win their legal fight for democracy...
...He made his debut as an insurgent in 1973 when he bucked the official candidate for director of the 125,000member District 31, Chicago, the biggest in the union...
...But we can assess the validity of the count, partially and roughly, by applying what we will call the test of zero, that is, by simply reviewing the tabulations in all locals reported to have cast every last vote for one candidate only...
...In the eyes of many labor leaders, hardly any act is more reprehensible, or a more dangerous form of lese majesty, than internal opposition, especially when that opposition is organized and effective...
...Boyle, whose conviction was upset, awaits retrial...
...As the earth rotated on its axis, the sun rose in the east, landlords voted for rent increases, and the International Executive Board rejected Sadlowski's challenge to the election it conducted—so Sadlowski forwarded his appeal to the U.S...
...Schonfeld, who ran for two posts, was declared defeated by only 7 votes out of 500 cast and by 35 for the other...
...Apart from that, they were qualified to sit in impartial judgment on his appeal, which was designed to unseat the man they want for union president...
...In the face of Sadlowski's challenge, however, the staff united behind the official candidate...
...With all this in mind: the bizarre mathematics in Local 1011, the irrational standards in Bachowski, the total lack of restraining guidelines in the D of L, we can begin to understand what Ed Sadlowski must overcome to succeed in his Steelworkers complaint...
...By bowing out, he at least ended up with a pension...
...What happens' when, despite the law, there is fraud in a union election...
...In a report commissioned by the U.S...
...Department of Labor itself, Doris B. McLaughlin and Anita Schoomaker explained how the D of L's own field staff assigned to Title IV enforcement, most of whom are civil service employees, viewed some of the decisions of the Department's politically appointed policy-makers: Of all the field staff we interviewed—administrators, enforcement officers, Regional Solicitor's Office staff just over 73 percent wondered if negative decisions (on complaints) might not be politically motivated...
...But the Department will not process a case to court unless it decides in advance that the outcome could have been affected...
...He can only puzzle over the cut-anddried announcement that arrives in the mail one day...
...Which may be true...
...Or, using some slightly different arithmetic, they could get the same result with an average of only 40 votes each in half the 5,000 local unions...
...But even if he could have recruited a team of couriers equipped with seven-league boots and could have afforded to dispatch them throughout the two countries, to what avail...
...They had selected the leadership they wanted...
...But others...
...When the union finally agreed to a rerun, Sadlowski walked away with that second election, winning in 1974 by almost two to one: 39,637 to 20,158...
...In the absence of crying national scandal, we will witness the normal D of L procedures in operation and learn anew how the Department cuts the heart out of LMRDA enforcement...
...Although McDonald was the incumbent president, Abel was Secretary Treasurer and had the support of a narrow majority on the union's international executive board...
...What happened in the other 4,200 locations where the voting process was free from the scrutiny of the Sadlowski team...
...The Landrum-Griffin Act makes this test possible by requiring a local-by-local breakdown of the vote and exposes results that are lopsided enough to be incredible, or a least suspect...
...Section 402, the LMRDA enforcement provision, reads as follows...
...In short: if the violations might have affected the outcome, the complainant may get a new election...
...As in Local 1011, the Department of Labor found various election violations—but dismissed Bachowski's complaint nevertheless on the familiar ground that the malpractices could not have affected the outcome...
...Boyle and other union officers were convicted of murder and sentenced to life terms...
...that there was violence and intimidation against Sadlowski campaigners and observers...
...if he [the Secretary of Labor] finds probable cause to believe that a violation of this title has occurred, and has not been remedied, he shall, within sixty days after the filing of such a complaint, bring a civil action against the labor organization as an entity in the district court of the United States...
...By the test of zero, almost 11,000 votes were cast under such conditions, not enough by themselves to change the outcome but enough to cast a shadow on the whole voting process...
...Dissident members, seeking a voice in the management of Council affairs or an opportunity to vie for...
...By private, painstaking, personal investigations, reported in testimony the court finds wholly credible, the plaintiffs proved that the practice of electoral frauds has continued into the period of the trusteeship...
...Unlike the D of L, which had *See Union Democracy Review No...
...Twelve weeks later, the tellers reduced the putative margin to 79,580 when their report announced that McBride had polled 328,861, or 57 percent—and Sadlowski 249,281 or 43 percent...
...The D of L's criteria for a successful election challenge (did the violations affect the outcome...
...Pulled in two directions, they often have gravitated toward the stronger pole...
