-By Warner Todd Huston
If THIS isn’t the wolf guarding the hen house, what is? After all, expecting the government — known for voter fraud since Aaron Burr strode the halls of Congress — to make sure a union election is run fairly shows how really bad it has gotten for the unions!
Still, that said, the government are pikers compared to the fraud perpetrated by unions over the years. And this story is just another example of union corruption and vote fraud.
Union aims to start with a clean slate
Reformers win Teamsters vote supervised by feds
A slate of reformers has been elected to head the Teamsters’ 12,000-member Local 743, where last month its president was indicted for helping steal the last election.
Members elected all but one trustee of the 743 New Leadership Slate headed by Richard Berg, who received 1,112 votes for president, narrowly beating opponent Reginald D. Ford, who garnered 1,058 votes.
“This is great,” said Berg, who lost in his last bid for president. “It’s been a long time coming. The 743 New Leadership slate has been part of the rank-and-file movement that has been tying to rid our local of corruption and give the union back to our workers. We’ve very pleased.”
The union represents transportation, clerical, food service, nursing home and manufacturing workers.
The election was supervised by the U.S. Labor Department.
In September, federal prosecutors indicted Local 743 President Richard Lopez along with three other union members alleging they schemed to defraud the local by diverting hundreds of ballots that had been returned to the union by mail because the addresses were old or no longer good. The four were accused of changing the addresses in a union database and having the ballots sent to friends, relatives or associates who weren’t union members.
Berg filed a complaint with the Labor Department, which found the ballots had been diverted. In a July settlement, union officials admitted a controller shredded the eligibility list, noting that might have affected the outcome of the election.
“Our first priority is to clean all the corruption out of 743 and then use the resources to give full representation to the members,” Berg said.
Well, let’s hope these rank and file fellows can clean up their union and lead their fellows to a more legitimate representation.
I CAN hope, can’t I?
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, townhall.com, men’snewsdaily.com and americandaily.com among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a guest on several radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston