Challenger for UAW Leadership: Give Rank & File More Time to Vote!
Will Lehman is challenging the legitimacy of the upcoming UAW election charging the current leadership with attempting to suppress the vote.
By Bob Hennelly
With just 24 hours to go before the deadline for ballots to be postmarked for the election of the United Auto Workers leadership by the rank and file — one of the candidates for the top post wants a federal court to extend the process for another 30 days due to “widespread reports that workers are unaware of the election” and incumbent union officials have failed to get the word out to the members.
According to the court papers filed in the Eastern District of Michigan on behalf of Will Lehman, 35, who is a Mack Truck Plant worker from Pennsylvania, just 91,000 ballots out of a potential roster of over one million active and retired members eligible to vote have sent in ballots — roughly nine percent. Friday, Nov. 18 is the current deadline for ballots to be postmarked. Ballots must be received by Nov. 28.
For the first time in the 87-year history of the United Auto Workers, active members and retirees are voting directly for who will lead their union. This unprecedented exercise in direct democracy for the UAW, now overseen by a court-appointed independent monitor, is the result of a massive federal criminal prosecution that resulted in at least 15 felony convictions of national and regional union officials, as well as a handful of company executives.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Fiat Chrysler [FCA US LLC], one of the Big Three automakers, doled out $3.5 million to cultivate the UAW leadership to betray their membership from 2009 through 2016. “FCA US LLC conspired to make improper labor payments to high-ranking UAW officials, which were used for personal mortgage expenses, lavish parties, and entertainment expenses,” said Irene Lindow, Special Agent-in-Charge with the U.S. Department of Labor Office of Inspector General, back in March 2021, when the company was hit with a $30 million fine. The announcement from the Department of Justice continues, “Instead of negotiating in good faith, FCA corrupted the collective bargaining process and the UAW members’ rights to fair representation.”
“The only reason there is an election is because the UAW leadership was convicted for taking bribes from the companies and selling us out,” Lehman said at a virtual UAW candidates’ town hall, in September. “This isn’t a question of a few bad individuals but of the bureaucracy as a whole. The UAW bureaucracy is part of management. There are 450 bureaucrats making over $100,000 in our dues money a year. The richest 15 UAW executives made a combined $3 million in 2021.”
The lawsuit accuses Neil Barofsky, the court appointed monitor, and the current leadership under President Ray Curry, of failing to address “widespread reports that workers are unaware of the election” and for letting the mechanism for mailing ballots to break down.
“The current UAW leadership — and the Monitor, by failing to take necessary action— have denied Lehman and other rank-and file UAW members the right to meaningfully vote in a leadership election that genuinely expresses the will of the membership,” Lehman’s motion papers assert. “An election cannot express the genuine will of the membership where the bulk of the membership has not been notified that an election is taking place at all, and in which numerous eligible members have not received ballots in time to meet the deadlines that have been imposed. Unless action is swiftly taken to guarantee the right to vote, whatever leadership emerges from this election will not be legitimate, ‘duly-elected’ or in any way representative of the rank-and-file members of the union like Lehman.”
A message left at the UAW’s headquarters for Curry was not returned. The monitor’s office, when reached, declined to comment on “pending litigation.” Barofsky is best known for his role as the U.S. Treasury Department’s Inspector General who oversaw the Troubled Assets Relief Program (TARP) from 2008 until 2011. Before that he was an assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.
“Despite entering into the consent decree and being placed under the supervision of a court-appointed monitor, the Monitor has consistently found that the UAW is violating both the consent decree and the rights of members like Lehman and his fellow rank-and-file co-workers,” the Lehman filings assert. “These violations are so serious that the Department of Justice threatened to prosecute the UAW’s current president, Ray Curry, earlier this year…. In recent weeks, the Monitor also determined that UAW president Ray Curry’s slate violated federal law by using union resources to promote his campaign. Despite these facts, the Monitor has continued to unreasonably rely almost entirely on the UAW leadership — the same leadership that the Department of Justice has described as having a ‘culture of corruption,’ and which opposed the holding of direct elections in the first place—to inform its membership that an election is taking place.”
Lehman’s lawsuit includes affidavits and statements from many workers who never got a ballot even after requesting one from the Monitor.
Lehman’s attorney, Eric Lee, said, “91 percent of UAW members haven’t voted and the deadline to mail ballots is tomorrow,” said Eric lee, Lehman’s attorney. “This is the first direct election and members are unaware it is taking place. They are not able to easily request ballots. This means the rights of every single UAW member to participate in a meaningful election have been violated. The entrenched leadership of the UAW will try to blame low turnout on worker apathy, but the reality is the leadership doesn’t want the membership to have a fair shot to vote it out of office.”
Lehman is running as a socialist committed to create “a mass movement of the rank-and-file to break the dictatorship of the UAW apparatus and bring power to the shop floor,” according to his website.
The other contenders to lead the union include the current UAW president Ray Curry; Shawn Fain; Mark Gibson; and Brian Keller. At a September 22nd virtual candidates’ forum, Lehman was joined by Fain and Keller in blasting the UAW’s leadership’s performance.
“I am running because I am sick of the complacency of our top leaders,” Fain stated, blasting the UAW leadership for viewing “the [auto] companies as our partners rather than our adversaries” and for feathering their own nests with “wage increases, early retirement bonuses, and pensions,” even as the rank-and-file failed to be made whole after major concessions made during the Great Recession of the late 2000s.
Said Keller, “I am running for international UAW president to help the membership reclaim the power and control of their union. I am also fighting to reclaim concessions granted these companies in the darkest of these times, and to make sure we educate the membership on all levels to help them defend themselves against management and rogue leadership.”
“The people that hold office now had over a decade to fix this,” Keller continued. “Even after the 16 indictments and the companies making record profits, we continue to receive concessionary agreements. General Motors, back in 2018, made $11.8 billion; in 2019, they made $13.9 billion in net income. Ford made $3.7 billion in 2018, and in 2019 made $21.2 billion. Fiat Chrysler Automotive made $8.1 billion in 2018 and in 2019 made $6.7 billion. So, with these people that hold office now why do we continue to receive concessionary agreements? Why haven’t we got back what we lost?”
Current UAW president Curry pushed back on the criticism, asserting that his team had cleaned up the union and had added thousands of new members outside the auto industry. “We are the key piece that removed the corruption out of our organization and led to all of the successful reforms that no one seems to remember are taking place today.”
Today, the UAW includes workers not only in the auto industry but in the government sector, legal aid, higher education, hospitals, and nonprofit organizations. The union has more than 400,000 active members and more than 585,000 retired members in the United States, Canada, and Puerto Rico. There are 600 local unions under contract, with more than 1,000 different employers.
The anemic numbers in the current balloting may have been presaged by last year’s rank and file vote on whether or not the union should abandon its caucus delegate system for direct democracy. Opening up the balloting prevailed by a 140,586 to 89,615 vote, barely a quarter of the total of active and retired members eligible to weigh in.