Secret ballots are good^H^H^H^H bad!
14-Jun-2005SARAH CLARKE: Japan’s rejected the report’s findings, claiming it’s a standard allegation that ignores real science and is aimed at misinforming the public.
But the report’s release is clearly timed to coincide with next week’s International Whaling Commission meeting in South Korea, where Japan will push to overturn a moratorium on commercial whaling.
While it may not be successful, Australia’s concerned Japan will push to introduce secret ballots – a move Environment Minister Ian Campbell says would undermine the accountability of the Commission, and eventually help in Japan’s pro-whaling cause.
IAN CAMPBELL: Their goal is to go out and destroy more whales with grenades, destroy more whales, blowing them up. They want to go from the hundreds that are taken now, to thousands and we’re trying to stop them, and they figure that secret ballots is a way to try to make that easier.
Are they going to work for conservation, are they going to work for the future of the world’s environment or are they going to quietly, behind closed doors in a secret ballot, vote to explode, put more explosives inside these innocent whales?
[...]
Secret ballots provide a fair, effective and simple process for determining whether a group of employees want to take industrial action. The secret ballot process will create and protect jobs by preventing unnecessary strikes. It will ensure that the right to protected industrial action is not abused by union officials pushing agendas unrelated to the workers at the workplace concerned.
[...]
Secret ballot arrangements exist in Canada, Japan, Germany and Ireland and have existed in the UK since 1984. When the Blair Government amended the U.K. laws it retained secret ballots which, in conjunction with other reforms, have helped to significantly reduce strikes whilst giving union members a direct say in the authorisation of industrial action and encouraging consultation by unions of their members.
