Will Lehman, an autoworker and socialist, filed a lawsuit Monday, July 3, against the Biden administration’s Department of Labor (DOL), demanding that the UAW election for representatives of the National Executive be revived with all candidate names on the ballot, because of the UAW – massive bureaucracy cracking down on voters.
Lehman’s lawsuit, filed in federal court for the Eastern District of Michigan, comes days after the Department of Labor (DOL) dismissed his challenge to the conduct of the UAW election in a three-sentence decision that did not even attempt to respond to the arguments he raised or the evidence he presented. “A press release setting out the reasons for this decision will be communicated to you at a later date,” the decision concludes.
This is the second time in less than a year that Lehman has gone to federal court to defend the aircraft’s ground rights. In November 2022, Lehman filed a lawsuit in the same judicial district, before voting ended in the first round of the election, asking Judge David Lawson to extend the election deadline for voting and demanding that the UAW take action to inform members. .
Lehman warned in the 2022 lawsuit: “If mailing out ballots continues at this rate every day through the November 28 deadline, the total number of votes cast in the election will be around 104,000, almost 40,000 fewer ballots than in last year’s referendum.”
Lehman cited this prediction in the most recent lawsuit, saying:
There is nothing more speculative about the issues raised by Lehman in November. Through a combination of betrayal, incompetence and deliberate delays, this election was effectively held behind the backs of the masses of base plan members and retirees. Even incumbent UAW President Ray Curry acknowledged on March 16, 2023 that the election was marked by “widespread disenfranchisement of UAW voters.” This is an extraordinary admission from the head of the bureaucracy himself, which confirms the many objections made by Will Lehman throughout the election period.
Lehman’s new lawsuit begins by explaining that “embedded bureaucracy systematically denied the rights of hundreds of thousands of plan members and retirees by willfully failing to provide adequate notice that an election was taking place. To this day, many union members are unaware that there was an election in which they were eligible to vote. Of 1.1 million eligible voters, only 104,776 cast their ballots, while around 1,000,000 did not. This turnout – 9% – is the lowest of any national union election in US history.
Lehman’s complaint details how and why the UAW bureaucracy systematically suppressed the vote.
The bureaucracy campaigned against the holding of direct elections and had a motive to suppress the vote. The bureaucracy feared the election would give rank-and-file workers like Will Lehman the opportunity to challenge his hitherto absolute control over the union’s holdings and financial assets, accumulated through generations of worker dues, as well as to thwart the privileges of the bureaucracy and pleasant relations with the management of the company.
The complaint details how the UAW provided information to the bureaucracy, but worked to exclude the grassroots as much as possible.
The bureaucracy treated the election as a private and internal matter. During the first round of voting, he took steps to inform his support network of civil servants and representatives at local and national levels that an election was taking place, while ensuring the minimum turnout possible from grassroots members. This strategy was reflected in the extensive use of the Local Union Information System (“LUIS”) communication system to announce the election, which historically has only been used for communication between officials national and local unions. This strategy ensured that the second ballot excluded Lehman and was limited to a competition between representatives of two main factions of the bureaucracy itself: the “Administrative Caucus” led by Ray Curry, and the “Members” caucus. United” led by Shawn Fain.
The lawsuit summarizes the massive amount of evidence Lehman’s campaign received from rank-and-file workers, explaining that the UAW in the centralized national administration and local branches failed to update their mailing lists and systematically refused to remind workers to update their addresses so they could receive a ballot. This evidence, as well as the responses of a poll conducted by more than 100 members from more than 20% of all locals, has never been refuted by either the election observer, the UAW, or the Ministry of Labour.
Among the points highlighted in the lawsuit is the contrast between how the UAW bureaucracy’s refusal to inform rank-and-file members “is underscored by the much more sophisticated and professional efforts simultaneously undertaken to inform and remind all members and retirees of their right and opportunity to vote for the Democratic Party in the November 22 midterm elections, which were held concurrently with the first round of union elections.” The lawsuit provides details showing that the UAW sent a series of messages urging workers to vote in the midterm elections, which “proves that the UAW had the means to provide adequate notice to members, but that the union deliberately chose not to use them”.
The complaint also reveals the role played by the two law firms recommended by the UAW bureaucracy to oversee the election: Jenner & Block and Crowell & Moring. “The law firms in the role of Monitor, Crowell & Moring and Jenner & Block, are longtime advocates and lobbyists for automakers,” he noted. “These law firms currently represent companies that employ tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of UAW members, including GM, Dana, CAT, Bosch, Bridgestone and others. The corporate clients of these law firms had a vested interest in seeing the voices of rank-and-file workers stifled in the elections, to ensure the election of a docile leadership that would continue the decades-long collaboration of bureaucracy. of the UAW with corporations to suppress grassroots interests and increase corporate profits.
The Labor Department’s decision to dismiss Lehman’s complaint, without even bothering to explain why, exposes the Biden administration’s claim to champion “democracy” in the United States, Ukraine or elsewhere. The entire political establishment has nothing but contempt for the democratic rights of working people.
Organizations such as the Democratic Socialists of America (DNS) and the publication Working notes falsely claim to be fighting for “democracy in the unions”. However, they played a crucial role in covering up the disenfranchisement of rank-and-file workers and maintained a guilty silence on Lehman’s efforts to ensure a fair vote throughout the campaign trail. These upper-middle-class forces speak on behalf of the bureaucracy, increasingly form the basis for recruiting its leading personnel, and operate within the framework of the Democratic Party.
As the complaint forcefully states: “This election was characterized by a complete disregard for the rights of rank-and-file workers like Will Lehman, of every institution that participated in his oversight. The most fundamental right of more than a million workers and pensioners – the right to vote – has been treated as completely irrelevant…”
In response to the filing of the lawsuit, Lehman said World Socialist Website“This lawsuit is about all 1.1 million members, regardless of who they voted for or if they knew there was an election. In light of the overwhelming evidence of UAW voter suppression and election interference, the Biden administration’s refusal to act on my complaint is a slap in the face to working people everywhere. This election was a fraud, and the leaders who came to power as a result of this one must be considered illegitimate unless the election is re-run with real notice to all.
Given that Lehman’s lawsuit last November was dismissed by the courts while there was still time to increase voter turnout, workers should have no illusions that the court will now intervene to protect their rights. The primary concern of the entire political establishment is bolstering the decaying UAW bureaucracy, now headed by longtime bureaucrat Shawn Fain.
The purpose of this corporate-government conspiracy is to deliver a crippling first blow to autoworkers and the working class as a whole, ahead of the upcoming contract battles of 178,000 U.S. and Canadian autoworkers. in the three large factories. [GM, Ford og Stellantis] in September. Fain has already proven to be as much a tool of the companies as Curry, by isolating the strike at Clarios and hammering out a retail contract, and refusing to do anything to protect the workers who have been forced to stay. on production lines and being poisoned by smoke from Canadian wildfires.
Lehman’s campaign was based on the struggle to establish power at the base, abolishing the union apparatus and developing a network of committees controlled by the workers themselves. This is the sine qua non for waging a real battle against the corporations and the ruling elite. The need for such a step was manifested in the way the election was conducted, through the systematic dispossession of workers by the bureaucracy, the Biden administration and the auto companies’ law firms, which stripped of their rights.
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