01/15/09

Dear Brother Goodwin,

We are in receipt of your letter dated 01/08/2009. (I, Mr. Teske, am in receipt of a copy via Mr. Kessinger due to the fact that you continue to send 'my' copy to an inaccurate address despite my accurate address being clear on each of the correspondence which I have sent to you).

Unfortunately, you have been misinformed in regards to whether we submitted the election challenge, simultaneously to the International OPEIU Executive Board and the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board. The fact is that, in accordance with the International Union's Policies and Procedures, we pursued our challenge with the International OPEIU Executive Board (09/13/2008) and we pursued our challenge with the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board (09/15/2008) since we anticipated your (and the International, OPEIU Executive Board's) refusal to process our challenge. As I'm sure your aware, this information is available on our website www.OPEIU30.org / www.OPEIUVOICE.org. The challenge was emailed to each of the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board Members for which we had email contact information as well as to the OPEIU, Local 30 office (addressed to the attention of the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board). Perhaps the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board should have contacted Mr. Kessinger, Mr. Murphey and/or myself if there was any confusion on their behalf in regards to the challenge which we submitted to them; We were each available to clear up any confusion they may have had. Unfortunately, no one from the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board chose to contact us at any time.

We find it queer that, in your letter dated 01/08/2009, you state that you had appointed a committee on 10/06/2008 in order to hear our appeal yet you are only choosing to inform us about this committee now (greater than three [3] months after you purport to have created the committee). Compounding the oddity of your timing is the fact that we did not receive further correspondence from you, until now, following our 09/25/2008 correspondence to you, which you referenced within your recent letter.

Further, as you likely know, due to the Union's failure to address the challenge within a timely manner and, in accordance with the National Labor Relations Act, we have pursued the election challenge with the United States, Department of Labor (DOL) which is currently conducting an investigation in the matter. We are looking forward to receiving the DOL's decision in regards to the matter within the next couple months. While your investigation will not produce a decision prior to that time (and in fact not until after April of 2009), we look forward to meeting with Mr. Kirkland and cooperating fully in order to assist in any investigatory effort that you may make. We appreciate that you may now be making an effort to address the election challenge (even though your effort is about four [4] months after the election and will not be completed until about eight [8] months after the election) and we will anticipate participating in the first investigation which any OPEIU entity has conducted thus far as we have never been contacted by the OPEIU, Local 30 Election Committee, the OPEIU, Local 30 Executive Board, or the International OPEIU Executive Board.

Fraternally,

Dustin E. Teske

Alyssa and Britney's Dad
www.UnionGuide.org
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Phone: (858) 568-1333 / Fax: (530) 325-3489