UAW election vote count underway in Ohio

Vote counting got underway Tuesday in the first direct election of top union officers in the UAW.

It’s not clear when final results might be made available.

A message to a representative for the independent monitor tasked with overseeing the union as a result of the long-running corruption scandal was not immediately returned Tuesday.

UAW spokeswoman Sandra Engle said the UAW would update the union's website as unofficial results come in from the monitor. She said the union would also issue a news release at the end of the week with all results.

Unite All Workers for Democracy, or UAWD, a dissident group within the UAW that is supporting its own slate of candidates, began posting unofficial updates on the vote tally Tuesday “live from the vote count” in Dayton, Ohio, based on reports from its observers.

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The vote represents a significant shift from past practice, with individual members and retirees now eligible to vote for president, secretary-treasurer, vice presidents and regional directors. Previously, top union leaders were picked at conventions by delegates.

As of 5 p.m. Monday, the monitor’s website listed a total of 106,790 mail-in ballots being received, a fraction of the more than one million ballots that the monitor’s office said would be distributed.

A federal lawsuit filed in Detroit by Will Lehman, a candidate for president, that sought to extend the ballot return deadline past Monday was dismissed last week.

According to the suit, “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.”

Both the UAW and the monitor’s office declined comment on the suit.

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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.

The five candidates were nominated at the UAW convention this summer in Detroit.

The Curry Solidarity Team, in an email, said it had observers at the vote count, but did not otherwise provide a comment to the Free Press.

Fain, in a news release from the UAWD, noted that this is a "pivotal moment for the UAW. Our membership desperately needs a change from decades of concessionary contracts in times of record profits, and from corrupt leadership. We need to restore our willingness to confront the companies — and get rid of the top-down, business union mentality. And return power to the membership."

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. Neil 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.