CDW: Hoffa's Card Check Gaffe Coincides With 20th Anniversary of Justice Department Requiring Teamsters to Hold Secret Ballot Elections

/PRNewswire -- The Coalition for a Democratic Workplace (CDW) is launching an advertising campaign on the card check issue this week that coincides with the 20th anniversary of the United States Justice Department ordering the Teamsters to allow its members to vote for their leaders by secret ballot. The Teamsters agreed to a landmark consent decree with the federal government on March 13, 1989 to avoid prosecution on mob-related corruption.

On March 10, 2009, James P. Hoffa, the current president of the Teamsters, mocked the importance of the secret ballot in a press release that commended Democratic congressional leaders for pushing forward with legislation to eliminate the secret ballot for union organizing elections.

In a desperate attempt to shift attention away from the fact that the card check scheme pushed by Big Labor and its allies on Capitol Hill would strip away worker privacy and make workers vulnerable to threats of intimidation and coercion, Mr. Hoffa, who has been elected by the Teamsters' secret ballot system three times, asked "since when is the secret ballot a basic tenet of democracy?"

The CDW ad campaign juxtaposes Hoffa's comments on the card check debate with the American people's overwhelming support of the secret ballot. A poll conducted in January for CDW found that 82 percent of likely voters believe a worker's vote in a union organizing election should be kept private; 86 percent believe a secret ballot election is the best way to protect the individual rights of workers. Only 11 percent support the card check scheme that would make the votes of workers public to their employers, co-workers and union organizers.

"The Teamsters were right to agree to use the secret ballot in 1989," said Brian Worth, with the Coalition for a Democratic Workplace. "It cleaned up mob-related corruption and made the union more accountable to rank and file workers. I'm assuming Mr. Hoffa is not in favor of taking away the secret ballot from his members. I just don't understand how he can justify stripping it away from the millions of American workers who don't belong to his union."

FAIR: Obama Rushing to Pass the Economic Stimulus Package While Delaying Vital Protections for American Workers

/PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- President Obama and top administration officials are actively pressuring Congress to pass an expensive economic stimulus package by mid-February, while quietly undermining an administrative rule that would protect American workers. The president has delayed, until May 21, the implementation of an executive order requiring all federal contractors to utilize the E-Verify program to ensure that all workers paid with taxpayer dollars are legally eligible to work in the U.S.

With the federal government poised to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy to create new jobs, the Obama administration appears to be caving in to business and ethnic interest pressure groups to delay, or perhaps eliminate, this vital protection for U.S. workers. Former President George W. Bush issued the executive order last June requiring that companies doing business with the government guarantee that they are employing only eligible workers, effective Jan. 15, 2009. Before leaving office, Mr. Bush delayed implementation until Feb. 20.

"President Obama's single greatest domestic challenge is to get Americans back to work," said Dan Stein, president of FAIR, noting that some 12 million Americans are unemployed. "It defies all common sense to borrow vast sums of money to create new jobs without having a reliable system in place to make sure that American workers will be the ones to fill those jobs."

Amidst a global recession, a massive jobs creation program in the United States is likely to serve as a magnet drawing workers from around the world in search of employment. "E-Verify has proven to be the single most effective tool to protect American workers from losing jobs in their own country to illegal aliens," Stein said. "It is imperative that Congress reauthorize the program and that the administration require companies benefiting from the stimulus package to use the E-Verify system before the first borrowed dollar is spent.

"President Obama came to office promising change and an end to business as usual in Washington. Delaying implementation of an executive order requiring that government contractors hire only legal U.S. workers is a disappointing first gesture on the part of the new administration and one that the president should reconsider before signing any economic stimulus bill," Stein concluded.