An open letter to UAW 2865 Elections Committee chair Travis Knowles
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Travis:
Last night three members of the elections committee hastily abandoned the vote count underway at the UCLA office without counting any ballots from Berkeley or UCLA. You presented three motions, certifying the results of the election which had already been tabulated, referring the count to the next Joint Council meeting, and adjourning the meeting. None of these motions passed, since only three members of the committee participated in the “votes.” These “votes” were conducted over the course of less than 10 seconds without any time for discussion or even time for the other three members of the committee to be informed about what was happening. The proposed motion referring the election to the Joint Council is in violation of the UAW constitution, which stipulates, “All elections shall be held under the supervision of a democratically elected Election Committee” (Article 38, Section 15 c). Section 11 stipulates, “Following each election, the Election Committee shall report in writing the canvass of the results of the election to the membership’s next membership meeting.”
The three members of the committee who abandoned the count are in violation of the constitution and are impeding the work of the committee. Please return to the UCLA office immediately to resume the count.
If you refuse to resume the count, I would ask that you submit your resignations effective immediately.
Adam Hefty
Santa Cruz Election Committee member
1 May 2011 at 8:46 AM
Gee, Adam,this is quite intellectually dishonest, no?
You post on an AWDU blog a call for the Election Committee to count all the ballots, without acknowledging that it was AWDU that challenged the counting of the UCLA ballots. At a minimum, let’s not try to deceive people so blatantly, OK?
-LGR
1 May 2011 at 9:42 AM
Hello, Ricardo. We wanted to count the LA ballots and continue to want to count them. One box of LA ballots was to be set aside as challenged. This was proposed by the elections chair and unanimously agreed to by the elections committee – and actually, the UCLA elections committee member initially suggested that it might make sense to mark that box as spoiled. So your claim is 100% false.
1 May 2011 at 11:30 AM
[...] adjourn, and leave the rest of the ballots uncounted. This motion did not actually pass (only three of seven committee members were allowed to vote). Even so, Knowles then fled the room–accompanied by the members of the Elections Committee [...]
1 May 2011 at 12:09 PM
[...] was absent with opposition candidate Jorge Cabrera for 3 hours, the election committee returned and certified the election without counting Berkeley or UCLA ballots.” What, I wonder, could “partial certification” [...]
1 May 2011 at 4:20 PM
I’m a rank and file worker. So first of all let me say, I am really disgusted at the obvious collusion between the Elections Committee and the incumbent slate. You are fooling very few people. Let me also just say, as a rank and file worker that you are FUCKING. Fuck you back. I don’t want to hear anything about a lack of civility either from folks who are in blatant violation of union bylaws, and more importantly, any basic standard of decency or democratic ethics. Your actions speak much louder, and more effectively, than my words. How does it FEEL to know you’re going to go down in the chapters of some labor history texts as another example of union leadership gone wrong?
Moving on, I love how your little responses here make no attempt whatsoever to address the bigger issues in this post. Classy, and of course telling.
Finally, I just want to say, I really enjoy my ability to publicly criticize and communicate on AWDU sites to AWDU posts. Don’t you like this transparent, democratic format? You must, because you’re utilizing it, though it’s not something you can do on USEJ sites. At USEJ sites all information is carefully controlled after a meticulous process of calculation, and all communication takes place in closed channels. You know this was one of the primary reasons I came off the fence. Way to go.