OFFICE OF THE ELECTION SUPERVISOR
for the
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS
IN RE: HOFFA-HALL 2016, ) Protest Decision 2015 ESD 14
) Issued: July 27, 2015
Protestor. ) OES Case No. P-016-071415-NE
____________________________________)
Hoffa-Hall 2016 filed a pre-election protest pursuant to Article XIII, Section 2(b) of the Rules for the 2015-2016 IBT International Union Delegate and Officer Election (“Rules”). The protest alleged that a Teamsters United poster was posted on the locked union bulletin board of an employer under the jurisdiction of Local Union 251, in violation of the Rules.
Election Supervisor representatives Peter Marks and Dave Reilly investigated this protest.
Findings of Fact and Analysis
A photo supplied by the protestor showed a color placard approximately 15” x 10” reading “Teamsters United! Tim Sylvester for General President” posted under the glass of an enclosed bulletin board across from the drivers’ room at McLaughlin & Moran, a beer distributor that employs members of Local Union 251. The protest alleged that the bulletin board was a locked union bulletin board.
On the date this protest was filed, our investigator requested that the poster be removed from the board, pending the outcome of the investigation, in order to mitigate potential harm caused by the posting. This was done the next day. Also removed was a posted single page from Teamster Voice, the TDU periodical, that described the timeline for the upcoming election and TDU’s effort to unseat Hoffa and Hall from IBT office; this timeline was first published in the January/February edition of Teamster Voice and was posted on the board some time later.
Dennis Lavallee is an employee of the employer and former steward there who has been on union leave since early this year to serve full-time as director of driver training. He told our investigator he donated the board in Spring 2014 because the employer limited use of the large adjacent employer board to official employer postings. Aside from union postings on the board when he was actively working for the employer, Lavallee recalled one occasion that a joke was also posted. Lavallee recalled no campaign postings on the board, whether for public or union elections.
Tom Cabral, the current steward at the facility, stated the board is used for official union postings, including notice of the next general membership meeting of Local Union 251 and phone numbers of union officials. The local union has no other board at the facility for its postings.
Cabral said the Teamsters United poster was put up by a rank-and-file member, adding that “guys put things in there that are not union-related.” However, Cabral was unable to identify any posting that was not official union business, other than the campaign placard at issue in this protest. He noted that a charity golf tournament posting was put up in the several days after the campaign placard was removed.
Both Lavallee and Cabral denied that the board locked, now or at any time in the past. A worksite inspection by an OES representative confirmed that the glass front has no lock and is accessible to anyone seeking to open it.
Teamsters United defends against the allegation, contending that the board at issue is a general purpose bulletin board and a preexisting right exists to post campaign material there.
Article VII, Section 12(d) of the Rules states that “[n]o restrictions shall be placed upon candidates’ or members’ preexisting rights to use employer or Union bulletin boards for campaign publicity.” However, where there is no law, policy or practice allowing campaign postings on a union board, there is no preexisting right.
The board here is of recent origin. We decline to find a preexisting right to post campaign material on it from the scant evidence that it may once have been used for an extraneous posting. There is no clear local union policy stating that the bulletin board is open to general purpose postings, nor is there evidence that such general purpose postings were regularly permitted or tolerated before the campaign posting in question. Accordingly, there is no preexisting right of general access to the bulletin board, and the posting of the Teamsters United poster was not protected by Article VII, Section 12(d).
That said, the local union removed the campaign literature promptly when the protest was filed. Further, it has since posted a notice declaring the board to be a union board that may be used only for official postings of the local union and not for the posting of campaign material.
In Deaver, 2006 ESD 74 (February 7, 2006), a union steward posted a campaign flyer on a locked worksite union bulletin board. The business agent removed the flyer, explained to the steward that posting campaign material on the union board was not permissible, and filed a protest. We deemed the protest resolved, finding that the prompt removal of the flyer and the steward’s promise to maintain the board solely for official postings mitigated the need for further remedy.
We reach the same conclusion here, given the prompt removal of the campaign literature and the notice the local union posted to secure the board for official postings only. Accordingly, we deem this protest RESOLVED.
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:
Kathleen A. Roberts
Election Appeals Master
JAMS
620 Eighth Avenue, 34th floor
New York, NY 10018
kroberts@jamsadr.com
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, 1050 17th Street, N.W., Suite 375, Washington, D.C. 20036, all within the time prescribed above. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing.
Richard W. Mark
Election Supervisor
cc: Kathleen A. Roberts
2015 ESD 14
DISTRIBUTION LIST (BY EMAIL UNLESS OTHERWISE SPECIFIED):
Bradley T. Raymond, General Counsel
International Brotherhood of Teamsters
25 Louisiana Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20001
braymond@teamster.org
David J. Hoffa
1701 K Street NW, Ste 350
Washington DC 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
Teamsters United
315 Flatbush Avenue, #501
Brooklyn, NY 11217
info@teamstersunited.org
Louie Nikolaidis
350 West 31st Street, Suite 40
New York, NY 10001
lnikolaidis@lcnlaw.com
Julian Gonzalez
350 West 31st Street, Suite 40
New York, NY 10001
jgonzalez@lcnlaw.com
David O’Brien Suetholz
515 Park Avenue
Louisville, KY 45202
dave@unionsidelawyers.com
Fred Zuckerman
P.O. Box 9493
Louisville, KY 40209
fredzuckerman@aol.com
Teamsters Local Union 251
121 Brightridge Avenue
East Providence, RI 02914
mtaibi.ibt251@gmail.com
Peter Marks
116 Nagle Street
Harrisburg, PA 17104
pmarks@ibtvote.org
Dave Reilly
22 W. Main Street
North Kingston, RI 02852
dreilly@dfresq.com
Jeffrey Ellison
214 S. Main Street, Suite 210
Ann Arbor, MI 48104
EllisonEsq@aol.com