National Convention
I would like to discuss the National Convention and how a few unhappy delegates controlled the convention and turned it into a kangaroo court against our National President Brian Renfroe.
On the opening morning of Monday August 5, 2024, even before the National Anthem was heard the unhappy delegates took over every microphone on the convention floor to show their displeasure about the Executive Council decisions on the issues that were already adjudicated against President Renfroe. We wasted time on this issue even before the convention got underway.
President Renfroe was brought up on 4 charges by these unhappy delegates that the Executive Council already ruled on. 3 of the 4 charges were dropped. But these unhappy delegates were not happy with that decision and according to the NALC constitution they were allowed to appeal those decisions. The issue I have is that the main culprit, who is National Director of City Delivery Chris Jackson who ran on Brian Renfroe’s ticket/slate already knew before accepting a position on Brian’s Executive Board that Brian was involved with these so-called allegations. This went on for a while. How they were going to handle these appeals brought before the Delegation? It was agreed upon that they would hear the appeals by Wednesday. This took up a lot of time on Monday and not much was accomplished because of it.
Tuesday was sort of a normal day we welcomed Roxanne Brown of the United States Steelworkers Union. We also, endorsed Harris-Waltz for President and Vice President. APWU President Mark Dimondstein gave a presentation to the delegation. Then it was back to the appeal process for these disgruntled delegates. VP James Henry explained the appeals process to the delegation. And of course, there was back and forth deliberation on the process. Next, Secretary-Treasurer Nicole Rhine delivered the secretary-treasurer report. President Renfroe introduced Ed Kelly, President of the International Association of Fire Fighters. Next President Renfroe invited Paul Hogrogian, President of the National Postal Mail Handlers Union to the podium. He gave a presentation to the delegation. Wrapping up the day the next guest speaker was NALC Auxiliary.
Wednesday the 3rd day of the convention, a motion was put forth to the delegation to have President Emeritus Fred Rolando chair a hearing of Article 10 appeals: to be held during the afternoon session, the delegation passed it. President Renfroe then called Credentials Committee Chairman to the podium. They gave the committee’s final report, stating that 5,446 delegates representing 619 branches were in attendance. The convention voted to accept the report. Then President Renfroe called the Board of Trustees Chairman to the podium, and he gave the trustees’ report. After the Trustees’ Report President Renfroe recognized branches with the highest percentages of organization.
President Renfroe welcomed Marcio Monzane, regional secretary of UNI Americas, to speak to the delegation. UNI Americas is part of UNI Global Union, an international group with affiliated unions in 150 countries representing 20 million workers. He told the delegation about the efforts of UNI Americas to protect postal services in many countries against the threats of privatization and non-union competition from delivery services such as Amazon, along with protecting democracy and union rights. Monzane praised the NALC’s involvement. in international labor efforts for the good of workers everywhere.
Then President Renfroe called to the podium the Chairman of the Scholarship Committee. He announced there were five winners of the $4,000 annual William C. Doherty Scholarship. The committee then announced the winner of the $1,000 annual John T. Donelon Scholarship winner.
President Renfroe welcomed Rep. Katherine Clark (D-MA) to the podium, who is the minority whip in the U.S. House of Representatives. She praised the letter carriers for their hard work. “You keep this country moving.” “You have shown America what service looks like.” She outlined the Democrats’ agenda in Congress for supporting letter carriers and all workers, including legislation to protect carriers from rising crime, strengthening the rights of workers to choose a union, defending retirement benefits, and ensuring that mail-in ballots are counted and respected.
The delegates then watched a video, “Carriers of the Community,” that demonstrated the many ways letter carriers voluntarily serve people in need.
The delegates then discussed and debated proposed resolutions and amendments. The convention voted to adopt the resolutions previously approved by the Executive Council. Director of Retirees Dan Toth introduced the retirement committee, they read the committee’s biennial report to the delegates. Also, to support H.R. 5995 the Federal Retirement Fairness Act and to support H.R. 82/S. 597 to repeal the Windfall Elimination Provision and the Government Pension Offset that affects the NALC Civil Service Retirement System.
