‘768’ Insurgent Drops Lawsuit Over Election; Cites Risk of Federal Limits on Agency Fee Monies

'768' Insurgent Drops Lawsuit Over Election; Cites Risk of Federal Limits on Agency Fee Monies

By RICHARD STEIER

A candidate who barely lost his bid for the presidency of Health Service Employees Local 768 of District Council 37 dropped his lawsuit to overturn the result after it was transferred to Federal jurisdiction, saying he feared that U.S. Labor Secretary Elaine Chao would use the case to hurt the interests of unions. Fitz Reid had challenged the decision by Local 768's election committee not to count 21 ballots from dues-payers who were not on the local's membership list. Eventually 13 of those ballots were opened and tallied, leaving him two votes behind incumbent President Darryl Ramsey. Mr. Reid asserted that the election committee balked at counting the remaining eight ballots because they came from Public Health Sanitarians - the job title that he holds - and were more likely to be votes for him.

FITZ REID: Didn't want Feds involved.

Ineligible Status

Mr. Reid said that all eight told him that they had previously signed dues authorization cards. Local 768 maintained it had no records to support those claims, and its attorneys, DC 37 General Counsel Eddie Demmings and Associate General Counsel Robin Roach, had argued before Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Debra James that they were therefore agency fee-payers and ineligible to vote.

DARRYL RAMSEY: Narrow win stands. Under the state's Agency Shop Law, public employees who decline to join the union authorized to bargain on their behalf must nonetheless pay the equivalent of dues. Those who are designated agency fee-payers, however, are not permitted to vote in union elections.

Mr. Reid claims that more than 20 percent of Local 768's members - about 700 out of 3,300 - are agency fee-payers, and that this is the result of a conscious decision by the local's past and present leaders not to enroll them as regular members. He said he believed every person paying dues to DC 37 "should be considered a union member unless he or she specifically opts out."

Feared Restrictions

Labor Secretary Chao invoked her power under the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act to intervene in the case, which had the effect of transferring it to the Federal court system. Mr. Reid said he and his attorneys were concerned that a Federal ruling that agency fee-payers were not union members could lead to a legal challenge to the provisions of the state Agency Shop Law that allow the dues contributed by persons in that category to be used for union activities including political contributions.

"We believe that she's maneuvering to restrict union rights," Mr. Reid said in a Dec. 6 interview, a few days after he decided to withdraw the lawsuit. "Darryl Ramsey is less of a problem for us than she could be."

Calls to Ms. Chao and Mr. Ramsey - who was out sick for part of last week - were not returned.

Mr. Reid noted that his own supporters - as a result of last December's election - constitute a majority on the Local 768 executive board, and that it was possible that a Federal court ruling would not have come until after the next union election in December 2008.

Roughly 17 percent of DC 37's membership consists of agency fee-payers, about four times the percentage at the next-largest municipal union, the United Federation of Teachers.

A DC 37 spokesman, Rudy Orozco, disputed Mr. Reid's claim that the union's practice of not enrolling as members a significant percentage of those under its banner was designed to allow "incumbents to manipulate elections for their own ends."

'Untrue Allegations'

"DC 37 is a democratic union with a process that allows a candidate to appeal or challenge the results of an election," Mr. Orozco said in a statement. "Mr. Reid did that and lost. Mr. Reid also made several allegations that are simply untrue."

The statement noted that "Section 208 of the New York State Civil Service Law establishes the agency shop fee that Mr. Reid is incorrectly attributing to DC 37."

Mr. Reid also charged that it was unethical for DC 37's top attorneys to represent Mr. Ramsey in what he described as an internal dispute arising from the Local 768 election.

Mr. Orozco responded, "DC 37's legal department represented Local 768's election committee as mandated, not Mr. Ramsey as a candidate."

An attorney for Mr. Reid, Stuart Lichten, noted that one positive aspect of Ms. Chao's intervention in the case was her establishing that all persons running for office within DC 37 were entitled to the protection of the LMRDA governing union elections, including the right to equal access to membership lists and to inspect the names and addresses of all members prior to the election.