...In general," they announced, "this election was the best-run election that we have had the privilege of supervising...
...It is impossible to make a close local-by-local check...
...Don't jump to easy conclusions on how it might interpret such plain facts until you have read about Painters Local 1011...
...Even without it, the historical record is already there...
...For the most part, the evidence offered at the hearing by the plaintiffs in support of their serious charges...
...Some of them surely performed their election assignments with the same kind of fervor displayed by one District 31 staff man who was caught stealing votes from Sadlowski in 1973...
...Painters Local 1011 MOVING ON from generalities, we can go to actual cases, beginning with Local 1011...
...But suppose you, the loser, were credited with only 1,000 votes, while the winners presumably got 10,000...
...While proof is difficult to obtain, it does not seem implausible to suspect that on occasion litigation to vindicate that statute may be sacrificed by the Department to preserve these relationships...
...The vote was reported as McBride 196—Sadlowski 6." These are only a few illustrative samples from Sadlowski's election protest...
...A decent leadership that violates minor technicalities can become vulnerable to D of L enforcement in a close election when the loser has a chance to prove that the violations might have affected the outcome...
...He went on to call the situation "scandalous...
...Accordingly, civil action under Section 402 (b) of the Act is not warranted, and the case has been closed...
...But the law must be read with the same skepticism required when we read clauses in the Soviet constitution guaranteeing civil rights...
...In not one instance—not even one!—did they uphold a single complaint of irregularities from an opposition candidate, not Sadlowski's, not anyone else's...
...Sometimes it becomes a dizzying experience, as Edward Sadlowski has discovered after running as an insurgent candidate for president of the huge United Steelworkers of America...
...In reply to an inquiry from the Association for Union Democracy, the D of L replied on December 17, 1976: Although the investigation may disclose violations of Title IV, the Secretary will not institute court proceedings unless he finds probable cause to believe that the violations "may have affected the outcome of the election...
...For example, if they are trying to persuade a union to settle a strike, what sort of position are they placed in if, at the same time, other members of that same agency are investigating an election complaint against the same union...
...at the Republic Steel plant in Buffalo, New York...
...Actually, there are no standards...
...The Secretary's finding of probable cause is dependent not only upon the particular violation alleged, but also upon the facts and circumstances which have been developed by the investigation in each case...
...But if the Labor Department is to defend fair union elections, it must be willing to support the rights of precisely such "dangerous" insurgents...
...These figures, to repeat, include only locals that voted zero for one candidate...
...One glance at that awesome tabulation shows how impossible it would be for any challenger to verify the accuracy of the tally after the election is over...
...The D of L is more capable of coping with petty pilferage than with grand larceny...
...Can its judgment be trusted...
...he was reported to have won in a close election...
...The patient reader who pursues this article to the end will discover that it requires determination to unravel the tedious processes that entangle unionists with the law and the Labor Department...
...Can the aggrieved unionist at last count on the fair election the law seems to promise...
...However...
...After winding his way through the courts, Bachowski reached the U.S...
...The local results are posted on a tally sheet, and that tally sheet alone is mailed to the tellers who simply enter the local results onto a master sheet...
...Four years later, in 1976, two Wayne State University research specialists pointed to the same persisting problem...
...After posting about 1,500 observers at some 1,200 sites, Sadlowski compiled evidence in support of his charges of massive election violations...
...Actually, he must present hard evidence of violations, hoping to convince the Department that there were violations enough to affect the election outcome...
...The tellers toured 25 cities in the United States and Canada for a period of 40 days to hold postelection hearings...
...The membership had spoken...
...Again, citing all field office staff, just under 81 percent commented that, political motives aside, the top agency officials must be concerned with their effectiveness as guardians of industrial peace, and that that could conflict with their role as administrators of LMRDA...
...Would the Department of Labor hasten to his support...
...was clear, consistent, careful, and highly credible...
...Among other violations, he proved that he had been restricted to the use of an old, obsolete mailing list while his incumbentopponent was permitted to use one that was right up-to-date...
...Out of pure self-interest, if for no other reason, they are available as the administration's campaign machine during elections and as a dependable source of big campaign money...
...More precisely, his only avenue of recourse outside the union is the D of L; because, according to the provisions of the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), the federal law that regulates union elections, he is barred from appealing directly to a federal judge...
...Appeals Procedure NOW THAT Sadlowski is convinced he was cheated, what can he do about it...
