LOCAL 768 VOTE SUPPRESSION

Local 768 Vote Suppression

Under the Agency Shop Fee Law governing city workers, those who do not wish to join the union that represents their job title must nonetheless pay a fee that is the equivalent of union dues.

Taking that course offers some advantages: they can request a refund of whatever portion of the dues money is spent on political action, for example. But it also denies them something that many would regard as more valuable: the right to vote in their union's election.

There have always been some city workers who have chosen to be agency fee payers rather than union members in good standing. In some cases they are motivated by a distaste for unions; in others, by an unpleasant experience with the union that represents them.

But when more than 20 percent of those in a union's bargaining unit are not full-fledged members, there would seem to be two likely alternative explanations: sloth on the part of those within the union who handle organizing work and/or a conscious decision to limit the number of people who can vote in officer elections.

The political motive looms large in the curious case of the just-concluded election of Health Service Employees Local 768 of District Council 37. On Jan. 19, the local's election committee concluded the ballot count in a runoff vote for president and declared the incumbent, Darryl Ramsey, the winner by three votes even though 10 ballots remained unopened.

According to Mr. Ramsey's challenger, Fitz Reid, all 10 came from persons who, like Mr. Reid, are Public Health Sanitarians employed by the Health Department. All were said to be agency fee payers, although their right to vote had not been previously challenged when they attended Local 768 meetings dealing with other matters. When one of them produced a member card from DC 37's international union, Mr. Reid said, his ballot still was not permitted to count on the grounds that he was on Local 768's list of agency fee payers. No explanation has been forthcoming from Mr. Ramsey or the local's election committee chair, Beatrice Everett, neither of whom has returned phone calls during the two months that the election process has played out. Their caution may be understandable given the problems Mr. Ramsey's predecessor, Helen Greene, had when she spoke to the media.

After a Village Voice story several years ago alleging that she had used her union credit card to charge thousands of dollars in personal expenses, Ms. Greene told this newspaper that the Voice story was libelous and she intended to sue the paper. In fact, the story was accurate enough that the Manhattan District Attorney's Office later indicted Ms. Greene on precisely that charge (she resolved the case by pleading guilty to a lesser offense) and she never sued the Voice.

Mr. Ramsey, who was closely aligned with Ms. Greene, may have concluded that when the truth is likely to hurt you, it is better to duck media inquiries.

In the absence of an explanation from him for the high number of agency fee payers in his local, it is not unreasonable to draw some conclusions. One may be that he and his aides have not been diligent in soliciting membership from those in the title of Public Health Sanitarian because they believe that employees in the title represent a stronghold for Mr. Reid, who has narrowly lost to Mr. Ramsey in each of the past two Local 768 elections.

It remains to be seen whether there are others on the agency fee list like Dameon Whyte, the man who produced a union card from the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees but still was denied the right to have his vote counted. If that is the case, AFSCME, which is considering Mr. Reid's appeal, will have to make a decision as to whether an inaccurate list of agency fee payers should supersede the wishes of what turn out to be bona fide members who cast their votes.

It is unclear that AFSCME can be depended on to be fair in this process. Last year its Judicial Panel chairman used what appeared to be a misreading of the international union's own constitution to dismiss an election challenge at School Employees Local 372 of DC 37. That local's president, Veronica Montgomery Costa, like Mr. Ramsey, is an ally of DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. Ms. Costa also serves as DC 37's president, and in that capacity has issued some unorthodox rulings at executive board meetings that furthered Ms. Roberts's power at the expense of her opponents on the board.

If he gets no satisfaction at AFSCME, Mr. Reid's next option would be a civil suit. At some point, though, the peculiar business done at locals like 372 and 768 ought to prompt the Manhattan DA's Office to take a new look at an organization that it sought to purge of corruption in the late 1990s, convicting more than two dozen DC 37 officials on charges ranging from large-scale theft of member dues money to the rigging of officer elections and the union's 1996 wage contract vote.

"The District Council is still manipulating elections," Mr. Reid said last week. "They used to switch ballots in the envelopes. What they do now is they switch the listing of who's eligible."

It's a sorry comment on what has become of a union that once was active in the civil rights movement that some of its local presidents to maintain their power now resort to maneuvers that are the equivalent of poll taxes and literacy tests.

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