Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530210
Winter 2025 – LOCAL695.COM 23 Howland, to ensure members on Zoom were complying with the requirements set forth by President Loeb's memorandum and the NLRB. After weeks of planning and preparation, Local 695 held its first hybrid membership meeting on July 16, 2022. While I have not been able to confirm that we were the first IA Local to do so, we were certainly among the first. The initial Stream Team consisted of Zak Holley, Local 695 member Tristen Poliseno, Bill Kaplan, and Oscar Alva. The meeting was a success and, with the concept proven, we all began devising ways of improving the workflow for next time. The real challenge came in January of 2023 when Local 695 held a vote to amend its Constitution & Bylaws. Legally, such a vote requires an anonymous balloting system, and any electronic ballot requires a level of integrity verification not possible on the Zoom platform. This meant that a third-party online balloting service would be necessary. What's more, we needed to ensure that only members in attendance participated in the vote, meaning that we couldn't send out voting credentials prior to when the vote opened in the middle of the meeting. After much research and several pitches from companies that could not meet our needs, Local 695 enlisted the services of Survey and Ballot Systems. Theirs was the only service we were confident could meet the precise timing needs of our meeting. During the meeting, all members who were participating at that moment, regardless of whether they were in person or remote, were emailed a unique login credential so that they could cast their votes on the new amendments. I cannot stress how stressful this process was, as a failure to conduct the vote or an improper voting procedure would violate our Local's existing Constitution & Bylaws, which set forth that amendments must be voted on after being read at two consecutive membership meetings. If members didn't receive their credential emails or there was some irregularity with the process, it would have been a real problem. But the vote went off without a hitch. Once again, I cannot confirm that Local 695 was the first union to conduct an NLRB- compliant vote in a hybrid format, but we were certainly among the very first. I also cannot praise Casey Weiss enough for taking charge of administering the voting process and working with Direct Vote to ensure everything went smoothly. She has since gone onto