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Release-Time Brouhaha

To the Editor:

Behrouz Fathi (July 11 issue) claims that every elected president of Chapter 2 of Civil Service Technical Guild Local 375 was given full-time release to perform union work since 1994. That statement is patently false.

I was president of Chapter 2 from May 1981 until my retirement on Dec. 31, 1999 and I only had two days a week release time. All this time I was able to service my membership and concurrently run my engineering group, which reviewed all design estimates (until June 1985) and was responsible for the structural integrity of all TA tunnels until my retirement. My union office was never closed and I never ran for or held another local office, as the size of the chapter and its many issues demanded that I pay attention to the chapter.

MEL LEVY