Comments on: Were they secret ballots or not?

By: expat

expat — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 03:28:55 +0000

cant the EPMU flunkies from the standard advise on this matter. lol.

By: scanner

scanner — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:50:47 +0000

The information I was given was that there was no secret ballot, and had there been there would have been no strike.
Sadly there are still a few union diehards well entrenched in the mines, these people will do anything to hold on to their “power”, these thugs are bullies and stand-over merchants of the highest order, remember union membership is voluntary not compulsory.
When someone eventually stands up to these thugs, and there aren’t very many of them, they may find their days are numbered.

By: Put it away

Put it away — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:48:08 +0000

Hah nothing’s changed, my granddad worked for a west coast mine, one time they were meeting to discuss some unpopular measure ( I forget the details ) that was being pushed by the national union HQ that the local branch were very divided about, the meeting cosisted of shouting matches, arguing and near violence breaking out, but in the end the measure just scraped through the vote. He had been against it but was prepared to go along with the majority vote, but when the next issue of the union rag came out, it had a description of the meeting that said the vote passed unanimously and everyone was enthusiastically praising this great idea of the union. He cancelled his membership and had nothing more to do with them for the rest of his life.

By: ernesto

ernesto — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:23:33 +0000

I imagine this is a case of the miner telling his wife a porky to cover his arse for having the week off. Honestly honey, I couldn’t vote to keep working, I was too scared…yeah right.

By: NeillR

NeillR — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:23:28 +0000

DPF, if you think the miners are going to speak up then you don’t know how unions operate. That’s the reason they hold “show of hands” ballots in the first place. It’s a tactic as old as the hills when you’re unsure about whether the masses are going to fall in behind the “leadership”. Why do you think that all the comments so far have come from “the wives”?

By: MikeNZ

MikeNZ — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:45:38 +0000

So What’s the penalty if they break their rules?

That they (if it is a closed shop) control someones access to work is a serious thing, which puts a completely different light on the issue, if they deliberately broke the rules and didn’t allow a secret ballot.

The question is why?
Was there a human rights breach as a result making the whole vote invalid and when is that going to be addressed by both the local and National EMPU leadership.

More importantly if the local executive of the union cannot keep to the rules and deliberately breached workers human rights then they should stand down and not sit for a considerably long time (10 yrs) as how can they ever be trusted again, even if it is a small minority of the union membership.