UFT BLOWS OFF MOST UNITED FOR CHANGE ELECTION COMPLAINTS THAT WERE FILED JUNE 6

You might recall that on June 6, 2022, United for Change filed 32 complaints with the UFT about violations of federal labor law and regulations in the recent UFT officer election by Unity Caucus-UFT. We reported on it here on June 10. We didn't say Hugo Chavez was hacking into election machines or that dead people were voting en masse. 

You can look and see there are very legitimate legal issues that were raised such as UFT President Michael Mulgrew and his Unity faithful campaigning on union time and union dime at the Delegate Assembly, Unity members personally attacking Mulgrew's opponent while not letting her respond at the DA (that's my wife Camille in case you have forgotten), the Union price gouging UFC to send multiple emails to the membership, the UFT only allowing attachments and not direct emails to go to members, not permitting sufficient observers to watch the vote count up close, and so much more.

The federal Department of Labor gives a union and the parent union (the UFT and AFT in this instance) three months to try to resolve election complaints internally. The UFT ignored us for June, July, and August. There was no investigation, no answers, nothing. That sent me up the wall. I started informing a UFC Election Committee person (he would probably say screaming and yelling at) in July from my vacation in Jamaica that we have to prepare to take this to the next level because the UFT isn't even dignifying us with a response. Finally, on August 26th, the United for Change Election Committee ran out of patience with the UFT and sent a complaint letter to the AFT which asked them to investigate the complaints and also find out why we received no answer from the UFT.

On September 1, we finally heard from the UFT. Secretary Leroy Barr answered 11 of the 32 complaints and said they were repeats of an individual's complaints that were already handled so we had to go right to the AFT with those 11. Why couldn't he have stated that in June?  He added that he would get back to us on the other 21. 88 days and this is the best the UFT could do. His excuse was the UFT business is slow in the summer because schools are on vacation. That is a very lame excuse.

Here it is right from the UFT Constitution. This is from Article V-EXECUTIVE BOARD

SECTION 8. The Executive Board shall supervise all elections in the manner provided for by the Constitution and shall decide all disputes arising out of such elections.

Is the Executive Board precluded from meeting in July and August?

SECTION 12. The Executive Board shall meet at least twice a month, except during July and August, at a time and place publicly announced. Its meetings, except for executive sessions, shall be open to all members of this organization.

SECTION 13. At the President’s discretion or at the request of a majority of the entire membership of the Executive Board, a special meeting of the Executive Board shall be called.

The UFT Executive Board doesn't have to meet in July and August but it certainly can and should in order to decide on complaints that they ran an unfair election. Those are serious charges that are time sensitive as I would think Leroy knows or should know. It looks like the UFT tried to just stall to run out the clock on us.

In reading over the 70+ pages of complaints and supporting arguments, I am only surprised that we didn't take this issue up years ago. Did you know the UFT has no bylaws on file with the Department of Labor? The UFT basically make the rules up as they go along.  UFT elections are fought on an extremely tilted playing field. 

Update. You can now read the entire complaint that United for Change sent to the UFT and AFT by going here.

The question now is since three months from when UFC filed the complaint is up today,  should United for Change go right to the Department of Labor as is our legal right for the next month, or do we give the UFT and AFT more time to answer us, or do we just let it go?