The ballots go out today to the 15,000 members of Local 1181 of the Amalgamated Transit Union in New York City, and under tight procedural safeguards to ensure both the secrecy of the vote and the accuracy of the count the union may enjoy its "first election free of mob influence in at least 30 years":
For years, the labor union representing most New York City school bus drivers and escorts did more to benefit organized crime than it did for all but a handful of its most connected members, who were usually picked to lead the union by the Genovese crime family, according to federal prosecutors. * * * Instead of installing leaders without a vote, or intimidating union members into voting for preferred candidates, on Monday union officials will oversee the mailing of ballots for executive positions and board memberships to members’ homes, part of a private voting process meant to ensure a fair election for the first time since the 1970s. Votes will be sent back in envelopes stamped with bar codes rather than return addresses as a means of ensuring that only legitimate union members participate, members said. “Nobody gets intimidated,” said John Bisbano, a school bus driver for 15 years who is running for union president on one of several competing slates. “You do it from your home, instead of going down to the union hall, which is the way it used to be.” Votes must be submitted by March 26 and will be counted by representatives from the American Arbitration Association at the association’s headquarters in Midtown Manhattan.
Local 1181 "has been influenced or controlled by organized crime since the late 1970s, according to union members and federal prosecutors, who have spent the past five years investigating its officials," and since 2006 its president, a treasurer and the pension fund administrator "have pleaded guilty to federal racketeering or obstruction charges." Its previous president, Salvatore Battaglia, "whom prosecutors have accused of being a member of the Genovese crime organization and who maintained his union position for months after he was indicted, is serving a 57-month prison sentence for taking payments from owners of several of the largest bus companies that have contracts with the city."
Unfortunately, certain members in Congress want to get rid of workers' privacy and secret ballots:
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