Under the recommendation of the U.S. Department of Labor, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 631 in Las Vegas, Nev., will hold a re-election of its officers no later than Oct. 26.
The new election, which was agreed to by Local 631 on Sept. 4, will involve the same candidates that ran for office in the December 2011 election.
This re-election is a result of a violation of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA). The LMRDA provides standards for the reporting and disclosure of the election of officers for labor organizations.
According to a spokesman for the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards, there was direct evidence that a violation of the LMRDA was committed during the original election and that the violation could have impacted the results.
The re-election will be for the offices of president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, recording secretary and three trustees.
The new election will be supervised by the Department of Labor.
If the leadership of Local 631 did not agree to the re-election, they did have the option to fight the Department of Labor in District Court. This is typically the course of action taken if a union believes they have a strong enough case. However, it could have also resulted in tens of thousands of dollars in court costs for the union.
The Department of Labor spokesperson said that this is never the desired outcome.
Candidates were notified of the new election in a letter sent from the Office of Labor-Management Standards on Sept. 6. In the letter, Ed Oquendo, election supervisor for the Office of Labor-Management Standards, also invited the candidates to a pre-election conference that will be held on Monday, Sept. 17.
“The conference, which is open to all interested parties, is for the purpose of developing rules and procedures to be used in conducting the election in accordance with the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959,” wrote Oquendo in the letter.
Although the Department of Labor would not comment on the direct nature of the violations that took place during the last election, it may be due to a significant number of ineligible ballots being cast in the December election.
According to one of the interested parties, more than 250 members of Local 631 cast ballots when they were not current with their union dues.
The incumbent slate lost the December 2011 election by 75 votes.
