Letter from General Chairman Keeley

General Chairman Keeley (GO-342 Amtrak) wrote an open letter to President Futhey last week, setting some issues straight in regards to the lawsuit blocking the SMART merger. It’s a long 9 page letter but brings up a host of facts and issues that have being buried and hidden from view.

While the letter is long, the points boil down to a host of still unanswered questions revolving around the motives and reasons for the International’s support of the Akron lawsuit.

it has become apparent that the facts regarding the UTU / SMWIA SMART Merger remain unclear and the record still needs to be set straight.

As to what is known about the SMART Merger Agreement itself, much was available to us on the UTU web site up until January 1, 2008, when the current administration had it all removed.

Keeley begins by unearthing some questions about some recent actions that have come from Cleveland. He finds it a bit curious that somebody decided to delete everything from the UTU website on January 1 regarding the SMART merger – including the link to the SMWIA Constitution that was made an issue by the Akron plaintiffs. It seems that if the SMWIA Constitution was an issue, then wouldn’t the new Administration want to include a link to it so that all members could read it for themselves?

Is it me, or is it a bit odd that the same people who complained about access to the SMART Constitution and its supposed “conflicts” seem to be the same people limiting members from seeing those conflicts? I don’t believe I have read a single exert You have to wonder if there’s something they’re trying to hide or if they’re trying to tell you there are conflicts, without showing you if any actually exist.

Keeley seems to call Futhey out in this next section when he reminds him that Futhey endorsed the decision that the SMART Constitution not be mailed out to every UTU household. The SMART Constitution is made up of the UTU Constitution bundled together with the SMWIA Constitution – and not something newly written. Futhey agreed with everyone else to make the SMWIA Constitution available at the UTU.org website – since that was the one part of the SMART Constitution UTU members were not familiar with. It’s interesting that Futhey bases his veto of the member vote for the SMART merger on his opposition to something he voted for in the first place.

According to Keeley’s letter, Futhey had an ample number of opportunities to oppose the SMART merger not only during the summer but even in the time before he made his arguments against it in late December.

The issue at heart is “whether our members received sufficient information about
the SMART Merger Agreement to make a fully informed decision”. At point is
whether or not the members received a copy of the SMART Constitution. The SMART Constitution is the SMWIA Constitution with the UTU Constitution inserted intact as Article 21b. The 2007 Board of Directors agreed unanimously that it was not necessary to provide a hard copy of the proposed Constitution but would instead post it on the UTU web site, where it could be downloaded and
printed by anyone with access to the internet. While there were many questions submitted about the merger itself (104 to be exact), there were never any objections submitted by anyone concerning the distribution of the proposed Constitution. At least not until December 7, 2007, well after the SMART Merger Agreement was put out for vote and ratified by the membership.

Keeley further explains that:

‘While still serving in the capacity of Vice President, and still serving as a
member of the 2007 Board of Directors, President Futhey received the e-mail and attachment on September 20, 2007. Article 23 of the UTU Constitution, effective August 2003, required the 2007 Board of Directors to meet on the first Tuesday of every April and October. The members of the 2007 Board of Directors were then required to have met on October 2, 2007. There is no evidence and/or any references to discussions during this meeting regarding the recently discovered problems concerning the SMART Merger Agreement. No one made any objections to moving forward with the merger.

After learning of the problems and conflicts with the SMART Merger Agreement and after assuming his position formally as our International President on January 1, 2008, President Futhey could have convened a meeting with the 2008 Board of Directors to resolve the issues as provided by Article 23 of the UTU Constitution. This never happened. Not even when all were present at the same time at the same location in New Orleans for the S. of U. meeting.

It’s the timing of Futhey’s objections to the merger that gives Keeley pause, and not only his lack of willingness to address the issues he waited until the last minute to object to but also his refusal to attempt to hammer out those issues during the meeting in New Orleans.

