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 Councils 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 tomorrows 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