President Renfroe turned the chair over to President Emeritus Fredric Rolando regarding Article 10 appeals. The parties had agreed to a process for presenting their case: First Fred read Article 10 of the NALC Constitution. Fred spoke about the process by which the charges have been made, investigated, and decided upon by the Executive Council. He then explained the three appeals to those decisions. Each charge would be handled separately. The disgruntled Director of City Delivery Chris Jackson was allowed 20 minutes to present his case to overturn the ruling of the Executive Council on charge 1, Neglect of Duty. President Renfroe received 20 minutes to present his case to uphold the Executive Council’s ruling of not guilty. Then both sides had five minutes each to rebuttal. I am no mathematician but right there was about one (1) hour of valuable time just on one appeal, and it is not over yet. Next, the delegates voted on whether to uphold or overturn the ruling. This was first done by a voice vote of the delegation all those in favor say “Yah” all against say “Nah.” President Emeritus Fredric Rolando said the “Yah’s” have it. The disgruntled delegates were not happy, they did not agree with the voice vote so, then it went all in favor of the Council’s recommendation to stand up. Then all against please rise. Again, President Emeritus Fredric Rolando said the “Yah’s” have it. But these disgruntled delegates disagreed. So now we had to have a teller vote where each delegate vote gets counted. As you can see this process went on for a while. The final tally on charge #1 was 2,997 to 1,576 in favor of the Executive Council’s decision. And that is all we got done on day three of the convention.
The fourth day of the convention started with appeal for charge #2 which was circulating false or misleading statements about a NALC Officer. I’m not going to bore you with the process it was stated above. This also went to a teller vote and a vote of 2,949 to 1,478 to uphold the Executive Council’s ruling of not guilty. Charge #4, Abandonment of Position went through the same process as the other charges and went to a teller vote of 2,674 to 1,712 to uphold the Executive Council’s ruling of not guilty. Garden Grove Branch 1100 former President and disgruntled delegate Charlie Miller had his appeal heard for the penalty the Executive Council imposed for charge #3, impaired driving in a NALC-owned vehicle. The process was the same as above that also went to a teller vote. The vote was 2,783 to 1,438 to uphold the Executive Councils’ penalty. As you can see each one of these charges took up a good portion of the day. For Director of City Delivery Chris Jackson and Former Branch 1100 President Charlie Miller to ask for a teller vote for each one of these charges was just to delay the convention from conducting important business as all the votes were not even close! To do a teller vote you have to go through a timely process. Then the Mileage and Per diem Committee gave their report and it was approved by the Board of Trustees. The convention was shown a video on increasing threat of crime against letter carriers. President Renfroe introduced Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH) who was the original sponsor of Protect Our Letter Carriers Act. After him President Renfroe welcomed Barbara Smith Warner, executive director of the National Vote at Home Institute. We did one National Agreement resolution on dealing with heat safety in bargaining it passed. Several announcements were made, and the delegation was told that the convention on Friday would be scheduled 30 minutes earlier than scheduled at 7:30am and will adjourn around 3:50pm.
On the fifth and final day we discussed National Agreement resolutions that mostly dealt with TIAREAP, eliminating the alternate dispute resolution process and route inspections. I personally felt that we rushed through these resolutions because we were running out of time. This is all because of the selfish few from the West Coast that want to make a mockery out of the Executive Council’s ruling on President Renfroe. It backfired on these selfish individuals, but it did cost every branch that was at the convention time and money because we came to hear solutions to issues that affect the normal carrier- attacks, violence, arrow keys, scanners, heat safety, route inspections, contract talks. We did touch the surface on these issues, but we did not get into full discussion because of the time restraints. Again, these few individuals made a sham out of the convention and the delegation paid the price! Not to mention that the USPS was watching this and laughing at us how divided we are in the middle of negotiations. Maybe this is another reason we could not negotiate a contract with the USPS in a timely manner!
