One of the five candidates running for president of the UAW has filed a federal lawsuit in Detroit requesting at least an additional month to have ballots returned in the union’s first direct election of top leaders.
The lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Detroit by candidate Will Lehman, a Mack Trucks worker in Pennsylvania, alleges the union and the independent monitor overseeing it have not done enough to notify those eligible of the election process and pointed out that only a fraction of ballots had been returned this week ahead of a suggested mail-in deadline to have them counted.
Hearings in the matter are scheduled for Tuesday.
“The UAW and the monitor have failed to provide anything resembling adequate notice to hundreds of thousands of rank-and-file UAW members, who are not accustomed to direct elections and would not ordinarily expect to receive ballots. The UAW has the resources and the means to provide the necessary notice but deliberately and obstinately refuses to do so,” according to the suit.
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A request for comment was emailed to UAW spokeswoman Sandra Engle. The office of monitor Neil Barofsky declined to comment.
The suit noted the struggles of some members to even get a ballot.
“Since early November, a concerningly high number of UAW members have been submitting reports to the Monitor complaining that they had not received ballots, either within a reasonable time or at all. Many members have reported the Monitor’s website and hotline were non-responsive when members attempted to use those resources to request ballots,” the suit said.
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As of Thursday evening, just under 96,000 ballots had been returned, according to the monitor’s website. The monitor’s office has said that more than 1 million ballots were being mailed out to those eligible. The deadline for ballots to be returned is Nov. 28, and vote counting is slated to begin the following day.
Lehman, along with Brian Keller, Mark Gibson and Shawn Fain are all trying to unseat incumbent Ray Curry for the union’s top spot. Curry and Fain are both also at the top of two candidate slates, Curry Solidarity Team and UAW Members United, respectively.
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The five candidates were nominated at the UAW convention this summer in Detroit.
The election is the result of the consent decree between federal prosecutors and the UAW following the corruption scandal involving the misuse of millions of dollars that sent top-ranking former union leaders, including two presidents, and auto executives to prison. Barofsky was also named as the monitor to oversee the union and the election as a result.
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber.