IN RE: MARK HUCKLEBERRY, Protestor.
Protest Decision 2006 ESD 358
Issued: October 2, 2006
OES Case No. P-06-327-080306-MW
Mark Huckleberry, member and convention delegate from Local Union 89 and candidate for IBT Central Region vice president, filed a pre-election protest pursuant to Article XIII, Section 2(b) of the Rules for the 2005-2006 IBT International Union Delegate and Officer Election ("Rules"). The protest alleged that the July/August issue of the Local 89 Teamster and Local Union 89's website constituted a union or official endorsement of Hoffa's candidacy, in violation of the Rules.
Election Supervisor representatives Joe Childers and Maureen Geraghty investigated this protest.
Findings of Fact and Analysis
1. Failure of newsletter to list IBT Central Region vice president nominees and report on convention activities of Local Union 89's delegates.
In late August 2006, Local Union 89 issued its monthly newsletter, the Local 89 Teamster. The newsletter is prepared by R.L. Communications and Richard Leebove. The newsletter contained a listing of nominated candidates for IBT President, General Secretary-Treasurer, At Large and Southern Region Vice Presidents, and International Trustees. The listing omitted candidates nominated for Central and Eastern Region Vice President. Local Union 89 is located in Louisville, Kentucky, in the IBT Central Region. The newsletter also contained a series of photographs of individuals attending the 27th IBT International Convention in Las Vegas, Nevada. The photos did not include any of the duly elected delegates from Local Union 89, all of whom are Leedham supporters, including delegate Mark Huckleberry, who was nominated at the convention as a candidate for IBT Central Region Vice President. The incumbent officers of Local Union 89, including Secretary Treasurer Fred Zuckerman, openly support the Hoffa slate.
The July/August Local 89 Teamster included the nomination results for all IBT International officer positions except for Central and Eastern Region vice presidents. Candidates from the IBT Central Region were omitted even though Local Union 89 is situated in that region and Local Union 89 members will be casting ballots for Central Region candidates in the upcoming mail-ballot election IBT international union officers. One of those candidates, Mark Huckleberry, is an IBT central region vice president candidate from Local Union 89 and a member of the Leedham slate.
Article VII, Section 8 of the Rules provides the following with respect to union-financed publications:
(a) No publication or communication financed, directly or indirectly, by a Union may be used to support or attack any candidate or the candidacy of any person, except as authorized by Sections 8 and 9 of this Article. A Union-financed newspaper or other publication or communication shall not:
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(4) print features and accompanying photographs about insignificant or unnewsworthy events in which the accomplishments or qualities of any candidate are heralded;(5) contain pictures or articles reporting on the activities of a particular candidate where the same or similar activities of other similarly situated candidates for the same office(s) have not been similarly reported
The newsletter's treatment of candidates for regional vice president violated the Rules because it reported on the nomination of candidates from other regions - facts that are insignificant and unnewsworthy to members of Local Union 89 - while denying the local union's members newsworthy information about the candidates for regional vice president in their own region, including a candidate for that office from their own local union. This finding rests on the newsletter's failure to print information about Central Region vice-presidential candidates while printing information about candidates from other regions. Our holding should not be read to require a local union to publish information about all candidates for International Office, or none. For example, had Local 89 Teamster printed information about Central Region vice-presidential candidates and not printed anything about other regional candidates, or if it had not printed information about any of the vice-presidential candidates, such coverage would not violate the Rules.
To remedy the violation we find here, Local Union 89 has agreed to post on all union bulletin boards under the local union's jurisdiction a one-page special edition of Local 89 Teamster, on that publication's masthead, that lists all candidates for IBT Central Region vice president. Such posting shall be completed by Thursday, October 5, 2006. An identical copy shall be posted on the "newsletters" section of www.teamsters89.com by the same date. Local Union 89 shall supply an affidavit that it has completed this remedy no later than Friday, October 6, 2006. On this basis, we deem this aspect of the protest RESOLVED.
The newsletter also included photos taken at the IBT convention. Of those, 4 photos contained images of various IBT convention delegates, without any reference to their support for particular IBT International officer candidates. None of the photos or text made any reference to the convention activities or participation of Local Union 89's delegates.
The protestor, through his counsel, argues that the newsletter's failure to include photos of the local union's elected delegates and a description of their activities at the convention violates the Rules. Citing Martin, 95 EAM 18 (October 2, 1995), which holds that "[a]n incumbent has a 'right and responsibility,' as a union officer, to advise and report to the membership on issues of general concern," the protestor contends that Local Union 89's responsibility in that regard constituted a duty to report on the newsworthy activities of the local union's delegation. We disagree. The protestor objects to photos of generic convention delegates, all of whom are portrayed in a politically neutral manner with no candidate or slate affiliation. Absent a political endorsement or attack established by the communication's tone, content and timing, the Rules do not require union-financed publications to report on all activities on the convention floor or treat opposing ideas or opinions. See Hoffa, P870 (September 6, 1996), and cases collected there. Accordingly, we DENY this aspect of the protest.
