A long-delayed, controversial merger between the
Sheet Metal Workers and United Transportation Union is dead, a UTU official
announced.
A long-delayed, controversial merger
between the Sheet Metal Workers and United Transportation Union is dead, a UTU
official announced.
"There will not be a merger today. There will
not be a merger tomorrow. There will never be a merger with the Sheet Metal
Workers," UTU President Mike Futhey told attendees of a July 8 meeting in San Francisco.
The announcement wasposted on the union’s Web site.
Plans to combine the two unions fell apart last year when a
group of transportation union members filed
a federal lawsuit to stop the merger, claiming they were not made aware of
potential problems between the two unions’ constitutions before their vote. UTU
members OK’d the merger in 2007.
The new
union was to have been called the International Association of Sheet Metal,
Rail and Transportation Workers and would have been known by the acronym SMART.
