OFFICE OF THE ELECTION SUPERVISOR
for the
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS
IN RE: MARK HAMEL, ) Protest Decision 2011 ESD 262
) Issued: May 23, 2011
Protestor. ) OES Case No. P-264-050311-CA
____________________________________)
Mark Hamel, member and delegate candidate in Teamsters Canada Rail Conference (TCRC), filed a pre-election protest pursuant to Article XIII, Section 2 of the Rules for the 2010-2011 IBT International Union Delegate and Officer Election (“Rules”). The protest alleged that Bruce Willows made an endorsement that was not permitted by the Rules.
Election Supervisor representative Peter Geraghty investigated this protest.
Findings of Fact and Analysis
The Teamsters Canada Rail Conference represents Teamsters employed on rail related jobs in Canada. The TCRC national office is in Ottawa; Rex Beatty is its president and Jim Flegel its secretary-treasurer. The TCRC is comprised general committees that are segregated by employer and, in some cases, craft. The larger employers, including Canadian National and Canadian Pacific, have general committees for geographic regions and craft groupings. Each general committee is headed by a chairman. Thus, Bruce Willows, the delegate candidate who is the subject of this protest, is the general chairman for locomotive engineers employed by CN in the western region. The CN western region has a general chairman for its conductors, trainmen and yardmen as well, and CN has additional corresponding general committees in its central and east regions. CP also has separate chairmen for locomotive engineers and for conductors, trainmen and yardmen, and is divided geographically into two regions, east and west (in contrast with CN’s three regions). VIA Rail has one national region and one general committee. Regional carriers such as Algoma Central, GO Transit, and Ontario Northland Motor Coach Operators likewise have one general committee each. All told, some sixteen general committees, each headed by a general chairman, operate within the TCRC structure. Local committees, designated as divisions, operate within general committees and are typically limited to representation of a particular craft of a particular employer.
For representation at the IBT convention, the TCRC is treated as a local union[1]. Its membership entitles it to eleven delegates and three alternate delegates. At the nominations meeting held March 8, 2011 in Ottawa, 22 candidates were nominated for delegate. Among them were Willows, the CN western region locomotive engineers general chairman, and protestor Hamel, the local committee chairman of Division 319, which represents a segment of CP locomotive engineers in the eastern region. No slates were formed among the nominated candidates.
Ballots in TCRC’s delegates election were mailed April 20 and counted May 17. On April 25, Willows sent an email to some 150 recipients concerning the election. In it, he noted that ballots were mailed “last week” and said, “We have been asked to draw your attention to the fact that there is a very short timeline between receipt of ballots and required date of return to be counted in Ottawa on May 17. Please ask our members to return their ballots promptly in order for their votes to count.” Willows’ email continued as follows:
As a point of interest, there are 22 candidates nominated for 11 delegate positions, including 13 nominees from CP General Committees. In order to ensure that the CN General Committees are represented at the Convention and to ensure an appropriate balance between CN and CP, please consider supporting the 7 candidates nominated from the CN General Committees who will appear on the ballot in the following order:
PAUL VICKERS
BRUCE WILLOWS
MICHAEL VESTROCY
RICK CERILLI
JEAN-MICHEL HALLÉ
BRYAN BOECHLER
RANDY CALDWELL
Needless to say, there are a number of other deserving candidates nominated from CP and VIA, including Brothers Steve Mitchell (VIA), Benoit Brunet, PLB-Quebec, Rob Smith, NLD, Tom Handkamer, PLB Manitoba, and others.
The Convention will provide delegates with an opportunity to build our unity and lines of communication with Teamsters Canada and the IBT. It will also provide us with an opportunity to caucus with National President Rex Beatty to discuss and strategize on matters of concern, including upcoming collective bargaining with CN Rail.
Please pass this along to your Division email lists with the reminder that there is a very limited window of opportunity to vote due to the tight timelines.
Willows closed the email with his name and his title, “General Chairman – Edmonton.”
Willows sent the email from his personal email account. He addressed it to himself, at his personal email account, and listed the other addressees in the “bcc” field. Willows did not save the email onto his computer, and his internet service provider’s email service does not maintain sent mail on its servers[2]. As confirmed by the copy of the email submitted with the protest, because “bcc” addressees are not displayed to anyone other than the original sender, each recipient sees the name of the sender, but does not see the names of any other addressees. Accordingly, we were unable to identify the list of addressees. Willows told our investigator – and the body of the email confirms this – that some addressees controlled or had access to “Division email lists.”
Investigation showed that Willows’ email was forwarded to additional recipients, but who and how many received it is unknown. Our investigator contacted several general chairmen whose committees maintain email lists; all reported that they did not forward Willows’ email to the members on their division lists. The TCRC maintains a system-wide email list of some 10,000 members’ names and email addresses that candidates could use pursuant to Article VII, Section 7(d) of the Rules. However, that list was not used to further publish Willows’ email.
