Letters to the Editor
Aided TWU Rivals' Spinning

To the Editor:

"Barry Roberts claims more support than he really has." This is the proper headline for last week's Chief article on the TWU Local 100 petitioning. Here are the facts, as well as some questions for The Chief.

The Rail and Bus United slate claimed 14,000 signatures on their Web site. They amended this figure to 14,300. The real number they handed in was less, including invalid signatures.

No big story yet. Candidates may boast. John Samuelsen lied to The Chief. But why did The Chief print the allegations knowing that the official count was soon to be presented?

The Rail and Bus slate claimed 2,000 more signatures than the One Union slate. Again, a lie. Again, The Chief offered itself as the megaphone for the lie.

The one contest Rail and Bus won hands down: blatant violations of the rules. They handed in so many sheets that were clearly bogus that no one will ever be able to get a real count of their signatures. They cheated.

In the same article containing the incorrect figures, Rail and Bus belittled any charges that they cheated. "Grasping at straws" was the accusation.

Straws? No, blatant violations of the fundamentals of union democracy. We all should expect The Chief to continue its longstanding crusade against those who cheat in union elections with a strong condemnation of the Rail and Bus shenanigans. But we would also expect The Chief to not lend itself to such obvious spin-doctoring in the future.

ED WATT, Secretary-Treasurer, Transport Workers' Union Local 100

Editor's reply: Both the headline and the body of the story Mr. Watt is complaining about made clear that Rail and Bus United's numbers regarding petition signatures were claims rather than official numbers. If he is unhappy that we went with those claims before the petition totals were certified, Mr. Watt should apportion some of the blame to himself and Local 100 President Roger Toussaint.

For two weeks, they were unresponsive to requests by a reporter for petition tallies. When Rail and Bus United came forward with specific figures, Mr. Toussaint questioned them - something that was mentioned prominently in our article - but offered no specifics of his own, either about his own signatures or the number from Rail and Bus that he was challenging. It seemed reasonable to conclude that he and Mr. Watt were being evasive because they had suffered a political defeat in not getting enough signatures to maintain the top spot on the Local 100 ballot.

We went with the most complete information we had at the time and made clear that those were preliminary figures that could change once the election monitor ruled on the challenges to the validity of some petition signatures.