2. Local union's alleged endorsement of Hoffa 2006 campaign.
As evidence that the July/August issue of the Local 89 Teamster constituted an endorsement of James P. Hoffa as a candidate for IBT General President, the protestor cites the publication's numerous references to 'unity' contained in the article describing the recent IBT Convention and Local 89's official website containing the heading: "Unity, Pride, Strength." The protestor asserts that the phrase "unity" is the central theme of the Hoffa 2006 slate.
We were presented with the question of whether the Hoffa 2006 campaign had adopted the slogan of "unity, pride strength" as a campaign theme in Bunch, 2006 ESD 305 (June 24, 2006). In Bunch, we conducted a thorough review of Hoffa 2006 campaign materials and themes and concluded that:
[T]he Hoffa campaign has not adopted the term "unity" as a campaign slogan and therefore has not taken a "thing of value" from the IBT. Where an earlier version of the Hoffa campaign's website identified the slate as "Hoffa-Keegel Unity Slate," subsequent and current postings on the site identify the slate, nearly uniformly, as the "Hoffa 2006" slate. Although the term "unity" appears on the site presently, the site does not employ the term in a manner or frequency that would permit us to find that the campaign has adopted the term as a campaign slogan. Use of the word in this way, consistent with its common use in trade union discourse and not with aberrant frequency, does not violate the Rules.
In the present case, as we previously determined in Bunch, Hoffa 2006 has not utilized "unity" or "unity, pride and strength" as a 2006 campaign slogan, and thus Local Union 89's use of the phrase in its newsletter does not constitute a violation of Article VII, Section 12(c) of the Rules, which prohibits use of union funds, facilities, equipment and personnel "to assist in campaigning." Further, such use also does not violate Article XI, Section 1(b)(3) of the Rules, which prohibits the union from contributing "anything of value" to a candidate "where the purpose, object or foreseeable effect of the contribution is to influence, positively or negatively, the election" of the candidate.
Accordingly, we DENY this aspect of the protest.
Any interested party not satisfied with this determination may request a hearing before the Election Appeals Master within two (2) working days of receipt of this decision. The parties are reminded that, absent extraordinary circumstances, no party may rely upon evidence that was not presented to the Office of the Election Supervisor in any such appeal. Requests for a hearing shall be made in writing, shall specify the basis for the appeal and shall be served upon:
Kenneth Conboy
Election Appeals Master
Latham & Watkins
885 Third Avenue, Suite 1000
New York, New York 10022
Fax: (212) 751-4864
Copies of the request for hearing must be served upon the parties, as well as upon the Election Supervisor for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, 1725 K Street, N.W., Suite 1400, Washington, D.C. 20006-1416, all within the time prescribed above. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing
Richard W. Mark
Election Supervisor
cc: Kenneth Conboy
2006 ESD 358
DISTRIBUTION LIST (BY EMAIL UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED):
Bradley T. Raymond, General Counsel
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
25 Louisiana Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001-2198
braymond@teamster.org
David J. Hoffa
Hoffa 2006
30300 Northwestern Highway, Suite 324
Farmington Hills, MI 48834
David@hoffapllc.com
Barbara Harvey
645 Griswold Street
Suite 3060
Detroit, MI 48226
blmharvey@sbcglobal.net
Ken Paff
Teamsters for a Democratic Union
P.O. Box 10128
Detroit, MI 48210
ken@tdu.org
Daniel E. Clifton
Lewis, Clifton & Nikolaidis, P.C.
275 Seventh Avenue, Suite 2300
New York, NY 10001
dclifton@lcnlaw.com
Stefan Ostrach
1863 Pioneer Parkway East, #217
Springfield, OR 97477-3907
saostrach@gmail.com
Fred Zuckerman, President
IBT Local Union 89
3813 Taylor Blvd.
Louisville, KY 40215
Gerry Miller
Previant, Goldberg et al
1555 N. RiverCenter Dr., Suite 202
Milwaukee, WI 53212
gm@previant.com
Joe Childers
201 West Short Street, Suite 310
Lexington, KY 40507
childerslaw@yahoo.com
Maureen Geraghty
Geraghty Law Firm
426 Old Salem Road
Winston-Salem, NC 27101
mg@geraghtylawfirm.com
Bill Broberg
1108 Fincastle Road
Lexington, KY 40502
wcbroberg@aol.com
Jeffrey Ellison
510 Highland Avenue, #325
Milford, MI 48381
EllisonEsq@aol.com