Hodgson v. Local 1299

453 F.2d 565, 79 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2153, 1971 U.S. App. LEXIS 6372
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit
DecidedDecember 29, 1971
Docket71-1293
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 453 F.2d 565 (Hodgson v. Local 1299) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Hodgson v. Local 1299, 453 F.2d 565, 79 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2153, 1971 U.S. App. LEXIS 6372 (6th Cir. 1971).

Opinion

453 F.2d 565

79 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2153, 67 Lab.Cas. P 12,318

James D. HODGSON, Secretary of Labor,
Plaintiff-Appellant-Cross-Appellee,
v.
LOCAL 1299, UNITED STEELWORKERS OF AMERICA, AFL-CIO, and
United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO,
Defendants-Appellees-Cross-Appellants.

Nos. 71-1293, 71-1297.

United States Court of Appeals,
Sixth Circuit.

Dec. 29, 1971.

Michael H. Stein, Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C. (L. Patrick Gray, III, Asst. Atty. Gen., Walter H. Fleischer, Atty., Dept. of Justice, Washington, D. C., Ralph B. Guy, Jr., U. S. Atty., Detroit, Mich., on the brief), for Hodgson.

Carl B. Frankell, Pittsburgh, Pa. (Michael H. Gottesman, Washington, D. C., Allen J. Kovinsky, Detroit, Mich., on the brief), for Local Union, etc., and others; Bernard Kleiman, Chicago, Ill., of counsel.

Before PHILLIPS, Chief Judge, and McCREE and MILLER, Circuit Judges.

McCREE, Circuit Judge.

This appeal presents difficult questions concerning the requirement of the Landrum-Griffin Act that a union member exhaust all internal union remedies before the Secretary of Labor can entertain his complaint that provisions of the Act relating to union elections have been violated. We are also presented with questions concerning the scope of the remedial and supervisory powers over elections conferred on the Secretary by the Act. For the reasons set out below, we affirm in part and reverse in part the judgment of the District Court.

At the 1964 International Convention of the United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO (Steelworkers), the delegates approved an amendment to the International Constitution. The Constitution had provided that terms of office in each local would be two years, and that in order to be eligible to run for local office, a member must have attended at least one-half the local membership meetings over a two-year period. In 1962, the terms of office were lengthened to three years, and the 1964 amendment reflected this change by requiring as a condition for eligibility for local office that a member have attended one-half the meetings over a three-year period. An exemption was provided for members whose union activities or working hours prevented attendance.

Following the June 1967 series of Steelworkers local elections,1 the Secretary of Labor, acting pursuant to Secs. 401 and 402 of the Labor Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), 29 U.S.C. Secs. 481, 482,2 filed eight lawsuits, including this one, in which he sought to set aside local elections on the ground, among others, that the Constitution's meeting-attendance rule imposed an unreasonable qualification on a member's right to run for union office.3 Three of these suits ultimately went to trial, and in all three the District Court found the meeting-attendance rule reasonable. However, in Hodgson v. Local Union 6799, United Steelworkers of America, AFL-CIO, 403 U.S. 333, 91 S.Ct. 1841, 29 L.Ed.2d 510 (1971), the Supreme Court held that the District Court should not have reached the issue of the reasonableness of the rule since that issue had not been raised by any member in the union's internal procedures. Accordingly, there had been no exhaustion of remedies as required by LMRDA Sec. 402(a) (1).

* * *

This appeal concerns an election of officers of the 9,000-member Steelworkers Local 1299. Of the 67 candidates originally nominated for the 11 offices in the local, 22 eventually decided to run. The local's election committee then determined that three of the 22 were ineligible to run for office because of the meeting-attendance rule, which the committee interpreted to require attendance at 12 of 23 local meetings.4

The election was held June 28, 1967. Subsequently, several members lodged internal union protests concerning the conduct of the election. One group of protests-the "Stevenson" group-charged irregularities in a recount conducted on August 1, 1967, of the votes for treasurer and grievanceman. No mention was made of the meeting-attendance rule in these protests. The local denied the protests on August 2, 1967, and the International Executive Board Branch on October 10, 1967, affirmed the determination that no violations had occurred in the recount.

The other protests were made by Robert Morgan and Donald Gianni, candidates for division grievanceman. They were declared ineligible to run under the meeting-attendance rule because neither had attended at least 12 of the 23 meetings preceding the election. They claimed that the local officials had misread the language of the union's Constitution and by-laws and had not given those documents their "fullest meaning."5 At trial, they testified in substance that they were protesting the election committee's decision to exclude from consideration the first 13 months of the three-year period preceding the election6 for purposes of applying the meeting-attendance rule. Both asserted that they would have been eligible for election if the committee had applied the meetingattendance rule literally.7 The Morgan-Gianni protests were rejected by the local on August 2, 1967, and by the International Executive Board on October 10, 1967.

On November 6, 1967, the Stevenson group filed with the Secretary a complaint alleging violation of the LMRDA in the recount procedures. After conducting an investigation of the entire election (and receiving a waiver from the union of the 60-day limit contained in LMRDA Sec. 402(b)), the Secretary, through his delegate, notified the Steelworkers on January 9, 1968, that he had probable cause to believe that the June 1967 election of officers of local 1299 violated LMRDA Secs. 401(c), (e), and (g) in the following respects: ballots were altered between the initial vote and the recount; members in good standing were denied the right to be candidates and to hold office because of the application of the Steelworkers' meeting-attendance rule; and union funds were used in various ways to promote the candidacy of incumbent officers.

The Steelworkers responded to this notification by reversing the earlier decision to disallow the Stevenson protests and ordering a new election for the positions of treasurer and grievanceman. On February 24, 1968, the Secretary was notified of this decision and was assured that the election would be held as soon as possible.

On March 1, 1968, the Secretary filed suit in the United States District Court to set aside the June 1967 election. The complaint alleged four violations of LMRDA Sec.

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453 F.2d 565, 79 L.R.R.M. (BNA) 2153, 1971 U.S. App. LEXIS 6372, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/hodgson-v-local-1299-ca6-1971.