Richardson, 2026 ESD 109
OFFICE OF THE ELECTION SUPERVISOR
for the
INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF TEAMSTERS
)
IN RE: PAMELA ) Protest Decision 2026 ESD 109
RICHARDSON, )
) Issued: June 10, 2026
Protesters. )
) OES Case No. P-121-031226; P-140-040626
)
INTRODUCTION
Pamela Richardson filed a protest against Teamsters United 767 – Dave Reeves Slate alleging that business agents running on that slate and members taken out of service to perform official union business engaged in campaign activity on working time in violation of the 2025-2026 IBT International Union Delegate and Officer Election (“Rules”).
Dolores C. Hall of the Office of the Election Supervisor (“OES”) investigated these protests.
P-121-031226
Protestor states that her allegations arose from pictures she saw on Facebook showing that Local 767 officers and business agents who ran on the Teamsters United 767 – The Dave Reeves Slate were campaigning at various work sites, sometimes for extended periods of time. Richardson identified the following individuals as having campaigned between March 2, 2026 through March 6, 2026, at UPS sites in Fort Worth, Dallas, Indy, and Haslet, and on March 10, 2026 at the UPS facility in Tyler: (1) Fernando Romo; (2) Joe Garcia; (3) Darren Bradley; (4) Loren Porter; (5) Robert Lopez; (6) Emma Stamps; (7) Sumar Noble. In her protest, she asked the investigator to review time records and asserts that “[i]f none of them have been on vacation nor been docked any days pay, it supports our position.”
Witnesses Dave Reeves, Robert Lopez, Sylvester Davis, Frankie Alvarado, and Sumar Noble deny the allegations. Reeves states that the business agents and officers who campaigned took time off and/or campaigned before or after their shifts. He similarly states that all employees who participated in the gate action were on vacation time or helped out with campaigning before or after work. He complied with the investigator’s requests for supporting documentation and provided documentation showing the local’s request for certain members to be taken out of service for official union business and the time sheets for officers and business agents of Local 767 from February 17, 2026 through March 20, 2026.[1] Review of these materials showed that the identified individuals took time off during the relevant time period.
Lopez stated that he prepared a schedule for campaigning for the slate when it was first formed but had to re-do it due to vacation dates and the discovery that workers at some buildings only worked Monday through Friday. He said as a result, they abandoned the schedule altogether shifting to a day-by-day schedule. He said that the first two weeks of March was a busy time for the slate to campaign. His statements were consistent with Reeves’s statements.
Local 767’s delegate election was held on April 4, 2026. A total of 1,552 ballots were counted, 11 ballots were void, and 58 challenged ballots remain unresolved. The margin of votes between the winning delegate who received the least votes and the losing delegate who received the most votes was 334 votes. That same margin in the alternate delegate election was 326. Factoring in the unresolved challenged ballots and assuming that all of those votes went to the losing delegate with the most votes, the margin was 276. Making those same assumptions in the alternate delegate election, the margin was 268.
Article VII, Section 12(a) grants all union members the right to support or oppose any candidate and to aid any candidate’s campaign, among other things. However, it prohibits members from campaigning on work time, incidental campaigning excepted, and further bars members on personal time from campaigning to members who are working. Article VII, Section 12(b) grants those same rights to union officers and employees, limiting their campaign activity to personal time and campaigning incidental to work.
Based on our review of the evidence, we find insufficient evidence to find a violation of the Rules. Protestor relies on photos of the individuals campaigning to infer that they must have been on union-paid time but the mere observation that campaigning occurred, even for multiple hours, does not establish that it occurred on union time or in violation of the Rules. The witnesses deny the allegations. The record evidence Reeves provided are consistent with these statements. Review of time sheets and requests for certain employees to be out of service for official union business, shows that all of the individuals Richardson identified took time off during the relevant time period. Protestor has not provided evidence sufficient to show that they were, in fact, on union-paid time while campaigning. The burden rests with the protestor to present evidence sufficient to support her allegations. Rules, Article XIII, Section 1; Pike, P278 (January 30, 1996) (protests may be denied where the protestor fails to offer evidence corroborating the alleged violation); Rodriguez, P241 (January 10, 1996); Teamsters United, 2015 ESD 10 (July 19, 2015); Teamsters United, 2016 ESD 98 (February 1, 2016). Consistent with this principle, the Election Supervisor has rejected allegations that campaign activity occurred on union time where the claim rests on speculation rather than evidence. See e.g., Woo, 2026 ESD 95 (May 27, 2026) (denying protest for insufficient evidence where allegations that campaigning occurred on union time was based on the fact that the campaigning occurred during a workday).
