Insurgents sweep Local 3005 leadership elections

An insurgent slate of Local 3005 members has swept the union’s leadership elections, winning all four of the union’s top leadership positions, every seat on the executive board and its three trustee positions. All 13 members on the Rank and File Voices slate won their elections late last month with more than 60 percent of the vote — with four getting at least 70 percent — in an election that the slate dubbed a “landslide.” 

“Local 3005 members said loud and clear that they want a democratic, worker-led union,” Sarah McKenney, the new leadership’s communications chair and an executive board member, said in an email on behalf of the elected slate.“We won because we campaigned with our values by reaching out to members, listening to their needs and concerns, sharing our vision, and encouraging them to get involved.” 

Local 3005, part of District Council 37, represents about 1,000 research scientists, criminalists, administrative public health nurses, architects, engineers and other titles working in the city’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Office of Chief Medical Examiner. 

“We were elected with a mandate from our membership to transform our union and build rank-and-file power,” Meghan Peterson, the union’s newly elected president, said in a statement. “We cannot protect the health and safety of our fellow New Yorkers without safe working conditions and strong labor leadership.” 

Peterson is a city research scientist at the Department of Health who’s served as a union shop steward. Paul Brown, who won the role of vice president, was formerly in union leadership as a trustee. Both assumed their new roles June 2.  

The election was conducted by the American Arbitration Association which sent out 1,218 ballots and received 383 back, an underwhelming 31-percent response rate. The votes were counted May 29 and finalized the following day. 

The Rank and File Voices slate ran against the union’s incumbent leadership, among them Samantha Rappa-Giovagnoli, the union’s former president.  

Rappa-Giovagnoli did not respond to a request for comment. She received 140 votes to Peterson’s 239.  

Activists become leaders 

Rappa-Giovagnoli became president last year after Jeff Oshins — who had led Local 3005 since it was founded in 2018 — stepped down from his position just days before a special meeting was held to discuss divesting members’ pensions from Israeli stocks and bonds. Peterson and other members of what would later become the Rank and File Voices slate led the petitioning drive that forced union leadership to hold that meeting.  

Ninety members, or 92 percent of those who cast ballots in the meeting, voted to pass a motion calling for divestment. "Local 3005 shall support a statement of divestment of NYCERS pensions from all Israeli bonds and holdings in industries that fund and profit from the ongoing genocide in Palestine," the motion read. It was the first motion calling for divestment passed through a DC 37 local. 

Peterson and other activists within the union had bristled against Oshins leadership for nearly two years preceding his resignation. They told The Chief that Oshins had been stifling member engagement and that proposals to create a membership committee, speak out about city budget cuts, fight for telework rights and pass a divestment motion had been shot down by the union leader.  

Frustrated with the lack of engagement and feeling out of options, 63 members signed a petition calling for the special meeting on divestment which union leadership would be required to hold under the local’s constitution. Oshins resigned Sept. 11, and the divestment meeting was held Sept 16.  

Oshins ran in this year's elections for a delegate position, but garnered just 89 votes. All three of the members on the Rank and File Voices slate won with over 230 votes. 

Oshins said in an email that the election of the Rank and File Voices slate showed that Local 3005 membership was "looking for a leadership that will continue the fight for member rights across the spectrum.” The election of insurgents could — and should — be replicated at other locals across DC 37, he said, and should be a “wake-up call” for leaders of other DC 37 locals.  “A reckoning perhaps is long overdue," he said.

Mckenny  said that the new leadership would “stand up for our membership during upcoming contract negotiations, navigate threats to city worker healthcare coverage, and stand shoulder to shoulder across the labor movement to fight rising fascism and the deprioritization by elected officials of the crucial services we provide.” 

dfreeman@thechiefleader.com