The independent UAW monitor rejected a demand by incumbent president Ray Curry’s team for a new runoff election.
The monitor stopped short, however, of resolving the presidential race, with Shawn Fain still leading Curry in the ballot count.
The monitor, in a report filed late Friday, said Curry’s team had lodged a protest the night before the vote count in the runoff in the United Auto Workers’ first direct election of top leaders was scheduled to resume on Thursday. The protest alleged that flaws in the administration of aspects of the runoff required the monitor to hold off on announcing a winner and instead schedule a redo. The count had been paused since March 4.
“Upon preliminary review of the submission, the monitor determined that there was no basis for such extraordinary action and denied the request. The Curry Solidarity Team submission will instead be treated as a protest in the ordinary course,” the report said.
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The report noted additionally that concerns the Curry team raised about Region 9 race winner Daniel Vicente and his standing related to dues payments had been rejected previously, with the agreement of the union. It was done so “on grounds that he had been a member in continuous good standing for the requisite time to run for international office,” the report said.
The report said Chuck Browning, director of the union’s Ford department, had won election as vice president, and Vicente had won the Region 9 director race, although the results have yet to be certified.
The outcome of those contests wasn’t in doubt because of the vote tally margin. The monitor’s office “strongly” encouraged the union to schedule the swearing-in for both Browning and Vicente in the next few days in light of the upcoming special bargaining convention scheduled for March 27 in Detroit.
That convention will set priorities for bargaining with Ford, General Motors and Chrysler-parent Stellantis when talks begin later this year and prompted former UAW President Bob King to issue a letter Friday urging the monitor, Neil Barofsky, to report the results as soon as possible.
King said it’s in the best interest of the membership to swear in the next president before the convention.
“As you know this is an extremely important year for bargaining with UAW represented employers — especially in the auto sector. Also, as I am sure you are aware, the outcomes of auto bargaining will have a major impact on UAW bargaining in other sectors,” King wrote, in the letter which was included in a news release from Fain’s camp. “Once the election results are determined, everyone in my opinion has a responsibility to pull together for the sake of the membership to achieve the best contracts possible — regardless of which candidates we supported in the elections.”
King said he understands both candidates have standing questions and protests and he respects the right of any candidate to pursue objections or protests ”through the proper channels of post-election appeals.”
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Curry’s team had filed a protest over the election with the monitor’s office, telling its followers on Facebook on Friday that “UAW members deserve an election process and a result that is free of taint and counts every vote.”Fain’s camp, in its news release, said a Fain victory was “nearly certain.”
The margin between Fain and Curry is tight, but Fain remains in the lead with 505 votes separating the two candidates and about 600 challenged ballots left to be counted, according to unofficial results from the monitor’s office. Collectively, the two candidates received more than 138,000 votes.
The vote count began March 1 in Dayton, Ohio, but was paused over the issue of unresolved challenged ballots. It resumed on Thursday in Detroit, although that did not end in a resolution for the presidential race.
A recent update on the monitor’s website noted that the issues that are holding up the resolution of the vote count in the presidential race relate to the eligibility status of the voters.
“In the interim, the challenged ballots were resealed under the supervision of the monitor and the observers and were transported by the election vendor from Detroit to Dayton, Ohio. The monitor expects that it will reconvene the vote count again.”
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Two of the five other presidential candidates in the first round have both also weighed in.
Brian Keller was among the voices calling for the monitor to end the drama, saying on Thursday that Fain should be sworn in and urging UAW members to protest the delay in resolving the election.
Will Lehman issued a statement Saturday blasting the election process. He said the situation proved the validity of his federal lawsuit, filed last year and later dismissed, to have the deadline to have ballots returned extended, in part because many UAW members said they had not received ballots.
“The narrow result and low turnout show Fain and Curry struggled equally to win votes beyond their own bureaucratic networks and that neither bureaucrat has significant support among the rank and file. In the runoff, although many locals actually took measures to notify workers of the election (they did not in the first round), Fain and Curry each won votes from only about 5% of the rank-and-file membership. The election was a debacle for the UAW bureaucracy and has provoked a serious crisis,” Lehman said in his statement.
He pointed out that the “UAW apparatus under Curry, the monitor and the Department of Labor each opposed my request to extend the deadline and require the UAW take measures to notify the entire membership” even as Curry’s team was now asking what “efforts were made to contact UAW members who did not receive a ballot in the mail.”
Contact Eric D. Lawrence: elawrence@freepress.com. Become a subscriber.