Unions must link to member rights info
Unions have to notify members of their democratic rights under Section 105 of the LMRDA. This requirement has long been honored in the breach, as they say. But we at AUD have had some success enforcing the rule in recent years. We also petitioned the Department of Labor to apply the same rule to federal employee unions which fall under an analogous law, the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA).
This spring we succeeded: the DOL issued a new rule requiring federal employee unions to notify members of their rights.
The new DOL rule specifically includes the internet:
d) If a labor organization has a Web site, the site must contain a conspicuous link to Union Member Rights and Officer Responsibilities under the Civil Service Reform Act
The next step is to enforce the rule, a task that falls to union members. Still, it is good to see an element of democratic unionism online shored up.
In the recent Longshore workers case, the judge cited the new DOL rule in her decision, saying "we find the DOL's reasoning persuasive" even though the rule was crafted for unions under the CSRA. So, go forth and notify. The DOL link to post is:
Union Member Rights and Officer Responsibilities under the Civil Service Reform Act (http://www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/olms/CSRAFactSheet.pdf for the pdf version and http:// www.dol.gov/esa/regs/compliance/olms/CSRAFactSheet.htm for the html version)
- Matt Noyes's blog
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Attaboy, Matt!
http://www.myibew.net/
email: myibew@yahoo.com
I suspect that largely due to AUD's efforts that the IBEW's new webmaster included very conspicuous 'rights' links on the website during his recent site rebuild and our IBEW Journal has been forthright in publishing full page (and more) articles on employee's and union member's rights during the past year or so. It just goes to prove that the 'squeaky wheel' does get greased! Thanks for all you guys do at AUD!
great news!
That is super! You people are the greatest!
(Still doesnt cover my local tho :-( We really are in the democracy-free zone!. But it helps I sure.)
How do these laws apply in the case of a diverse population?
For example my local like many locals in that union, is not covered
under LMRDA nor any similar federal nor municipal law. The union does
not as far as I know fall under the LMRDA even at our state level,
but it does at the National Level. I'm not sure if there is *any* state level body in our union that is itself covered under LMRDA. In such a case, if there is no "trickle down" effect, LMRDA doesn't mean much in that situation. (The national level body is covered but nothing below that, so they file the financial report, which is helpful, but it's not supporting any democracy agenda for the membership.) Was that the intent of the law to work out that way or are they interpretting this excessively in their favor?
One bad thing about this is I wonder if this doesnt adversely affect organizing, in that a union that has managed to avoid LMRDA requirements as well as this international has so far might be unwilling to acquire a population that was covered. For example, if they organized a private workplace in this state would that have the effect of invoking the LMRDA on that new local and the whole State federation even tho say that was just one out of 100 locals in that state? Or doesn't it work this way?
LMRDA coverage and beyond
Thanks for the kind words.
The LMRDA is important because it covers not only private sector union members, but also members of "mixed" unions, e.g. a public sector local that represents one private sector bargaining unit, or a council that includes at least one private sector unit, etc. So, if a public sector local organizes a private sector workplace, then LMRDA applies to the local and on up -- because each successive body becomes a mixed body. (It gets a little more complicated, but that's the general framework.)
If you are a state employee and your local is entirely public sector, the LMRDA is still relevant in two ways: first, because many state labor laws incorporate many of the provisions of the LMRDA, second because courts often look to the LMRDA for guidance in adjudicating internal union disputes. Also, some unions, like AFSCME, include LMRDA-type provisions in the union constitution.
(The only union I know of that has tried to get out from under LMRDA coverage is my own, the National Writers Union. But that's another story.)
In the recent case, AUD had argued that federal employees should also have a right to know, like LMRDA's Section 105, and the good news is that the DOL agreed.
The CorD angle to all of this is the trend toward incorporating the web into the application of the union democracy law. That federal employee unions are required to post this info online and required to place a prominent link on the homepage is an interesting development and a recognition of the importance of the internet as part of a union's infrastructure. See also the IBT Vote website created by the government monitors of the Teamsters Union, and the campaign videos and literature from both slates (Leedham and Hoffa) that the union was compelled to place on the official union site.
But union democracy should not be limited to the imposition of minimal conditions from the outside -- the key is making democracy part and parcel of unions (and other worker organizations). That's where a list of benchmarks of democratic union websites would be a nice contribution.
I often refer people to the Coalition of University Employees (www.CUEunion.org) for an example of a union that has made a concentrated effort to build democracy in.
invaluable!
I'm finding this discussion invaluable. There are a lot of people in
unions who don't trust thir union or it's affiliates and there's a lot of people who could join a union if they wished but they won't unless they see some evidence that the unions are upstanding, responsive organizations that they could influence if they wanted to.
I don't find either international we're affiliated with in the LMRDA database at less than a national level. In the "international1" case, there are many locals in the state that individually file lm-2 forms. So the area councils and state council have somehow found a way to avoid the requirements (possibly by having all the locals be "directly affiliated" whatever that means. In the other case "international2" simply has no locals that are covered. We care about this because no one knows what the constitution and bylaws are for international1 and it's bugging people, especially after a recent news article about elections at the state level. There was no opportunity for the rank and file to nominate nor influence the nomination of nor voting for officers (as in I personally received no notice nor do I know of any other person who received notice of this and I know a lot of people in that large international. They did send out notice of the convention but it wasn't at all detailed. I'm sure they did send detailed info to local presidents but I'm not one.) And they are not putting the constitution or bylaws or anything like that on their web site either.
I've complained about this type of issue now and then over the years and what has really surprised me was the ferocious hostility from traditional unionists. Which is typically something like "how dare you expect X persons who don't have any money in their budget and not enough staff to maintain some stupid web site when they are out fighting Y battles for YOUR welfare!". I got that reaction for suggesting that internation1 put the agenda of an upcoming conference on their web site because people didn't know what it was about. I was told that "everyone who needs to know has been informed of the conference".
Unions that are in the habit of publicly announcing meetings/conferences only after the registration date is past, or never, need to get called on it. I invite everyone to do so. Or conversely, I invite people to talk up unions that do post information in a timely manner that is accessible to all the membership.
In both cases of international1 and 2 they have the habit of sending communications only to local presidents and in some cases vice-presidents. That is at most 4 people in a local. I encourage everyone to go out and battle this practice. Tell your unions to quit spending bushels of money on printing and mailing to local bigshots.
Tell them to put that info on the public web site period. And it's more efficient. Instead of someone spending hours laying out a communication for offset printing and the time lag for that, just a text file can go on a web site, it doesn't even have to be html. It doesnt have to be a multimegabyte pdf file either.
I've suggested this in the past and gotten a very negative reaction everywhere I've ever floated it, which is something like "there's union presidents who don't do computers". Ok then they can ask the rank and file to print it for them. It definitely doesn't work the other way. Communications sent to presidents are treated like State secrets and stay in the union's tightly closed inner circle. Even if someone's constitution had a clause requiring presidents to reveal communications to the membership there's no way to enforce it. You can't complain about not being notified of some thing you don't know exists, obviously. The affiliates could easily put a stop to this information hoarding merely by putting notices on the public web site. (I have doubts about putting notices on password protected web sites which is what international2 does. That is a restriction that could be abused.)