Membership Attendance Requirements and Public Sector Unions in Massachusetts
To: Jerry Enos, President, ECCOA
Fr: Howard Lenow, Attorney for the ECCOA
Re: Membership Attendance Requirements and Public Sector Unions in Massachusetts
Dt: June 12, 2008
This memo is offered to clarify the legal basis for the ECCOA’s requirement that members attend 50% of the membership meetings in order to be eligible to run for office. This is in response to a question by a member about several older court decisions that seemed to call into question the ECCOA’s eligibility rules to run for office.
First, the ECCOA is an independent labor organization representing only public employees in Massachusetts. As such, there are no statutes or controlling court decisions that regulate the ECCOA’s internal rules and regulations for officer elections. As such, the ECCOA eligibility rules, which are intended, among other things, to encourage active participation in the ECCOA’s affairs, are, in fact, lawful.
The posting by Mr. Gallo contained references to two cases, one by the United States Supreme Court and one by a United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Both of these cases dealt with the proper interpretation and application of a federal law and the regulations promulgated under the Labor Management and Reporting Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA). The LMRDA only applies to unions that represent employees in the private sector—NOT to independent unions like the ECCOA that only represent public sector employees. As such, even if Mr. Gallo fully understood the limited and narrow holdings of these cases, and even if both cases were still good law and applicable in Massachusetts (which is not the case), the decisions do not apply to the ECCOA because the ECCOA is not governed by the LMRDA.
The Supreme Court decision on this issue was based primarily on the fact that under the LMRDA, a union cannot impose eligibility restrictions that are considered “unreasonably” restrictive. In that case, the trial court found that a 50% attendance requirement over a period of three years had the effect of excluding 96.5% of the members being ineligible. The Court also made clear that each case had to be taken on its own facts and that no “per se” rule applied to all union eligibility restrictions.
The Doyle v. Brock case from the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, decided in 1987, was expressly rejected in its application to private sector unions in Massachusetts. In Herman v. APWU, 201 F.3d 1 (C.A. 1, 2000), a 2000 decision by the First Circuit Court of Appeals (the circuit that covers New England), the Court expressly distinguished Doyle v. Brock and did not follow the reasoning of that Court. In Herman, the First Circuit found that a requirement that members attend at least three meetings in a twelve month period in order to run for office, was “reasonable” and intended to advance a legitimate union agenda of encouraging active participation in the union. In Herman, 96% of the membership was excluded from running for office, but because the rule was viewed as a legitimate exercise of the union’s right to determine its internal affairs, the rule was upheld. Accordingly, the Doyle v. Brock case, even if it applied to the ECCOA—which it does not—is not controlling precedent in Massachusetts.
While I don’t have the exact numbers, I understand that only a handful of members who expressed an interest in running for office, were unable to run because of their failure to have attended 50% of the meetings in the year prior to the election. In the past, I believe several members who would have been ineligible, provided evidence of their inability to attend meetings, and were granted waivers by the Executive Board. I am confident that even if the ECCOA were governed by the LMRDA, the ECCOA’s eligibility rule would be upheld as a legitimate and lawful exercise of the union’s right to regulate its internal affairs.
I hope this short memo helps clarify the issues raised on the ECCOA bulletin board.