...In 1961, the second year after his law had taken effect, Senator Robert Griffin expressed satisfaction that things were going so well: As a Republican who has watched carefully with the eye of a skeptic, I wish to commend Secretary [of Labor] Goldberg and Commissioner John Holcombe for the firm but fair and objective manner in which they and the Labor Department had continued to administer this Act...
...Sometimes the Department acknowledges that a complainant has indeed uncovered violations of the law...
...A naive citizen might assume that democratic rights, including the right to elect representatives in honest elections, apply to all, winners and losers, especially losers...
...He warned that all signs pointed to a stolen election...
...In Local 4203, there were more votes than members: "The plant had been closed for three weeks and had only 150-200 employees when in operation...
...When a unionist first comes to the U.S...
...and they backed up their charges with massive evidence...
...One example of six complaints of ballot-box stuffing: in Local 15530, the Sadlowski observer arrived 15 minutes before the voting was scheduled to begin and found the box already one-third full...
...above all, the prevention of strikes by conciliation—all this and more demands rapport between labor union officials and D of L officials...
...Actually, the April 28 tellers' report reveals that 430 locals—tiny, small, and medium—had presumably voted zero for Sadlowski, a figure that does not even include the near-zero vote...
...It would be hard to invent a case with simpler arithmetic...
...Imagine, then, how exhausting, futile, and risky the actual life experience would have been for McDonald...
...When he gets to the Labor Department, he is presumably required by law only to make charges while the D of L follows through...
...Exhausting, perhaps...
...Sadlowski is skeptical...
...Of those 10,970 votes, 10,646 went for McBride and only 324 for Sadlowski, Looked at another way: Sadlowski, who was credited with 43 percent of the total vote, got only 3 percent in the zero-forone locals...
...I dedicated myself to prevent the destruction of our organization by individuals who I personally assessed to be extreme radicals seeking only to infiltrate into positions of leadership in our union to cause dissolution in the labor movement with their subversive propensities...
...The D of L simply ignored the law, insisting that it could do nothing until its prescribed dilatory procedures were completed...
...He charges that the paid union staff campaigned illegally on union time...
...To follow the process through which the D of L receives complaints and disposes of them is like stumbling through the corridors of a maze...
...It is, however, virtually impossible to evaluate or document such asserted political bias...
...We recall, of course, that between the two miners' elections, Yablonski, his wife, and his daughter were murdered, an outrage that surely affected the election rerun...
...One enforcement officer, for example, told of a parent organization election that he clearly believed should have been rerun but was not because of the costs involved...
...In his February 18 appeal Sadlowski noted that 95 locals had reported a zero, or near-zero, vote for him...
...The complainant never knows, because the Department's investigation files are closed to inspection...
...When the law was adopted, the mandate seemed so forthright that the problem of legitimate union elections seemed to have been solved...
...With such requirements, the law's guarantees begin to evaporate...
...Not necessarily...
...McBride as Steelworkers' president will surely expect friends to smile disdainfully at those gullible enough to swallow those figures...
...Sadlowski attended only the session in his own District 31 area...
...Union attorneys suggested a systematic bias in favor of incumbents resulting from the fact that the Department, and specifically the Assistant Secretary for Labor-Management Relations, depends upon good relations with labor leaders in order to deal with them in labor-management disputes...
...Prove that five votes were switched from one candidate to the other, and you have a tie...
...The ballots, which are cast and counted in the locals, are never shipped for review to any central place...
...The road ahead is still bewildering...
...Supreme Court, which ruled that the D of L had wide discretionary powers to dismiss complaints but that it could not be "irrational," arbitrary, and capricious...
...What then...
...the head of the union's New York District Council 9 was indicted and later convicted in a bribery conspiracy...
...To put it another way, the complainant must demonstrate that, if the election was fair and not illegal, he might have succeeded in winning instead of losing...
...The Standards of Power & Politics WHAT APPEARS from the standpoint of law or logic to be "irrational" in Labor Department Title IV enforcement can actually be explained quite reasonably from the standpoint of power and politics...
...There were Locals 7701 and 5914 casting their 214 and 226 votes, and every one for McBride...
...No matter how far the tellers traveled and for how many days, they remained the same tellers, not impartial Solons carefully selected to render impartial judgment, but soldiers for the official power structure...
...Thinking about it, we get some idea of what must have been happening in hundreds of small locals where there were no opposition observers...
...During these years, two reform leaders were murdered in California...
...one contractor was almost murdered in New York...
...Even under the best of circumstances, the tellers' ability to verify election results is limited...
