Judge Orders Carpenters to Conduct New Union Elections : Labor: Federal jurist overturns O.C.-based Local 803’s vote and orders new balloting, saying it may have been rigged.

A federal judge overturned a local union election this week, saying it was possible it had been rigged.

The judge ordered a new election supervised by the federal Department of Labor before the end of the year for Orange County’s Local 803 of the carpenters union.

The election “smacks of (being) undemocratic,” U.S. District Judge Edward Rafeedie said Thursday after a short trial, “and lends itself to the inference that this election was intended to produce certain results.”

One of the losers of that election said carpenters officials in Los Angeles were trying to use the election to tighten their control over Orange County. He complained to the Labor Department, which sued, saying the union had violated labor laws and its own constitution by not notifying all of the local’s 3,400 active and retired members.

Only 140 turned out to vote.

And, the Labor Department said, the union held the nominations and election on the same night last fall, giving candidates no time to campaign. The union’s constitution says nominations should be in May and elections in June.

“We’re extremely disappointed, and of course we disagree with the ruling,” said Lee Miller, who had been elected financial secretary of Local 803, which has headquarters in Orange.

It is not unusual, Miller said, to have some nominations and elections on one day when a vacant post must be filled. And poor turnout, he said, is common to most local union elections, including the carpenters.

“We mailed out notices to almost everyone,” he said, “but we can’t and don’t guarantee they’ll all get delivered.”

Local 803 is the result of a merger between two locals that were combined because--like other building trades unions in Southern California--both were losing members.

Two years ago, officials of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America swooped down on several locals in Orange and Riverside counties, changing locks and declaring the locals would be merged. All its remaining locals in Southern California, the union said, would now be supervised from Los Angeles.

For the next year, the union ran Local 803 from its Washington headquarters, said Miller. A year ago, officials ordered the one-day elections.

That order--which the judge later found violated labor laws and the union’s own constitution--came from the union’s top national official, General President Sigurd Lucassen, to Douglas J. McCarron of Los Angeles, the union’s top officer in Southern California, said Assistant U.S. Atty. Donna J. Everett. Everett represented the Labor Department in its lawsuit.

Three dozen posts left vacant by the merger were up for grabs in the Oct. 27, 1992, election, including the 10-member executive board which ostensibly runs the local. A slate of officials from the two old locals--who the dissidents claim were running simply to consolidate Los Angeles’ control over the local--won narrowly.

Union member Richard F. Basile of Garden Grove, who had run one of the two locals that were merged, appealed shortly afterward to the union’s Washington headquarters, which rejected the appeal.

Basile then complained to the Labor Department.

“They ran that election so fast, even a lot of the members couldn’t believe it,” said Basile, who lost his bid for a post.