March 8, 2012
Mike Bilello, Executive Secretary-Treasurer
Dennis Walsh, Review Officer
New York City District Council of Carpenters
395 Hudson Street New York, NY 10014-7450
Re: Pre-Balloting Access to Union Work Site and E-Mail Lists
Dear Messrs. Bilello and Walsh,
I am writing to you on behalf of myself, and the union member identified in the “cc” line below, to ask that you grant us prompt access to a list of all of the District Council’s work sites and email lists, so that we may exercise our LMRDA rights under 29 U.S.C. §§ 411(a)(1), (2), to express our views on the upcoming contract referenda to other members, and so that other members may hear and discuss these opposition views before they mark and return their ballots. Otherwise, untold numbers of members will be denied access to opposing views and the opportunity to discuss them with fellow members before marking and returning their ballots for counting. See Pawlak v. Greenawalt , 713 F.2d 972, 975 (3d Cir. 1983); Sheldon v. O'Callaghan, 497 F.2d 1276 (2d Cir.), cert. denied , 419 U.S. 1090 (1974); Johnson v. Kay, 671 F. Supp. 268,278 (S.D.N.Y.1987) , aff'd 860 F.2d 529 (2d Cir.1988).
While I understand that Mr. Walsh and Judge Berman have determined that 14 days is a reasonable period of time for affected members to have access to the tentative agreements that are posted online before ballots are mailed, up to 25,000 members located in the New York City and vicinity, will be affected by these CBAs, and 14 days does not provide a lot of time for working members to disseminate their opposition views to other working members, and for affected members to hear, discuss, and debate those views.
My colleague and I have other substantial concerns, including the inadequacy of online posting of the proposed agreements as sufficient pre-ballot notice of them to members, and the possibility that members who do not work under some of the proposed agreements will nevertheless be voting on them, even though they are not affected by them.
I urge you to suspend tomorrow’s mailing of ballots so that we may discuss and resolve these issues before money is needlessly expended on a ballot mailing that will need to be redone later,after these serious flaws have been remedied. Toward that end, I look forward to hearing from you today, or tomorrow morning, before ballots are mailed.
Sincerely,
Demian Schroeder
cc: Robert Makowski
Saturday, March 10, 2012
Open Letter
6 comments:
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DROP DEAD UNITY TEAM !
ReplyDeleteDear Brothers thank you for your courage and show of democratic force in this farce of a contract negotiation.Ill remind all company men that you are in the same boat as the hall guys ,and theres a GIANT LEAK IN THAT VESSEL> Its name is Doug and NERCC 54.73 after three years.With full mobility theres no hall to go back to, so when you tell the boss to fck himself it will be you whos fucked!!! Vote NO early and Often Thank you Damien the omen we need, as well as Bob tell it like it is Makowski thanks fellas Vote NO dont let that ballot hit the kitchen counter open it vote NO and put that waste of our money in the mail immediatley this is your future.
ReplyDeletewe all have to live with this farce for the next 5 years brothers and sisters. the resilient floor coverers had our contract negotiated by someone who is not even a member of our local and then he runs away, like the piece of shit that he is. and to all who had a hand in this you sold us out. this is clearly in favor of the contractors. why is it that we are the only local taking such big paycuts?
ReplyDeleteLike our Eboard president said anyone can do our job.Thanks for your confidence in the ability of very talented people, but I guess your not one of them or you would nt have sold us and you so short.Other comment from Eboard president "thats the best we could do" let me not be selfish other 2287 eboarders and managers and rep agreed.Well if this is your best you should look into some other line of work you might excel in cause the contract speaks for itself.Thats the truth in its own nakedness,no apologies
ReplyDeleteguys
ReplyDeleteyou are all being laid to.the contract gives us our just deserved raises.It gives the contractor nothing.He had full mobility in the form of the request until it was taken away from them by the Judge as punishment for the union giving up the 6 month rule.If you vote no you are taking somthing away from the contractors.If you vote no you will never have a contract that you agree on.Has anyone said we will get to vote the next time.The 50/50 rule only helps the bad carpenters,if you are good you are working if you are bad you are not.if you are in between and we get busy and a contarctor wants to hire you he won't be able to because he has to take the next guy on the list whether he is any good or not.It only helps the bad carpenters.the non union invasion is real in order to keep our salaries we need to be more effecient and better then our non union competitors.The problem is real and it is not going away.someone said yesterday that agreeing to the contract does not guarantee our raises because the distribution can be changed or decided at a later date and that is true but that is done by our elected officials not the contractors.somebody said the contract allows us to work for a reduced rate at certain jobs,that is not our contract that is the PLAs that are signed by our elected officials.Voting NO is a step toward destoying our way of life because if anyone remembers the same contractors who have agreed to this contract started by asking for a 20% reduction in salary.This is the best deal we are going to get we should grab it while we can.If you agree vote yes.if you don't vote no either way vote it may be the only time in our lives we get a chance to
Guy
ReplyDeletethe contractors have had full mobility in the form of the request for the last 15 years.The union is still here!The list may not work but it never did.Thats why the judge got involved