Column: Mashantucket Tribe wields sovereignty

Wednesday, January 30, 2008  

"The Mashantucket Pequots, in their zeal to fend off the United Auto Workers, may be setting themselves up for a much bigger battle, one in which the stakes will be so high it will make a union brawl seem like penny slots.

The tribe drew a new line in the sand this week when it refused to comply with a subpoena in the continuing National Labor Relations Board hearing into its complaint about the election, in which dealers at Foxwoods Resort Casino voted 1,289 to 852 to unionize.

At issue is a report by tribal police that purportedly outlines a claim made by an anti-union dealer who has testified under oath that she was harassed by union sympathizers and reported it to tribal police.

The NLRB hearing officer was justifiably peeved that the Pequots, to use his metaphor, want, on the one hand, to wield the testimony of the aggrieved dealer as a sword, but when it comes to corroborating her testimony with what she told police, they want to use their sovereign immunity as a shield, to block a subpoena of the police report.

But of course the Mashantucket Pequots have been using this sword-and-shield trick for a long time with their sovereignty."

Get the Story:
Wielding The Club Of Immunity (The New London Day 1/30)
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Related Stories:
NLRB Hearing On Foxwoods Union Vote Ends (The New London Day 1/30)
Casino union vote hearing wraps up (The Norwich Bulletin 1/30)