Objects to UDR on Carey
The writer of the following letter
is a workers' rights attorney in Massachusetts who has been a staunch supporter of the
union democracy cause:
Dear editor: If you told me even a year ago that I would be reading repeated
articles in our organization's publication doing anything other than chastising a union
leader for using funds of the organization to promote his own re-election to union office,
I would have told you that no such thing is possible. Yet in issue after issue I find what
appears to me to be AUD and its most active members and contributors in one way or another
doing just that.
While I have generally admired and long been part of the work of AUD and TDU, applauded
the struggle of Carey's team in the UPS strike, supported Carey's candidacy and oppose
Hoffa's, and believe the members should not have been selectively deprived of a chance to
choose whom they want to elect, I still deem it among the worst of all offenses for a
union leader to use the union's (i.e. the members') funds to promote his own candidacy for
office and can neither condone nor excuse it because the candidate who did that was the
one I preferred.
In solidarity, Mark D. Stern
P.S. While it has no influence whatsoever on the views I expressed above, I voluntarily
disclose that Barbara Zack Quindel was my law partner 20 years ago and remains a friend to
this day.
Editor's comment: Mark Stern's denunciation of the Carey campaign tactics are well
taken; but, I believe he misreads the intention of our accounts which is not to excuse
those misdeeds but precisely to emphasize what he, himself, mentions and is so critical a
fact: that "the members should not have been selectively deprived of a chance to
choose whom they want to elect." Now that Carey is eliminated, even expelled from the
union, the way has been smoothed for the old guard to return to |
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APWU: from page 12
invites manipulation and abuse by the
incumbent union officers."
According to the DOJ brief, none of the candidates was informed before or during the
nominating meeting that the union election committee required the submission of social
security numbers and addresses. The seven candidates were assisted in their appeal to the
Department of Labor by AUD staff and cooperating attorney Louie Nikolaidis.
Convention Report
Peter Raska, one of the plaintiffs and a delegate to the APWU in July,
distributed hundreds of copies of the DOL brief to convention delegates. David Yao, a
delegate from Seattle and a long-time friend of AUD, reports that con |
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