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From the May-June 2005 issue of Union Democracy Review #156
2KB of free speech?
ACLU & Public Citizen sue in IBEW Local 46 election
The Seattle chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union has joined the Public Citizen Litigation Group in backing the protest of electrician James Hughes against restrictive election campaigning rules adopted by IBEW Local 46, rules that limit access to the internet and forbid campaigning in the union hall. In the first stages of this case, Hughes won a partial victory: the local backed off and modified one rule; but a federal district court upheld the local on another.
The local had just issued its rules for local elections. In one respect, it's old stuff. If you want to mail your literature, you pay for everything: printing, postage, address labels, mailing service. Now, however, there's the internet, which can be a great tool for democracy - especially union democracy. Candidates for union office have a legal right to mail campaign literature to union voters, but in the large sprawling locals that are becoming the fashion, mailings are prohibitively expensive for insurgents. Now that unions load their membership lists on to a database, it could be possible, at low cost, for any candidate to reach the whole constituency. Could be! But will it? It may take years of litigation to get this under control. Here's what's happening in IBEW Local 46 in Seattle:
The original rules provided that candidates who wish to use the IBEW Local 46 e-mail database to reach the membership may produce a text document, but no longer than 2KB and not more than once a week. A 2KB text? Try it out for yourself! You can't say much. Under the threat of a lawsuit, the local compromised. It now permits longer and more frequent statements.
But when it came to the rule which weighs most heavily against any insurgent, the local would not budge. Candidates are not allowed to campaign in the union hall, not in the hiring hall, not in the parking lots, nowhere on union property. For Jim Hughes, the ACLU and Public Citizen sued in federal district court for a preliminary injunction to stop application of this campaigning rule. In court, union officials tried to justify the ban on campaigning in the hall on the ground that it was designed to protect challengers because it would prevent incumbents from misusing their control over the hall.
Affidavits from Ken Paff and Herman Benson, submitted in reply, noted that incumbents had direct access to the membership all year round through shop stewards and business agents and that these administration reps were even permitted to campaign while being paid by the union so long as their campaigning was "incidental" to union business. The rule harms only insurgents; the only time insurgents can reach members in large groups is when they meet together at union meetings or when signing up for work in the hiring hall. That single possibility is now eliminated.
District Federal Judge Ricardo Martinez bought the union argument. He was eased into this view by the Labor Department which, according to Hughes's attorney, Paul Levy, advised the union that its rules were perfectly reasonable. Before reaching its conclusion, the department afforded Levy no opportunity to comment.
The slipshod quality of the court's opinion is suggested by one careless error. Three times in a very short text, it refers to the "Sandowski" case, which it finds very relevant. The correct reference, of course, is to Sadlowski.
Union Democracy Review was alerted to these events after Thomas Smith, a spokesman for Hughes, sought advice from the Association for Union Democracy, which helped recruit legal representation.
Articles
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president Hill upholds Canadian member's rights
Union
officials "condone and endorse" attack on member's internet free speech
rights
Round
2 in the internet battle in AFSCME DC37
In AFSCME
DC37 - A round in the internet battle
Danger of democracy on the Internet? Kill it!
Whose
"IBEW" is it? An Electrician on the Internet.
Results
of the 2005 AUD Best Rank-and-File Website Contest
Union
democracy online survives two lawsuits
Online
Guide: build an effective rank-and-file website
SEIU
Pulls plug on "Labor's Future" discussion
52
Playing cards = fearsome "Local 52"
Using the Internet for Union Democracy
AUD's Best Rank-and-File Websites of 2004
Matt
Noyes on AUD and the Internet
2KB
of free speech? ACLU & Public Citizen sue in IBEW Local 46 election
Making a splash:
SEIU's Unite to Win and the "free and open debate" on Labor's future
SAG officers unnerved by actors' internet free speech
Free speech irritates UFCW
Free speech in NWU
IATSE 600: Internet
democracy triumphs over super centralization
Cyber-democracy:
your legal rights online.(handout)
See
also:
AUD's 50 Guidelines for
building an effective rank-and-file website, and the sample
homepage.
The labortech tag
on del.icio.us.
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