A discussion piece by Herman Benson

The whole structure of DC 37’s highly-touted self-reform process, erected to remedy years of scandals, has collapsed ignominiously in the face of its first major test.

In March, Carmen Charles ran for president of Local 420, one of some 50 local DC 37 affiliates. She was challenging the incumbent, James Butler, who had tightly controlled this local of hospital employees for decades. Fearing fraud, she asked that the election be supervised by an impartial outside agency. Not an irrational fear after former DC 37 officials had arrantly stolen a contract referendum and local elections. One even went to jail for the crime. The local rejected her request. The "reformed" DC 37 council administration did nothing. As a second line of defense and a precaution against intimidation at the polls she asked for a mail ballot election instead of in-person voting. Denied in the local. Ignored by the reformed district council.

For this local of over 7,500 members, scattered about, its election committee decreed that voting would take place at only a single site. Charles asked that more sites be opened to encourage more members to vote. Denied in the local. Ignored by the reform council administration.

After all that -- miracle of miracles! -- Charles actually won the election by 580 to 526. But, not so fast. Butler challenged the election on the ground that Charles had used union resources and intimidated voters. It would be hard to invent a more ludicrous claim. Butler is no shrinking violet; some even consider him a bully. Give him credit for denouncing Mayor Giuliani when all other DC 37 officers were cringing before him. If the Taliban accused women of intimidation, if the old Tammany crowd charged others with stealing votes, then one could grasp the absurdity of Butler’s complaint against Charles.

Reality was irrelevant. Butler had appointed all members of the Local 420 election committee, and they obliged by upholding his complaint, declaring the election of Charles void, and calling for a rerun. (Meanwhile the reformed DC 37 council was not in evidence.)

But there was still one obstacle to hijacking the election: the election committee report had to be presented to a membership meeting. The meeting assembled on April 8 where the election committee duly presented its decision: void the election of Charles. When the chair called for a physical division of the house to facilitate the count, he noticed that about 200 had shifted over to the Charles side and only about 100 for Butler. No problem. We can’t do it this way, the chair is reported to have declared, there will be a new election. With that, the chair and all the Butler forces walked out of the room. The Charles people remained, voted to reject the report, and installed Charles as president.

Through all this, the DC 37 council reform administration remained aloof. (Presumably there was private uncomfortable hand-wringing.) The official ground for inaction is that the council had no constitutional right to intervene in local affairs. If so, that fact alone would expose the reform structure as impotent. But the excuse was a copout. This was a critical situation, not covered by constitutional certainties, justifying effective action by reformers. Two contenders claimed the office of Local 420 president. The DC 37 council had only to recognize the rightfully elected claimant. Instead, Butler continued to hold office while Charles, on her own, with her own resources, retaining her own attorney, had to fight to validate the decision of the Local 420 electorate.

After years of voting fraud, the DC reform structure was supposed to protect the integrity of elections. In this first important test, it failed. However, not only elections but union money had been stolen over the years; and a whole group of former DC 37 officers were convicted of crimes. To protect the union’s money, DC 37 adopted an ethical practices code and retained an attorney as ethical practices officer to police the code. Its guiding principle is the rule that it is wrong to steal money from the union. This idea applies now to union law a commandment proclaimed some years ago, "Thou shall not steal." That raised questions:

Was Butler, while holding office improperly, to be permitted to continue collecting his salary of $250,000 a year? Still in office as the incumbent, Butler was represented by an attorney. Was union money being spent to defend his claim on office, despite his defeat?

These questions were posed to the Barbara Dienhardt, who as DC 37 ethics officer, is the assigned watchdog over union money. Her reply offered no evidence of intense interest. She insisted that Butler’s salary was not within her jurisdiction but had to be decided by the national office through the union’s regular appeals mechanism. But what if the local is paying Butler’s attorney? That, she conceded, would be an ethics problem. "Are you going to act?" she was asked. "I have no reason to believe that the local is paying his attorney," she replied. "Are you going to ask?" was the final question. Final reply, "I might."

The outrage in Local 420 did not go unnoticed in DC 37. Half the presidents of its 56 locals, but not DC 37’s new president, wrote to national president Gerald McEntee, calling for swift remedial action. Obviously they found no avenue of recourse within the powerless DC 37 self-reform procedure.

Still, perhaps all’s well that ends well. The dispute finally reached AFSCME’s national Judicial Panel which ruled that Charles had won the election. In mid-May she was installed in office as president of Local 420.

After years of scandals and boasts of reform, it would have been scandal piled on scandal if AFSCME had turned its back on Charles. Justice triumphed in the end, not through DC 37 however, but outside it. DC 37 itself, which failed this first decisive test of democratic reform, was rescued by the Judicial Panel.