In an earlier letter, Keeley had asked Futhey many of these same questions he is asking now. He never received a response from Futhey besides a note asking him to attend the meeting in New Orleans. Besides taking Futhey to task for being elusive, Keeley begins to raise some doubts about some of Futhey’s actions:

Because the current administration has chosen not to engage me in my efforts to
seek out the truth, I have been forced to investigate this issue on my own
and to draw my own conclusions. . .after attending the State of the Union
meeting in New Orleans and hearing President Futhey’s S. of U. address, I respectfully submit that I am more confused now than ever before. . .First, to my great disappointment, the questions submitted in my January 14, 2008 letter to the Board of Directors were completely ignored as not one was answered.


With that understanding, we must consider when everyone involved first became aware of the alleged problems and conflicts with the SMART Merger. Then we must ascertain what actions were taken subsequent to acquiring this knowledge. How and when did they take any action? When we learn the answers to these and other questions, we might be able to discover the true purpose behind everyone’s actions. Are their intentions really in the best interest of UTU and that of our members?

At any time after Former UTU President Thompson first presented the SMART Merger Agreement, President Futhey could have and in retrospect he should have, refused to support the measure without first having in his possession all the relevant documents (SMART / SMWIA Constitutions), taken the time to necessary to review them closely; document his questions and concerns and wait until he received a written response which would have enabled him to make an informed and intelligent decision. In President Futhey’s own words, this never happened.

Addressing the charges against the seven UTU board members, Keeley begins by attacking the twisted notion that any of them are blocking the actions of their own union.
Bringing everyone back to reality, he lays out that they were only standing in support of their obligation to recognition the membership vote, but they did not even initiate a lawsuit against the plaintiffs – instead they are the victims of a suit seeking to have them shoved out of the way for a goal that none of the plaintiffs have yet to reveal.

Another allegation about the seven Board of Directors concerns the financial burden that their continued support for the SMART Merger has contributed greatly to the fiscal crisis that UTU is currently facing. This simply is not true. Evidence the undisputable fact that these seven Board of Directors actions are only subsequent and in response to actions taken against them by the engineers of the anti-merger movement.

Keeley openly wonders why a meeting of everyone involved in the merger talks never took place to answer the questions and issues posed by anti-merger plaintiffs. While the SMWIA signaled its willingness to attent such a meeting, nobody from the International responded:

in a letter addressed to President Futhey and dated January 17, 2008 (see attached), I requested to have all parties involved with the UTU SMWIA SMART Merger, including all members of the 2007 Board of Directors, all signatories and authors of the Merger Agreement present at the S. of U. meeting. My reasoning and purpose for having everyone involved with the merger agreement present was so that they could explain their actions and be held accountable, which would ensure that the record would indeed be set straight. This request went unanswered and for reasons never explained by anyone at the International Office, none of the UTU Officers listed in my letter of request
were invited to explain their actions.


Keeley’s letter raises some serious questions that still haven’t been answered.

Why did President Futhey not raise his concerns about the merger during the time from August to December 31st when he had every opportunity to do so?

Why did President Futhey object to the merger based upon an action that he himself voted to endorse?

As President-elect, why did it take Mike Futhey, an attorney specializing in contract law, at least three months to sit down and read the SMART merger agreement and decide he was opposed to it?

As President-elect, why did Mike Futhey not bring up any objections he had to the merger agreement during meetings on October 2nd and later in November?

As President-elect, should Mike Futhey not have raised his objections during the fall when he could have avoided what he now calls a “costly lawsuit?”

As President-elect, when did Mike Futhey and or Arty Martin and Kim Thompson meet with the plaintiffs? Did the plaintiffs have any of their attorneys with them? Who were those attorneys associated with? Were there any Teamster officials or staff at those meetings? Was President-elect Futhey aware that the plaintiffs were associated with the Teamsters?

What parts of the SMWIA Constitution did President Futhey have an objection to? Why has he removed any trace of the SMWIA Constitution from the utu.org website for members to see?

Why did President Futhey decide until after the membership voted, to oppose the merger and eventually take it upon himself to veto their support of it?

These questions are just the tip of the iceberg. There is still more to Keeley’s letter to President Futhey. These questions are only those from the first 4 pages of the letter and are no way a complete accord of the whole letter. We will continue to provide more commentary on this letter tomorrow, but in the meantime you can take an unfiltered look at it [here].