Major Victory: Sixth Circuit to Review Merger Injunction

The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals has agreed to hear arguments on April 21 in an appeal of the preliminary injunction halting implementation of the merger between the UTU and the SMWIA.
The preliminary injunction was issued last June by Judge John R. Adams, a Bush appointee, who ruled that the merger could not be implemented pending conclusion of the case, including any appeals that might be accepted by any higher courts.

At issue is whether Judge Adams erred in siding with the UTU/BLET plaintiffs who joined forces with then UTU Vice President Futhey to block the merger.

While no charges have been filed against the UTU/BLET members or their co-conspirators for suing the UTU, 7 UTU Vice Presidents who intervened in support of the merger were charged with dual unionism and face a trial before the UTU Executive Board. Mike Futhey, now UTU President, testified against his own Vice Presidents on February 5th.

While attempts have been made to secure transcripts of the trial, the Futhey-controlled Executive Board has refused to make them available, even after promising Judge Adams they would do so in order to conduct a “fair” trial of the UTU Vice Presidents.

Stay tuned for more information on these breaking developments.

Irony

One minute, Ed Michael is claiming to be a rank and file member of the UTU. The next moment, he's continuing his failed campaign to be a member of the Teamsters International Executive Board.

All this while he and his allies continue their attempts to persecute the 7 UTU Vice Presidents who took a stand for the UTU membership.

And what brush is Ed Michael and his co-conspirators painting them with?

One that claims they are working for another union.

Now that is irony.

Will the Real Mike Futhey Please Stand Up?

While Mike Futhey was stating his support for the UTU-SMWIA merger, little did anyone know that he not only was secretly meeting with members of the BLET-Teamsters to file a lawsuit to stop the merger, but he was also the one who initiated the contact with them.

“I received a phone call from M.B. Futhey that resulted in a meeting Ed Michael and I had with him in Memphis . . ."
- Michael et. al plaintiff and member of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (#4, page 8)

And now he is proclaiming that the union is spending millions in court costs, while he fails to let on that the UTU-SMWIA merger agreement already had a grievance procedure in place to protect both the UTU and SMWIA from spending member funds on unnecessary attorneys’ fees.




Mike Futhey has a gift. Besides being a railroader, his bio mentions his legal career. This explains two things. First, he must be a great attorney, given that he has no trouble taking opposite sides of the same issue. And second, his legal background explains why he would have no trouble spending millions of his union’s dollars to fight a court battle on behalf of a group of Teamster plaintiffs who he prodded into filing a lawsuit against the UTU in the first place.

Mike Futhey is trying to pull off one of the most devious tricks ever attempted in the history of our Union. Once he became UTU president, Futhey decided to jump in on both sides of the lawsuit against himself through his Teamster proxies - while planning to settle after taking over control of the defendent in the case. The UTU Vice Presidents, a majority of the UTU Board of Directors, stepped in to prevent that from happening, frustrating Futhey’s efforts to be king. Now we are where we are today, a sham trial brought about by a vindictive witch hunt and a load of members dues money that could have been saved if Futhey had gone in good faith and fought this merger through the arbitration process set up to save our hard earned dues money.

Chilling Dissent

The right of free expression is a central tenet of a free society. It is this right that the existence of the labor movement itself stems from – through workers expressing themselves through collective action in order to advance a better future for themselves.

During the course of the SMWIA-UTU merger, a group of plaintiffs filed a lawsuit against the UTU seeking to impose a court-ordered injunction against the merger. During the course of these proceedings, no official from the UTU or SMWIA attempted to suppress these individuals’ rights to express themselves. To some there may have been a short term gain in doing so, but the affront to the fundamental right of every UTU and SMWIA member to free expression would be too great an affront to the rights of every UTU member and a detriment to the ability of each and every potential member of SMART to express themselves.

We learned later on, through court testimony, that these individuals were prodded to file their injunction UTU President Mike Futhey, then a UTU Vice President sitting on the union’s Executive Board. Futhey had many opportunities to voice opposition to the merger, from when he voted for it in June of 2007, to the UTU Convention where he campaigned a month later. During the six months leading up to the merger he never voiced any concerns he may have had about it but instead clandestinely worked with the individual plaintiffs (members of an outside union) seeking to put an end to a merger approved by an overwhelming majority of his members in August 2007.

Futhey’s aim, we later learned, was to prod the plaintiff’s into a lawsuit which he was planning to settle once he took office as UTU President on January 1, 2008. His plan would have worked flawlessly, if not for the fact that an overwhelmingly number of the members of the UTU Executive Board, 8 out of 10 members (not including Futhey) saw through this manipulation and challenged his grab at absolute power.

Rather than respect their rights as not only UTU members but also as elected representatives of his union’s membership, Futhey chose to have trumped up charges filed against each of these men. These charges were filed in an internal court comprised of appointees that were hand-picked by Futhey. Each of these men now facing trial shares an uncertain future with their personal and professional lives standing on the edge of ruin. All of this for speaking out against an attempt by a union President to overturn a the will of an overwhelming majority of his own membership. Rather than being portrayed as the heroes they are, Futhey has designed to sketch them as conniving villains, disloyal to his aims and a threat to his future ambitions.

Futhey’s actions are regrettable and have cast a pall over his union. He has sent a message that not only has the right to free expression within the UTU been erased, but he has chilled dissent unless it meets with his own aims.

Futhey’a attempt to defend his actions have resorted to scapegoating the SMWIA and the members of the UTU Executive Board. He now is trying to deflect attention from himself by assigning blame for the court costs his actions have cost his union to the people he has chosen as his adversaries. Futhey chose this route after having ignored an arbitration remedy already available to him through the SMART Merger Agreement – once designed to protect the treasuries of both the UTU and SMWIA by negating the need for costly litigation.

It is our hope that the UTU membership can salvage its great tradition and once again take its leadership role in the American labor movement by putting an end to this dangerous and costly dictatorship.