The anti-Employee Free Choice Act Workplace Fairness Institute
put out a statement today highlighting the
sentencing of three former Teamsters officials for rigging
union elections in light of proposals to solve the "card check"
problem by allowing mail-in ballots. While they can be written
off as rogue union activists, it does demonstrate the need to
protect the integrity of union elections -- especially from
officials who denigrate the secret ballot.
At the Teamsters, that denigration starts all the way at the top:
"Since when is a secret ballot a basic tent of democracy?" asked
Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa. "Town meetings in New England
are as democratic as they come, and they don't use the secret
ballot. Elections in the Soviet Union were by secret ballot, but
those weren't democratic." Of course, the Soviet elections were
not democratic because the secret ballots did not contain actual
choices. And many town meetings in New England are actually
representative town meetings, where the participants are elected
by secret ballot, rather than open town meetings. Let me know
when somebody is convicted of fraud for rigging the filling of a
pothole in some small Western Massachusetts town.
