WORKERS at a Goodyear tyre plant in Mexico voted on Monday to throw out an old-guard union that was accused of stealing a ballot box at a failed union election last month.

The skullduggery at the plant in the north-central state of San Luis Potosi illustrated the uphill battle Mexican workers face in unseating old-guard unions that keep wages low and enjoyed the protection of the previous government.

The Labour Department said employees voted by a massive 727 to 140 against renewing the labour contract held by a union affiliated with the Confederation of Mexican Workers. 

The Confederation of Mexican Workers has for decades functioned as a wing of the old ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. 

By signing contracts behind workers’ backs, such unions have long held Mexican industrial wages to about one-eighth or less of what workers earned doing similar jobs in the United States.

Mexico’s Labour Department agreed that fraud had occurred at the plant in April.

They said eyewitnesses and video cameras saw people associated with the old-guard union steal the ballot box used for voting in a previous election.

The department said: “It was evident that after voting concluded, the members of that union, possibly in collusion with the company’s security guards, stole the ballot box.”