...Sadlowski must prepare internal union appeals with meticulous attention to detail so that they are technically perfect, for the D of L will not consider any issue that he has not previously raised inside the union...
...The same kind of evidence, publicly presented, which the judges found so highly credible in open court, had been available before to the Labor Department...
...Seventy pieces of Schonfeld literature were returned in the mail marked "addressee unknown...
...that the secrecy of the balloting was widely violated...
...Once the law was passed, however, the issue was quickly forgotten as the nation moved on to other scandals...
...But the D of L performance in the miners' election was the exceptional outcome of extraordinary events...
...Congress adopted the LMRDA in 1959 after years of investigation, thousands of pages of testimony on corruption in unions and stolen elections, front-page headlines, and cries of scandal...
...Without a thorough investigation, it is impossible to be sure...
...Nevertheless, when the ordeal was over, the insurgent miners succeeded in ousting the murderous clique that had seized their union...
...But that 79,580 margin seems so impressive . Could so lopsided a tally be simply laid to fraud...
...9 was repressively governed and the interests of its constituent union membership poorly served and frequently betrayed, under the dominance of...
...the gathering of assorted statistics...
...There his charges were reviewed by the same men whose candidates he tried to defeat, who contributed money to elect McBride against him, who circulated the opinion that he is a tool of outside enemies of the working class...
...Now, with the law, they have a fighting chance, which is better than none...
...His doubts are catalogued in a 36-page election protest, presented first to the tellers and then to the union's international executive board, charging among other things that ballot boxes in some locals were stuffed...
...I stole four elections for Joe Germano as director of District 31...
...There is no valid reason why the Labor Department should not serve the labor movement so long as the Department is not loaded with contradictory assignments...
...some cast fewer than 10 votes...
...Back in 1965, after submitting his protest against an election in Painters Local 1011, New York, Frank Schonfeld, reform leader, received the following letter from the Department of Labor, dismissing his complaint in formulas that are quite familiar to other complainants: The investigation disclosed that a violation of Section 401 of the Act occurred...
...This time Bachowski won...
...How could it reach so different a conclusion in private every time...
...Department of Labor...
...that staff employees campaigned for the administration slate on paid union time...
...but how good is their best...
...The cause of that conflict is elemental...
...The delicate subject of politics and power in Title IV enforcement has been noted in at least two scholarly studies...
...Of these, the Department dismissed more than half, leaving a majority of the appelants without any recourse whatsoever.* How does the agency responsible for enforcing the law on fair union elections decide to overlook so many violations of the law...
...The threat of stolen elections normally comes not from rank and file dissidents but from those in power who are determined, come what may, to stay there...
...More than 11 weeks after the election, Sadlowski saw the first full report: three and a half pages of text, tersely dismissing all complaints from all dissenters, accompanied by 110 pages of charts—a solid black wall of statistical tables from almost 5,000 locals...
...The Department ruling is crucial to the complainant...
...Nevertheless, in those 451 zero-for-one locals, 10,970 votes were cast for president...
...That, precisely, was Sadlowski's problem in an election in which 550,000 votes were cast...
...there is no reason to doubt either one, for both possessed the expertise that comes from long experience in directing staff operations...
...In the heat of a bitter election, to preserve the principles I took an oath to uphold, I did what I thought was right...
...In such a case, your task might seem simple...
...Since each complaint filed under section 402 is investigated and reviewed individually, the Department has not issued any guidelines, standards, or directives...
...During the election campaign itself, Yablonski was beaten and knocked unconscious...
...He gave the Department a second chance to come up with something better...
...This position has been upheld in court...
...Where does he look and how thoroughly...
...In other unions, however, the officialdom will not curtail its authoritarian power to deal with critics as it sees fit...
...that the violation of section 401 may have affected the outcome of an election, the court shall declare the election, if any, to be void and direct the conduct of a new election under supervision of the Secretary of Labor...
...Here, unless some unanticipated factor supervenes, is how it usually goes: The Labor Department Record A CAREFUL STUDY of the Labor Department's report, Union Election Cases 1966-70, indicates that out of 602 election complaints submitted to it in those years, more than 90 percent probably involved violations of the law...
...Confident predictions are impossible, because decisions of the Labor Department are not based on such ordinary operations as adding and subtracting, but on more inscrutable standards...
...Now comes Sadlowski...
...the Sadlowski camp sent observers to perhaps 1,200...
...The Council bylaws, of little moment to a dictatorial regime, were in a state of scattered disarray...
...Did the violations charged in the complaint actually occur or did they not...
