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BACKGROUND THE REMOVAL MY APPEAL THE ELECTION THE AFTERMATH
Once resigned, the Chief Steward went out among the membership in the largest bargaining unit and convinced 42 members to sign a petition which they were told would cause me to be removed from office. She told them that I would put the base on the BRAC list because I filed too many OSHA complaints and had picketed Senator Nickles (R-OK) in front of the Base. She managed to collect 42 signatures, or roughly 10% of the membership, by lying to them, misrepresenting facts, even making up lies. Asked later, many of them said that they would not have signed the petition if they had known the facts. And those 42 members were not representative of every organization on Base - only the one where the Vice-president, Treasurer, and Chief Steward worked, and where they had personal acquaintances, many of whom signed the petition.
The Chief Steward convinced some thirty members to attend the April 2003 membership meeting, where one hapless soul , bolstered by the former Chief Steward, actually tried to suspend Robert’s Rules so he could call for a no-confidence vote to remove me from office! The former Chief Steward even exhorted the membership to leave the Union to protest my Presidency. NVP Kelly was present at that meeting, and witnesses all of this first-hand. After the meeting, he met with the former Chief Steward in private, then inexplicably counseled me to allow her to return to the office from which she had resigned.
The newsletter editor (later appointed Secretary to replace the one that resigned weeks after taking office), harassed me and subjected me to no less than three e-mail tirades over a period of less than six months, in which he insulted my integrity, called me names, and was hateful, hurtful, and relentlessly attacked me hour after hour, day after day. He was irrational and unreasoning in his criticism, and I sank deeper and deeper into depression. I asked him to stop sending me such vile e-mails, told him the effect it was having on my emotional state, and said that I considered them harmful to my health. Although he also suffers from depression, and has himself contemplated suicide several times, he showed callous disregard for my safety and well-being when he continued to heartlessly harass me. In reply to one of his more disturbing e-mails, I sent an anguished reply expressing my feeling of worthlessness and failure, which accurately echoed his own expressed assesment of my worth as a union officer and member of the human race. He interpreted the response as suicidal. Maybe I was suicidal, maybe I wasn’t. I’m no expert, but I do know the thought crossed my mind for a fleeting, heart-stopping second before thoughts of my son took precedence.
When the Chief Steward’s efforts to remove me from office failed, she began courting the Vice-president, Treasurer and later, the new Secretary to champion her return. By July 2003, the Executive Board was ready to make its move. They approached me before the monthly membership meeting and said they thought she should be appointed to the office she had abandoned. They, along with NVP Kelly, assured me it would be a “good political move” to show that I could put aside my personal differences with her “for the good of the union”. Although I could have blocked her return to office, I did not want to incite the Executive Board any more, or receive yet another vicious tirade of e-mails from the Secretary so I acquiesced.
THE NEXT DAY, the Secretary, who was also the newsletter editor, sent me a copy of all the articles he proposed to publish in that month’s newsletter - except one, which he called the “guest editorial.” Suspicious about the obvious omission, I asked to see the editorial, and he resisted. I insisted. After many terse e-mails, he sent the editorial for me to read, and I discovered it had been written by the person we had just appointed as Chief Steward after her resignation from that office - and that it criticized me for “making bad decisions” - but this time, instead of exhorting the members to quit the union to protest my Presidency, she argued that they should stay in the union so they could vote down bad ideas. Then she said that I didn’t care about the members. I refused to let the “editorial” be published in the Union’s newsletter, and predictably, the Secretary again attacked me in the most vile way by e-mail. He accused me of “censorship” and called me a Nazi. He brought me up on charges and then resigned. Then he started sending e-mails to members and non members criticizing me and insulting my integrity and making public details of my handicapping condition which I had ervealed to him in confidence so that he could represent me in a grievance I had filed against my supervisor. These, and many more deplorable violations of ethics, were daily occurances. The Executive Board members tried to convince him to come back, and began plotting on how to get rid of me. In an e-mail, the Vice-president discusses the possibility of bringing me up on charges, but complains that I could appeal to the NEC.
I later discovered that the members of the Executive Board had been in constant contact with NVP Kelly, complaining bitterly about how my “illness” was “harming the union” and how people were leaving the union in droves (completely discounting the anti-union activities in which the former Chief Steward and former Secretary were engaged, of course). NVP Kelly had responded to the Treasurer’s three-page rant by thanking her for sharing her concerns, and asking her to set up a meeting with “no more than six’ members whom she could trust. In other e-mails, NVP Kelly and the Treasurer discuss a meeting with National Representative Gary Benton, although I was never given notice that he would be visiting my Local, and I was not given the opportunity to defend myself against the Executive Board’s attacks in that meeting. All of these secret communications and covert meetings were to discuss my “illness” - the handicapping condition of depression - and the “effect” it was having on the membership - meaning the organization where they all worked, where they aired the Union’s dirty laundry, and where they complained about the rigors of working for me. They criticized me mercilessly for the unforgivable offenses of asking them to do their jobs and expecting them to come into the office on official time.
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