Eight of the persons identified in the text of Willows’ email were elected (Vickers, Willows, Cerilli, Hallé, Boechler, Caldwell, Brunet and Smith); three were not (Vestrocy, Mitchell and Handkamer). Protestor Hamel, who was not mentioned in Willows’ email, finished in fourteenth position and was not elected.
Hamel’s protest raised one issue: whether “it is legal for a candidate running for a position, to openly support another candidate(s) without either dropping out or being disqualified from the election?” It is. Article VII, Section 12(a) of the Rules preserves for all union members “the right to participate in campaign activities … including the right to run for office, to support or oppose any candidate, to aid or campaign for any candidate, and to make personal campaign contributions.” The Rules place no limitation on a candidate’s right to support another candidate’s campaign.[3]
Although the protest did not allege it, we examined whether Willows had impermissible access to Division email lists or used his position as CN western region general chairman for locomotive engineers to encourage or direct others to make impermissible use of such lists. We find insufficient evidence that he did, as we found nothing to suggest that his email was republished using those lists.
Accordingly, we DENY this 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, NY 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, 1801 K Street, N.W., Suite 421 L, Washington, D.C. 20006, all within the time prescribed above. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing.[1] The TCRC-MWED represents maintenance of way employees within the Canadian rail conference. This entity elected its delegates in an earlier election and is not implicated in this protest.
[2] Our investigator verified this fact with a representative of Manitoba Telecom Services, Willows’ ISP, who stated that the current version of the mts.net webmail does not contain a “sent messages” folder; therefore messages sent from mts.net webmail accounts are not saved.
[3] Indeed, the slate rule of Article VIII expressly permits a candidate “to seek nomination, be nominated, campaign and appear on the ballot … as a member of a slate of candidates,” a campaign tool that would be illegitimate if a candidate were not permitted to openly support another candidate, as Hamel asks.
Richard W. Mark
Election Supervisor
cc: Kenneth Conboy
2011 ESD 262DISTRIBUTION LIST (BY EMAIL UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED):
Bradley T. Raymond, General Counsel
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
25 Louisiana Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20001
braymond@teamster.org
David J. Hoffa
Hoffa Hall 2011
1100 Connecticut Avenue, N.W., Ste. 730
Washington, D.C. 20036
hoffadav@hotmail.com
Ken Paff
Teamsters for a Democratic Union
P.O. Box 10128
Detroit, MI 48210-0128
ken@tdu.org
Barbara Harvey
1394 E. Jefferson Avenue
Detroit, MI 48207
blmharvey@sbcglobal.net
Fred Gegare
P.O. Box 9663
Green Bay, WI 54308-9663
kirchmanb@yahoo.com
Scott D. Soldon
3541 N. Summit Avenue
Shorewood, WI 53211
scottsoldon@gmail.com
Fred Zuckerman
3813 Taylor Blvd.
Louisville, KY 40215
fredzuckerman@aol.com
Robert M. Colone, Esq.
P.O. Box 272
Sellersburg, IN 47172-0272
rmcolone@hotmail.com
Carl Biers
Box 424, 315 Flatbush Avenue
Brooklyn, NY 11217
info@SandyPope2011.org
Julian Gonzalez
Lewis, Clifton & Nikolaidis, P.C.
350 Seventh Avenue, Suite 1800
New York, NY 10001-5013
jgonzalez@lcnlaw.com
Mark Hamel
49 Grey Street SPO Box1434
Chapleau, ON P0M 1K0
Canada
mhamel@teamstersrail.ca
Bruce Willows, General Chairman
TCRC
CN Western Region – LE
Suite 310, Building No. 2
Whitemud Business Park9622 42 AVE
Edmonton, AB T6E 5Y4
brucewillows@mts.net
Rex Beatty, President
TCRC
1710-130 Albert Street, Suite 1710
Ottawa, ON K1P 5G4
jflegel@teamstersrail.ca
Peter M. Geraghty
730 Hancock Street
Quincy, MA 02170
pmg@morisi.com
Gwen Randall
1000 – 250 2nd Street SW
Calgary, AB T2P 0C1
Canada
Maria Ho
Office of the Election Supervisor
1801 K Street, N.W., Suite 421 L
Washington, D.C. 20006
mho@ibtvote.org
Kathryn Naylor
Office of the Election Supervisor
1801 K Street, N.W., Suite 421 L
Washington, D.C. 20006
knaylor@ibtvote.org
Jeffrey Ellison
214 S. Main Street, Ste. 210
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
EllisonEsq@aol.com