Retirees Show '372' The Way

The leadership of the District Council 37 Retirees' Association, dismayed that only 2 percent of its 25,000 members voted in its 2004 officers' election, decided that if it couldn't bring enough members to the voting booths, it should bring the voting booths to the members.

This year, the Retirees' Association used a mail ballot, and the result was an increase from 479 ballots cast three years ago to 10,977 last month. While the 44-percent return is not as good as what many unions get in officer elections, it's nonetheless impressive considering that incumbent president Stu Leibowitz and most of his running mates were unopposed.

There is an object lesson there for DC 37's largest local. Department of Education Local 372 had a similarly alarming turnout rate in its last officers' election: only 547 members out of about 25,000 made the trek to DC 37's lower Manhattan headquarters to cast ballots.

The Local 372 election is far more important than the retirees' vote to DC 37. Because of Local 372's size, it heavily influences the election of DC 37's officers; the local's president, Veronica Montgomery-Costa, has maximized that numerical power by ensuring that the local's delegates vote in a bloc for the candidate of her choice.

Given that DC 37, by using delegate voting rather than giving members the right to choose their leaders, runs the least-democratic election process in the city, it is especially repugnant that its largest local holds the kind of in-person election that is designed to minimize turnout, since the employees it represents work in schools scattered throughout the five boroughs.

The public reason offered by DC 37 spokespersons on behalf of Ms. Montgomery-Costa for doing it this way is that it is about $60,000 cheaper to hold an in-person election at a single location than to use a mail ballot.

It is hard to justify such economizing, however, after Ms. Montgomery-Costa got her cronies on the union's board to vote her a $76,000 pay raise five years ago. Since the local holds elections every three years, the yearly cost of going to a mail ballot would be just $20,000 more than at present.

The real reason the local's leadership seeks to make it hard for members to vote is that Ms. Montgomery-Costa believes the lower the turnout, the better her chances of winning.

This has not embarrassed her close political ally, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts. But maybe other labor groups with which DC 37 is affiliated, from the Municipal Labor Committee to the AFL-CIO New York City Central Labor Council, should cringe at those figures and attempt to bring moral pressure on Local 372 to follow the retirees' example.