Meet the Executive Board

Left to Right - Ralph de Juliis - President, Mitzi Brooks - 1st Vice President, Magda Mashburn - Secretary/Treasurer, Carol Lewis - Executive Vice President

2nd Vice President, Mary Roberts (below)

Board Bios

President

Ralph de Juliis: I started with SSA in 1978 in Passaic, NJ. Worked in the Montclair and Paterson, NJ offices before transferring to Tulsa, in 1998.

I was a Local Rep and officer in the NJ SSA/AFGE Local (2369). I was Regional Vice President in the NY Region. I was Executive Vice President of AFGE Council 220 from 1988 through 1993. I became Executive Vice President of Local 2505 in 1993 and President in 2007.

I first became aware of how much SSA hated me when management in the NY Region refused the request of another representative to reschedule a 4 PM grievance presentation. The NJ Local then reassigned the grievance presentation to me. Regional LMR called the NJ Local President and asked what time was good for the OTHER representative!

For instance, in my first office, the DM was reprimanded because of me; However, trying to lower my appraisal, reprimanding and suspending me didn't bring me under control. I won my EEO to wear sandals without socks. Management's name was taken in vain by the arbitrator who noted I couldn't have official time because of office exigencies; but, when my wife called with car trouble, there were no offices exigencies and I could leave. In my second office, the DM was reprimanded twice because of the Union. (I was in Baltimore at the time of both offenses). I forced management to stop making the employees raise and lower the flag daily. I caused them to spend $10,000 (according to the DM) to get handicapped workable doors. I prevented them from having an emergency exit through the utility room when employees has to step over drain pipes while ducking to avoid hitting their heads on electrical conduit. OSHA told the DM to remove the Emergency Exit sign. He pulled it off the wall in front of both of us. He also pulled the sheet rock off the wall. Then he took the OSHA Inspector to my cubicle and asked if he had ever seen a more messy, hazardous cubicle. (Phone wires stretched the length of the cubicle, my motorcycle helmet, boots, leather strewn about the floor.) Boxes. The Inspector took me and the DM to the DM's office, closed the door and in a very quiet voice asked the DM is he was aware of the very serious and significant penalties OSHA could impose on an employer to took reprisal and retaliation against some one who filed a Health and Safety Complaint with OSHA.

Things calmed down. Then, one day, we got a new photocopy machine. I burned it out the FIRST DAY. I was banned from the Photocopy machine. The Local filed a grievance. The settlement was that I had unlimited access to the AD's photocopy machine.

A former, demoted supervisor was assigned to our office. After one year on 100% review, he asked for representation. I got everything removed and him reassigned. The DM called me into tell me what a DISSERVICE I had perpetrated on SSA for saving the job of so worthless an employee. So.it was ON, again.

Next management counseled me for my sick leave usage. I was pretty angry because I had slid around the corner, at speed on the ice on my motorcycle. (The guy who came over to help and lift my bike off of me, slipped on the ice and landed on my head! Luckily, I hadn't taken my helmet off yet). That led to a series of grievances. As it turned out, management pretty much admitted that the only reason the counseled me was because they had counseled 4 women and couldn't very well get away with counseling them, if they didn't counsel the guy (me) who had used more sick leave than all of them.

The AD offered a settlement to remove everything against everyone. I wouldn't agree. They wanted to know why. I said that one of the women wasn't in the Union. Screw her. The AD hung up on me; called the LP and they settled out from under me! WHAT NERVE! (Okay; it was an Unfair Labor Practice; we would have had to settle sooner or later).

I guess that gives rise to the baseless and spurious allegation that "Ralph can't take YES for an answer!"
In my next office, the ADM retroactively cancelled my official time. I said he couldn't and had to file a grievance against me. He didn't buy it and threatened to put me on AWOL. I wrote a scathing letter to him / RO in which I called him a p*ssy.  He called me into his office and asked me to step into the parking lot to settle it like men. I declined and complained to RO that instead of having a picture of the President, VP and SSA Commissioner in his office, he had a picture of an admitted perjurer and felon, Lt Col Oliver North. He was ordered to remove the picture. SSA's Regional Counsel refused to back him up and let him discipline me for name-calling because it was "robust debate."

I was assigned by Council 220 to be the Union's Representative on the 1300 grievances that SSA filed against various AFGE/SSA Locals across the country in an attempt to bankrupt the Union. From 1984 through 1988, only 4 of those grievances reached arbitration and then, only on procedural, arbitrability / jurisdictional issues. In 1998, one of those grievances, against Local 2505, was heard by Arbitrator Francis X. Quinn. After a couple of days of discussion, Arbitrator Quinn told the parties that he understood their issues and told them NOT to write post-hearing briefs; but instead, to write the decision that each side wanted him to sign. Arbitrator Quinn signed the one I wrote. Shortly thereafter, all 1300 of the Union filed grievances were settled by the parties at the National Level.

I was the Union's lead representative over the National grievance concerning implementation of SSA's revised Travel Manuel. After receipt of my post-hearing brief, SSA opened settlement discussions which resulted in SSA agreeing to establish a fund of over 10 million dollars to reimburse employees to whom it had refused to pay relocation costs.

I was a negotiator for the Union for the 2000 National Agreement between SSA and AFGE and for the creation of the GS-12 Technical Expert in Field Offices.

As an employee representative in Local 2505, I have successfully helped different OK employees receive a CR promotion, three TE promotions, 1 CR promotion, prevented SSA from terminating an SRT at the end of that employee's probationary period, gotten numerous employees to stand up for themselves so that they get their breaks and full lunch periods, had lost use-or-lose annual leave restored, gotten SSA to schedule grievance presentations during core hours, worked with management to on training and rotation through various special assignments, helped employees get a reasonable accommodation (phone duty instead of reception for an employee with Lupus) and a hardship reassignment, got a suspension for a rep who turned herself in reversed and convinced an arbitrator that a probationary employee had been fired for protected activity and got her reinstated $40,000 in back pay.

Executive Vice President

Secretary / Treasurer