Protest Decisions

OFFICE OF THE ELECTION SUPERVISOR

for the

INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS

IN RE: CONNELL CROOMS,                  )           Protest Decision 2016 ESD 345

                                                                        )           Issued: December 16, 2016

            Protestor.                                           )           OES Case No. P-404-102616-SO     

____________________________________)                      

Connell Crooms, member of Local Union 512, 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 two stewards employed by First Student interfered with his and another member’s parking lot campaign rights.

            Election Supervisor representative Dolores Hall investigated this protest.

Findings of Fact and Analysis

On October 26, 2016, Connell Crooms and Fernando Figueroa appeared at First Student’s facility in Jacksonville, FL to campaign for Teamsters United.  First Student provides bus transportation services to schools.  The Jacksonville depot has a large parking area devoted exclusively to buses and a smaller area in which employees park their personal vehicles.

Investigation showed that the employer has established a walkway demarcated by PVC pylons and polyethylene chains that runs from the facility’s building to the employee parking lot.  Employees use the building to clock in and out, receive their assignments, and submit their reports.  The walkway traverses the bus parking lot from the building to the employee parking lot.  Even though the walkway is marked with bright yellow chains and faded orange cones, employees traversing the walkway are required by employer rule to wear reflective yellow vests with silver tape when doing so.  Although the walkway leads to the employee parking lot, it is not situated in that lot.

When they arrived to campaign, Crooms and Figueroa took positions in the walkway where it traversed the bus parking lot.  They did not wear reflective vests.  Two employees, Ramon Turner and Steve Siedel, informed them that they could not campaign in that area but had to move to the employee parking lot.  Turner and Siedel are stewards at the facility and understood that worksite campaigning could permissibly occur only in employee parking lots.  Crooms and Figueroa ignored the instruction.  Turner informed a supervisor that the campaigners were campaigning in the bus parking lot and had refused the instruction to move, suggesting that the supervisor call the police.  The supervisor spoke with the campaigners, instructing them to move from the bus parking lot.  Again, they ignored this instruction.  The supervisor called the police.

Turner told our representative that the police arrived but did nothing because the campaigners could not be located.  Crooms said that he and Figueroa left the facility before the police arrived and never saw the police.

Cellphone video provided by Crooms verified that Crooms and Figueroa were in the walkway, that the walkway was in the bus parking lot, and that the campaigners were instructed to leave and did not.

Article VII, Section 12(e), among other things, grants candidates for International office and members the right to “distribute literature and/or otherwise solicit support in connection with such candidacy in any parking lot used by Union members to park their vehicles in connection with their employment.”  (Emphasis supplied.)  It is undisputed here that the chained walkway in which Crooms and Figueroa sought to campaign was in the bus parking lot, not the employee parking lot.  Accordingly, their activity there was not protected by the Rules, and they have no basis to complain that others impermissibly interfered with their campaigning in that location.

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:

Kathleen A. Roberts

Election Appeals Master

JAMS

620 Eighth Avenue, 34^th 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 17^th 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

            2016 ESD 345

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