The executive board of the largest labor union at Bath Iron Works has asked the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers union for help to assure it is running correctly.
Jay Wadleigh, a former president of the BIW Local S6 who is now at the District 4 level of IAMAW, will be a supervisor to Local S6 of the machinists union, said John Carr, an IAMAW spokesman based in New York. The district level is above the local union level, but below the national IAMAW.
Carr said all of the executive board’s 10 members were involved in signing and sending the letter asking the union for help.
“The executive board members asked for assistance to make sure they were providing duties in the way they’re supposed to for provisions in the bylaws and constitution,” Carr said.
“Wadleigh is handling what international union president [Robert Martinez Jr.] directed him to assist the executive board in seeing to the welfare of the membership and assisting them to follow the bylaws,” he said.
Carr said all of the duly elected officers of the local executive board will remain in their positions, running day-to-day operations.
That includes Local S6 President Mike Keenan, who is a member of the executive board, he said.
Carr would not say specifically why the Local S6 executive board asked for help. He did say that such supervisory help has occurred at other local union sites throughout the United States.
Local S6 has 3,500 members.
Keenan, a shipfitter who was president of Local S6 from 2001 to 2008, was re-elected as president in 2016 and took office in January 2017.
Keenan has been a controversial leader of the union. In March 2008, he and three other officers of the local chapter were escorted from the union hall amid claims of financial mismanagement.
Keenan denied the allegations, but the chapter was placed into receivership and he and other officials were suspended.
The IAMAW eventually returned control of the chapter to Local S6.
“Financial transactions aren’t even indicated by any means,” Carr said of the current move to put Wadleigh into a supervisory role.
He would not elaborate further.
He would only say that Wadleigh will try to determine what the concerns are of the executive board and recommend how to handle them.