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From the July-August 2007 issue of Union Democracy Review #169
Who knows what in the Steelworkers?
The United Steelworkers is a far better place for union democracy than in the bad old days when they stole elections right and left. As far as we can tell, they don't do that anymore, but you can still get dizzy trying to exercise your rights; after 48 years of the LMRDA, staff members and local officials are either totally unaware of the provisions of federal law on union democracy or simply evade them. Take the case of Douglas Campbell.
He ran for president of the 150-member Local 272 in Louisiana and came in second in a three-way race. The incumbent came in first but without a majority. According to Campbell, Local 272, a Paper Workers local now affiliated with the Steelworkers, required a runoff when no candidate got a majority. But the incumbent insisted that under Steelworker rules a plurality was sufficient, and so he was installed in office again. By the time Campbell's election complaint was processed in the local and in the international and rejected, almost a year had elapsed, and so he lost his chance for a prompt timely appeal to the Labor Department.
The incumbent president was so annoyed by Campbell's persistence that he declared him expelled him from the union, no formal charges, no trial board, no nothing. It required the intervention of the international to reverse this obvious violation of the LMRDA and restore Campbell to good standing but it didn't happen for five months although the international's staff knew all about it from the beginning. His election appeal must now await the next international convention.
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