Accordingly, for the reasons set forth above, we DENY this protest.
P-140-040626
Protestor filed another protest against Reeves alleging that ballots had not been received by members and seeking information about undeliverable ballots. Pursuant to her protest, protestor alleges that some members did not receive their ballots, and she information about the ballots returned undeliverable. She did not provide any additional information about members who allegedly did not receive ballot.
Matt Fitch of Merriman River Group (“Merriman River”) stated that there were 909 undeliverable notices that were transmitted to the local for address correction in TITAN prior to mailing the ballots. He said that with significant effort by the local, Local 767 was able to identify many updated addresses reducing their list of bad addresses by more than half between December 2025 and February 2026 for the mailing of ballots. Specifically, Fitch stated that following the mailing of ballots, Merriman River received a total of 430 undeliverable ballots out of 11,179. Merriman River transmitted the addresses of these undeliverable to Darren Bradley in an effort to obtain updated addresses. The local was able to obtain 52 new addresses, and ballots were remailed to those addresses leaving 378 ballots undeliverable or a rate of 3.38%.
The same day and around the same time Richardson filed this protest,[2] she spoke with Matt Fitch and Seth Marceau of Merriman River via text message about the undeliverable mail for Local 767’s delegate election. In response to her inquiries, consistent with Fitch’s statements discussed above, Merriman River informed Richardson that 430 out of 11,179 ballots were undeliverable, that the local was able to identify 52 new addresses and remailed those ballots, therefore, there was a total of 378 undeliverable ballots. He further confirmed that following the election, all undeliverable materials would be shipped to OES for permanent storage. Review of this text message string confirms Merriman River’s statements.
After the protest was filed, the investigator called Richardson regarding her protest including, whether she received the information she requested from Merriman River. Richardson stated that she could not talk at the time and would call the investigator back in ten minutes. She did not return the investigator’s call and has not provided any additional information in connection with this protest. Accordingly, we find no evidence to support a finding of a violation of the Rules here.
APPELLATE RIGHTS
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. Any party requesting a hearing must comply with the requirements of Article XIII, Section 2(i). All parties are reminded that, absent extraordinary circumstances, no party may rely in any such appeal upon evidence that was not presented to the Office of the Election Supervisor. Requests for a hearing shall be made in writing, shall specify the basis for the appeal, and shall be served upon:
Election Appeals Master
Barbara Jones
Election Appeals Master
IBTappealsmaster@bracewell.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. Service may be accomplished by email, using the “reply all” function on the email by which the party received this decision. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing. A copy of the protest must accompany the request for hearing.
Timothy S. Hillman
cc: Barbara Jones, IBTappealsmaster@bracewell.com
2026 ESD 109
DISTRIBUTION LIST (BY EMAIL UNLESS NOTED OTHERWISE):
Pamela Richardson
Dave Reeves
Sumar Noble
John Palmer
Richard Hooker
Edward M. Gleason, Jr.,
James L. Donovan Jr.
David Suetholz
Will Bloom
Ken Paff
Thomas Kokalas
Timothy S. Hillman
Paul Dever
Dolores Hall
Kelly Hogan
[1] We note that the protestor’s allegations arise out of campaign activity that occurred between March 2, 2026 and March 10, 2026.
[2] Even to the extent Richardson filed this protest a few hours before Fitch and Marceau responded, Fitch and Marceau had been flying to Chicago and responded upon landing.