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17. Union Democracy
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chapter seventeen UNION DEMOCRACY If we lose this case most other unions will follow suit and that will be the end of union democracy. —joe rauh Attorney for Dissidents In twenty years of practice he had become accustomed to phone calls from strangers and unannounced visitors to his of‹ce, most of whom brought him tales of legal woe. Many were political dissenters, rebels, and outsiders, and some were not entirely rational. One man believed the FBI bombarded him with a death ray from outer space and wanted the harassment stopped. Rauh said his jurisdiction did not extend that far. In the wake of the Yablonski case, others now arrived, mostly ordinary union members, bearing stories of repression and corruption. Like the miners who rallied behind Yablonski, they wanted more democracy in their unions. When thugs in the National Maritime Union savagely beat reformer Jim Morrissey, Rauh arranged for Jimmy Wechsler to expose the affair in the Post and raised funds that permitted Morrissey to win a substantial judgment. For others, such as Selina Burch, a staff member purged by the Communications Workers for criticizing union leaders, he found attorneys willing to take up her cause. Chip Yablonski represented Burch, who received her job back with lost pay and $100,000 in damages. While helping Burch, Rauh simultaneously represented the of‹cials of the Communications Workers and nine other unions in their suit against the National Right to Work Legal Defense and Education Foundation, which ‹nanced individual employee legal actions against unions to whom they owed dues.1 As his efforts on behalf of 211 union dissidents increased, however, he found it more dif‹cult to carry such litigation for the labor establishment. Rauh often worked behind the scenes to aid insurgents. When three locals of the Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) joined in antiwar demonstrations, their national leaders put the units in trusteeship and threatened to revoke their charters. Rauh mobilized Jerry Wurf, the maverick president of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, and several other union leaders who pressured the AFGE to back down. In a 1975 pro‹le Business Week hailed Rauh as “Attorney for the Dissidents.” That article encouraged more dissenters, including carpenters from the union’s local in Fairbanks, Alaska, whose members had been excluded by their own international from work on the giant oil pipeline to Valdez.2 Each time Rauh took one of these cases he called down the wrath of the labor barons, especially AFL-CIO president George Meany and the head of the United Steelworkers Union, I. W. Abel, who had hoped to unite his union with the UMW. Yablonski’s rebellion and the election of Arnold Miller scotched those plans, and Abel blamed Rauh. Meany and others did not bother to hide their resentments. When he came to the funeral for Senator Wayne Morse at the National Cathedral in 1974, the AFL-CIO chief greeted him with an icy stare, quickly turned his back, and loudly railed to other union leaders present about Rauh’s treachery.3 Sadlowski Weary after the UMW battles, Rauh hoped for a respite from union democracy wars in 1973, but he could not refuse an old friend and ADA stalwart from Chicago, Leon Despres. A prominent labor and civil rights attorney, Despres wanted him to meet a new client, steelworker Ed Sadlowski, who had been defeated recently in a campaign to become director of District 13, the largest local in the union’s hierarchy. Over dinner, Despres and Sadlowski gave Rauh a fact-laden account of how, in old-fashioned Chicago style, the leadership of the Steelworkers had stolen the election for their handpicked candidate, Sam Evans. One international staff member had already resigned in the face of evidence he had stuffed ballot boxes against Sadlowski. The thirty-three-year-old Sadlowski won over Rauh with his charm, lack of guile, and intellectual curiosity. The son of a steelworker, he had moved quickly from the production ›oor to a union staff position with his brains and sociability. His candor and ambition to head District 13, however, irritated Abel and the union’s national of‹cers, who had become accustomed to 212 citizen rauh [3.238.79.169] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:06 GMT) anointing candidates and guaranteeing their victory. Sadlowski broke the union’s code: he did not wait his turn. Unlike Boyle and his gang, Abel and the Steelworkers’ of‹cers did not steal from their members or employ...