New Election for Postal Workers Begins

Elections began Monday for six leadership positions in the Orange County postal workers union, capping a 15-month controversy in which the U.S. Department of Labor finally intervened.

The vote will nullify the union’s election of April, 1987, which then-Labor Secretary William Brock had tried to do in October. He had charged in a federal lawsuit that union dues were used to promote incumbent candidates.

The dispute ended out of court last month when officers of the Southwest Coastal Area Local of the American Postal Workers Union agreed to allow the Labor Department to supervise new elections. All of the six union leaders now facing reelection, including the local’s president, Bobby Donelson, were elected for the first time last year, and none of them were named in the Labor Department lawsuit.

After last year’s election, some of the losing candidates filed a complaint protesting the election with the national union’s Election Appeals Committee. The complaint was rejected, so last July they lodged a protest with the Labor Department.

With five of the losing candidates running now for the same positions as they did in the disputed election, the latest slate of candidates is almost identical to last year’s.

The winners of this election will serve out the remainder of the three-year terms, which will end in April, 1990.

Referring to the current campaign, Mike Stinson, a vice president running for reelection, said, “It’s been extremely hostile.”

Richard C. Grant, a senior investigator with the Labor Department’s Office of Labor-Management Standards in Los Angeles and the official overseeing the election, declined to comment Monday.

According to a schedule published by the department, ballots to the local’s 2,200 members were mailed Monday. Results won’t be known until after July 14, when the ballots are to be tallied.