...But in its topsy-turvy universe, the Department of Labor protects only possible winners...
...It was the democratic way...
...The second election was supervised by representatives of the Department of Labor...
...After he was declared defeated in 1965, McDonald never bothered to appeal to the U.S...
...When Donald Rarick, opposing the McDonald-Abel slate in 1957, demanded a local-by-local tally, the union administration refused to provide it...
...This time, their grievances were evaluated by a federal judge who heard seven days of sworn testimony...
...and he could be certain that additional mailing pieces, forwarded by the Post Office to new addresses, arrived only after the election was over...
...On July 15, 1971, testifying before the Senate Labor Subcommittee, he said...
...All of the Compliance Officers as well as two former National Office staff told us that they often feel that the National Office is more concerned with its relationship with the union leaders than with honest elections and rank-and-file rights...
...The seven-year Painters' experience suggests that the D of L decision-making process is unreliable and suspect...
...These were the events that opened Senator Griffin's eyes...
...According to unofficial reports that were promptly announced by the officials, the count showed an 86,000 majority for Lloyd McBride, the administration candidate for president, a victory for the official family slate of top officers backed by incumbent president I. W. Abel...
...In contradistinction, when it adopted the LMRDA, Congress turned Title IV enforcement over to the Department of Labor...
...Joseph Rauh, Yablonski's attorney, warned that unless the D of L intervened, union officials would destroy the evidence of their misconduct...
...The more widespread and effective the fraud, the more difficult it becomes to prove arithmetically, to the D of L's satisfaction, that the outcome might be different in a hypothetically fair election...
...Supposedly he had lost 23,394 to 21,616, but when he proved that the election was riddled with fraud, the U.S...
...Nevertheless, if only half the staff were zealous and talented enough to duplicate the performance of their District 31 counterpart, and only to the extent of 250 votes each—not a difficult feat—that result would make a total difference of 100,000—far more than adequate for creating a 79,580 plurality...
...Locals have the same ten days in which to transmit their tallies to the tellers whose official report was not made until April 28...
...Simple to you, certainly—but not to the D of L, which is fortified by a transcendental arithmetic...
...The test of zero suggests that the dice most likely were loaded against Sadlowski...
...Those who know how to win elections usually know how to take care of themselves...
...7 (1974...
...With that, a dark door opens into the next room, stuffy with smoke and vapors II: At the Labor Department T he Department of Labor is responsible for enforcing Title IV, the election provision of the LMRDA, which is explicit in its requirement for the fair election of union officers: Adequate safeguards to insure a fair election shall be provided, including the right of any candidate to have an observer at the polls and at the counting of ballots...
...for, if it goes against him, that's usually the end of his case...
...It has taken more than 17 years for this frustrating truth to filter out...
...Years later, mulling over the old days with a New York Times reporter, McDonald said (Dec...
...Democratic procedures were ignored...
...The traditional role of the Labor Department requires it to cultivate amicable relations with the mainstream of the labor movement, which means its officialdom...
...Before the suit could be litigated and brought to a conclusion, another election rolled around...
...Shift six votes and you "affect the outcome...
...Department of Labor (D of L...
...Schonfeld won, and he dropped his earlier protest, leaving this question still unanswered: by what standards does the D of L decide whether violations are serious enough to affect an election outcome...
...The top DOL officials are political appointees, they pointed out, and remain in office only so long as they make "politically right" decisions: i.e., consider the interests of the union leaders, who control contributions to campaign funds and may have an influence upon how the members vote in the country's elections...
...Suppose, for example, that Sadlowski succeeds in proving that the Steelworkers' election violated the law...
...How does the D of L come to a decision...
...The investigator presumably looks for evidence, conducts interviews, evaluates conflicting claims...
...Using the names of its sponsors, the law was called the Landrum-Griffin Act...
...office, were fought ruthlessly with all the power available to entrenched officials...
...Locals 4586 and 15167 cast 118 and 114 votes, respectively, straight down the line for the whole McBride slate and not one, even by mistake, for a single other candidate...
...Some of the tabulated individual results are incredible on their face: Local 7456 went 152, all, for McBride...
...How was it possible to calculate that a violation affecting at least 70 voters, and probably more, could not have affected the outcome of an election that was decided by only 7 votes...
...After the tellers turned him down, Sadlowski had ten days to forward his complaint to the next higher appeals body, the union's International Executive Board...
...In a majority of cases, the D of L does nothing for the victims of illegal elections...
...And this is a mere reading experience...
