Teamsters Local 767 Election Tracker

I have been inundated at work, on the phone, and in emails by voters who wanted to voice apprehension about various aspects of the local’s executive board election results in which Wesley Jenkins was announced the tentative winner pending the Department of Labor’s review of labor protests filed during and after the campaign.

I answered a comment in the entry below this one with most of the following information and POV:

Anyone who has concerns relating to the election should notify: Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS) at (972) 850-2500. This is an easy phone call that any member can place.

Members who want to get in touch with the Dept. of Labor at the above number to express concern regarding this election are likely justified. In the last election, which was the 2006 delegate vote, a labor protest was won by member Eric King against the local and Wesley Jenkins’ executive official who supervised the election. Because of the difficulties this local has experienced in the past with True Ballot, members and candidates wanted a different third party involved this time to ensure a fair ballot count as many members were NOT even afforded the opportunity to vote in the 2006 instance. However, the rules governing our delegate elections (in which the executive board does NOT have complete control over the decision regarding who handles the election) and the rules governing our executive board elections differ. We were essentially forced into dealing with, as members, who Wesley Jenkins and the current executive board selected to handle the election. The company they chose, True Ballot, is over a thousand miles away, thus making it impossible for members to observe or monitor all aspects of the electoral process. Why would Jenkins want that when he could have hired a more neutral, reputable ballot-counting company in north Texas that has never been named in an upheld labor protest against the local?

I agree, the duplicate ballot situation is definitely weird. Who was stopping anyone from re-ordering MY ballot by calling True Ballot, requesting a new ballot for me because of whatever reason or another, and then changing my vote and returning the ballot, thus making my legitimate ballot completely invalid? For that oversight alone, we should be afforded a fair rerun.

The local ALSO was in possession of the P.O. Box key for FIVE days before it was presented to the other slates to be sealed in an envelope, signed by witnesses, and then locked in the safe. Why was the local’s secretary-treasurer, a candidate in this election, allowed to obtain this key alone? Why was he allowed to rent the P.O. Box using his name only and with no witnesses? Why would he not have asked the witnesses and candidates, who have always accompanied him in the past when the secretary-treasurer secures the official P.O. Box for the ballots, to observe this time? Because of this suspect behavior, the P.O. Box for this particular election had to be sealed in the presence of slates by the USPS. That is ridiculously sloppy.

Members, some of whom voted for Members First and alerted the slate of the following issue, were called by 767 business agents and executive officers who currently work at the local. These workers were coerced to send in ballots marked for the Experienced Slate. Some were advised to re-order them through True Ballot’s recorded system as well. In fact, some stewards were acting on behalf of the union officials from the Experienced Slate by unethically requesting and harassing co-workers to resubmit and change their votes. This, in itself, is not illegal, but it IS a major labor department issue if the local generated any calling lists from its TITAN system that were not made available to the other candidates who were not given hard copies of this incredible advantage. As a former employee of the local, I can’t imagine how some of these agents would just happen to have the phone numbers of certain members who they don’t know from Adam, but I CAN imagine how it would take about five minutes for them to have a list printed in the hall — during office hours, even, and possibly by unsuspecting office staff, as the agents don’t generally know how to generate specific lists, while we were paying them to work and NOT campaign. I believe there is a way for such information to be retrieved from TITAN, as well, but would imagine it would have to be requested in writing from the IBT itself. This would all have to be verified, naturally, before one could make a valid assertion.

Any agent or executive officer, etc., who phone banked with a list of numbers gathered from the local in any way violated DOL election laws by utilizing an unfair advantage over other slates who were not given or allowed the same materials.

The only way to ensure fairness in our future elections is for members to band together and eliminate all possibilities of the voting process that are not completely reputable. We should not be expected to settle for anything that lends itself to potential fraud. All men and women who are members in good standing have the right to run for office and should be able to do so without reproach or neglect.

Even in light of this matter, I encourage every member, regardless of views on this topic, to continue to work together in a cohesive manner representative of our duties defined by the Brotherhood. We are Brothers and Sisters and, thus, obligated to put matters of labor advocacy first and foremost as that is the main objective as Teamsters.