‘It’s not common.’ Judge orders new election for thousands of KC labor union members
A Kansas City labor union must hold a new election after a federal judge tossed the results of a 2017 vote to elect local leadership.
U.S. District Court Judge Howard Sachs this month ordered Teamsters Local 41 to redo the election after the union was sued by U.S. Labor Secretary Alexander Acosta. The union represents thousands of local drivers at employers like UPS.
In November 2017, Local 41 President Ralph Stubbs and his slate of candidates won re-election over two rival slates, each of which protested the election. At issue was whether the outcome was changed by mishaps in the process of collecting members’ ballots or a post on the union’s Facebook page that promoted Stubbs’ candidacy.
Stubbs did not respond to a request for comment.
In 2018, the federal government took the rare step of suing to challenge the election, citing ballot problems and possibly improper efforts to sway the outcome.
While the suit was rare, so too was the judge’s decision to overturn the election.
“It’s not common,” said Ken Paff, national organizer for the independent Teamsters for a Democratic Union. “Most protests are dismissed.”
He noted that the local union could have settled with the Labor Department years ago rather than fight the suit.
The ruling means challengers Keith LaCroix and George “Butch” Gardner along with their slates of candidates might challenge Stubbs again — years after the original contest.
The lawsuit claimed that one union member supporting Stubbs posted a message to the group’s informational Facebook page and included “#Stubbs” in support of his candidacy. It said the post remained active online for two-and-a-half hours before being removed.
Later that day, a candidate for secretary-treasurer was denied the ability to post to the Facebook page because his post was “viewed as campaigning,” the lawsuit said.
Local 41 also was accused of bungling the voting process itself. A company contracted by the union incorrectly printed the ballot return envelopes, according to the lawsuit.
“This envelope problem resulted in all return ballot envelopes being delayed and many voted ballots being returned back to members,” the lawsuit said.
The union posted about the mishap on Facebook and asked members to draw a line through their return address and mail the ballots again.
In court filings, the local union argued that the election results shouldn’t be tossed because Stubbs did not act with malice. But the judge wrote that “acting in good faith will not immunize the union from liability.”
“There was wrongdoing all the way through,” LaCroix said.
LaCroix, a driver for YRC Freight, said he’s mulling whether to run for local union president again. He said Local 41 has not communicated any of the news to members since the judge’s Feb. 10 decision.
“None at all,” he said. “A lot of people didn’t even know this was going on.”
At the time of the election, the local union counted about 6,200 members working at about 100 employers across the Kansas City area. But LaCroix said membership has fallen by several hundred people since.
“In the years that this administration has been in there they organized basically nobody,” he said. “That is very detrimental to the local union.”
Gardner said he plans to challenge Stubbs in the upcoming election, which will be overseen by the Labor Department. He would not share details about his current employment status.
He said he was not surprised by the judge’s ruling.
“Well, I pretty much knew it was going to happen,” Gardner said. “Anybody that has any integrity at all knows that this was not right.”
Still, he sounded vindicated to have a federal court ruling on his side: “Now we can say, ‘we told you they were cheating. A federal judge said so.’”
Complaints about the ballot problems, Facebook posts and other issues were investigated by the trial board of the Teamsters Joint Council 56. Officials with that group could not be reached for comment.
The ballot envelopes were a problem, the council wrote in a seven-page report, but there was no “inference of fraud” or evidence that it impacted the election.
There were 163 late ballots not counted, but Stubbs won by 222 votes, the council found. Participation was similar to previous union votes.
The Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 requires “adequate safeguards” to ensure fair elections.
The judge’s ruling noted that the any violation of that law that might have affected the outcome of an election required the court to demand a new election.
Kevin Hardy covers business for The Kansas City Star. He previously covered business and politics at The Des Moines Register. He also has worked at newspapers in Kansas and Tennessee. He is a graduate of the University of Kansas
No comments:
Post a Comment