...The course of Sadlowski's appeal will inevitably provide new evidence...
...Complainants and their attorneys tended to view this influence as being exerted in specific stances to forestall litigation—by the national union to protect an incumbent local officer, or by the AFL-CIO to defend a national official...
...In 1969, Jock Yablonski, an old-time United Mine Workers union leader who had come up under John L. Lewis, reached the painful conclusion that, under its incumbent president, Tony Boyle, the union officialdom was betraying its dues-payers...
...All of the Compliance Officers we interviewed also wondered aloud whether or not the final decision not to pursue certain election complaints, particularly those against parent body elections, might not involve financial considerations...
...After years of frustration, when their cause seemed almost hopeless because of the Department's indifference, they managed to get into federal court through a happy combination of legal moves...
...For a rough analogy, we must imagine the position of a tenant who goes to court for a rent reduction only to find his landlord sitting as presiding judge while all the others, jury and appeals court, are staffed by the landlord's relatives, lawyers, and employees...
...Yablonski's reported performance with only 36 percent of the vote was substantially less favorable than Sadlowski's with 43 percent...
...The protest cited nine charges of physical assault and of threats made to Sadlowski campaigners...
...It is the loser, the underdog, who most often needs protection...
...They were originally elected on Abel's official family slate, the very same tellers who had whitewashed the District 31 election of 1973 when Sadlowski had been counted out in the illegal election later challenged by the Labor Department...
...In every single instance, the D of L turned down the reformers' appeals...
...over the past twelve years, under four Administrations, the Labor Department has generally been timid and reluctant to give the Landrum-Griffin the vigorous implementation and strict enforcement that Congress expected...
...They attributed this happy result to assistance from the Labor Department, but it was more likely because Sadlowski was able to post perhaps 1,500 observers around the country, not enough to guarantee that the election would be fair, but perhaps enough to make it the "best...
...But all during the election, and immediately thereafter, the Labor Department refused to intervene, informing Yablonski that he had to wait until the election was over, then devote three months to exhaust his "internal union remedies," and only then would the Labor Department look into his complaints...
...He may simply be shunted along a new byway to frustration...
...But how translate that kind of violation into hard voting arithmetic...
...The experience of 18 years under the LMRDA has proven that, with help and encouragement from outside the labor movement, internal union democracy can thrive...
...Then time passed and there were doubts...
...But it was impossible, even hypothetically, to formulate a thorough appeal, because the results were not yet in...
...and he will still have to exert pressure on the Department to sue in federal court...
...Remember Catch 22...
...and suppose, too, that you could prove that ballot boxes were stuffed as tightly as baloney sausages...
...Supervision of wages, hours, pensions, health and welfare...
...to make an investigation and in connection therewith he may enter such places and inspect such 111M records and accounts and question such persons as he may deem necessary to enable him to determine the facts relative thereto...
...On February 8, 451 locals supposedly voted zero-for-one...
...The first election had been supervised by the union administration itself, and so its candidate was assured of a goodly amount of votes...
...District 20 included 190 separate locals in which 24,000 votes were cast...
...Rauh pointed to Section 601, LMRDA, which authorized the D of L to enter the picture: The Secretary shall have the power when he believes it necessary in order to determine whether any person has violated or is about to violate any provision of this Act...
...In a three-way race, the administration man was reputedly the winner by a slim plurality...
...If the Labor Department turns him down, he will have to convince a federal judge not only that the Labor Department was wrong to dismiss his complaint— it has the right to be wrong—but that its decision was so irrational as to be arbitrary and capricious...
...its Secretary Treasurer and those allied with him in positions of power...
...He must rely on the Department of Labor...
...Even in 1961, the Senator's optimism was sadly misplaced...
...Each side accused the other of stealing votes...
...at the Estelco plant in Pennsylvania...
...Untroubled by guidelines, the Department of Labor is free to dart erratically from one position to another...
...The Painters' Experience FROM 1961 TO 1967, embattled Painter reformers complained to the D of L at least once a year that elections in their union were stolen...
...There were two attacks on John Askins: at the Republic Steel plant in Gadsen, Alabama, in July 1976, and in August at the Armco plant in Houston, Texas, followed a day later by the shooting of Ben Corum in the neck at the Hughes Tool plant in that city...
...Supreme Court in another union democracy case: The struggle by U M W A members to overturn tyranny in their union was a lonely and difficult one in part because of the apathy and indifference, if not outright prejudice against them, by officials within the United States Department of Labor...
Vol. 24 • September 1977 • No. 4
