The ballots for the Teamsters Local Union 767 Executive Board election must be received by the USPS this week in order to be counted on Saturday. If you have not already mailed yours, please, take this opportunity to let your voice be heard. Since Veterans’ Day is observed Wednesday, you should send in your ballot immediately to make sure it is at the post office when the slates retrieve ballots on Saturday morning. Each vote is very important; don’t hesitate to act now.
MEMBERS FIRST: Billy Smith, Scott Wallace, Carlos Rios, David Varela, Jimmy Lyon, Bill Bagwell, Brandon Santana.
Let’s stand together, not divided. The future of our local is in the hands of every member.
Bilingual members: Please explain any voting queries to your Spanish-speaking 767 brothers and sisters since there may be some confusion reading the English instructions from True Ballot. Members First wants every member to be included regardless of primary language. Many thanks.
6 Comments
Thanks to members first for making the effort to communicate to our members who’s first language is not english. They also are members,brothers,sisters. I have personally helped alot part timers to vote for the first time just by explaining the ballot. They wanted to vote to. Your hard work will pay off and we are looking forward to a great changes.
Everyone is excited about the vote count this saturday. What time will it begin?
janeirreg: You can meet at the union hall at ten a.m. if you’d like. However, this will be a long process, so there is a chance it will not be over with shortly.
LAST CHANCE, EVERYBODY! IF YOU SUPPORT MEMBERS FIRST AND YOU STILL HAVE YOUR BALLOT: Please, send it in today. This is really your last chance at having your voice counted. The P.O. Box is located in north Ft Worth at the main USPS, so I suggest you go directly to the Post Office and have them mail it directly from the location as opposed to simply letting your mailperson carry it the whole day.
Thanks, everybody. This has been a great campaign and a fantastic experience with lots of welcomed teamwork.
Weber is crying foul. Terry Johnson is a terrible business agent and as far as were concerned a rock would be better than him. We voted for change and were crying foul.
Anyone could call the ballot replacement line and leave a recording with the name and address a replacement ballot can be sent to. Who keeps track of these calls to see if they’re legit or not? I smell something fishy!
Why can’t the membership choose what outside company is going to run our elections? I think that Jenkin’s did something very wrong and as a member I’m imploring all of our members and supporters to stand up for a just election process.
Call the Department of Labor number and demand fairness, it is our right.
Good idea. I was planning on addressing this, too!
Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS): (972) 850-2500
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?
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 allowed to obtain this key alone? Why was he allowed to rent the P.O. Box using his name 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 bizarre behavior, the P.O. Box for this particular election had to be sealed in the presence of slates by the USPS. That is ridiculous.
Members, some of whom voted for Members First and alerted the slate of this issue, were called by 767 business agents and executive officers who 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 I know 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 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.