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By ALAN FARNHAM

Sept. 22, 2011

How nasty can union violence get and still be legal? A labor racketeering case against one of the biggest building trade unions in New York promises to clarify just how far union violence can go without becoming illegal -- if not at the polling place, at least on the work site.

In Hamburg, New York, near Buffalo, leaders of the International Union of Operating Engineers Local 17 stand accused of violent acts, threats of violence, and destruction of property. The defendants have denied the allegations, according to the Buffalo News.

According to court papers and to

coverage by the Buffalo News, the charges against them include stabbing a knife into the neck of a construction company president, throwing hot coffee at non-union workers, pouring sand into gas tanks and transmissions of 17 construction vehicles, and threatening sexual assault against the wife of a company representative. The racketeering case was first filed in 2008.

According to court papers, the executive who was stabbed in the neck asked a union organizer what benefit he would get if he hired members of the union. "You guys slash my tires, stab me in the neck, try to beat me up," he protested. "What are the positives?"

"The positives," reportedly replied the organizer, "are that the negatives you are complaining about would go away."

At the time of the indictment, then-U.S. Attorney Terrance P. Flynn said Local 17 had victimized construction sites large and small. "We believe they had a negative financial impact on almost every major construction project in Western New York." Today Flynn, in private practice at law firm Harris Beach, tells ABC News he still considers the case to be "a very important investigation." A dozen union officials stand accused of extortion and labor racketeering.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business...al/story?id=14572790

fdr-smoking1

One of the Union's best friends.

Skippy

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What was management's egregious provocation? Is there a Mafia connection? Gotta be one in there somewhere. Unions just don't act like that of their own accord.

 

Management's favorite negotiating tool



Strikebreaking
 
 Employers don't always accept a workers' strike calmly. They can try to fight back against the union, sometimes through lawsuits and legislation, sometimes with violent thugs. Some employers used companies that offered strikebreaking services, such as the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Former cooper Allan Pinkerton started the infamous agency in the mid-1800s [ref]. Although it usually engaged in standard crime-stopping detective work, they discovered there were profits to be made as strikebreakers. Many other companies were soon offering similar services, but strikebreakers were usually called Pinkertons.

 

A strikebreaking crew was essentially an armed mob of mercenaries. They reported to the picket lines to escort scab workers into the business, or to intimidate the strikers. The crew also acted as guards to prevent strikers from damaging company property. In the 1800s and early 1900s, conflicts between striking workers and Pinkertons often grew bloody. In 1892, a standoff at Homestead, PA escalated into "the Battle of Homestead," a fight involving massive fires, a cannon and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. In the end, three Pinkertons and ten strikers died [ref]. Incidents like this one, combined with strikebreakers' penchant for mistreating the populace, lead to a sharp decline in public acceptance of these tactics.

 

Government officials conducted investigations into strikebreaking activities, and many towns and states passed laws restricting their actions. By the 20th century, employers looking to defeat unions were using espionage and media campaigns to discredit their union opponents. The era of the violent Pinkerton strikebreaker gradually faded, although bloody battles continued to occur.


http://money.howstuffworks.com/strike5.htm

"Since 1975, the National Institute for Labor Relations Research has collected more than 9,000 reports of union violence. These incidents are recorded and electronically maintained in the Institute’s Violent Event Data File.

 

The Violent Event Data File is a record of violent events that involved labor union members and/or labor union officials. The file is organized into a list of individual records, with each record summarizing a separate violent event. The information about each of these events is found in articles in magazines, newspapers, television news program transcripts and trade association journals.

 

Violent events that occurred anywhere in the United States since 1975 are put into the file and recorded electronically, so that violent events can be listed by criteria such as the union involved, where and when the violence occurred, and whether the violence involved property damage and/or personal injury. In addition, the Data File can be programmed to print a listing of all violent incidents that occurred in Arizona and involved the Teamsters union. In addition, the original source of each event can easily be found because the number assigned to each record in the data file is also written on the original article. These original sources can then be relocated for confirmation and/or more detailed analysis.

 

For instance, while the Institute has recorded 8,799 incidents of union violence since 1975, only 1,963 arrests and 258 convictions have been found. It is difficult to believe that local news media who covered the violence resulting from a strike would not follow up on any subsequent legal action.

Thus, it appears that of the violent incidents recorded in the Institute’s Data File, barely three percent of those incidents have led to an arrest and conviction.

 

Many of the news clips here point to one of the reasons: local law enforcement authorities frequently overwhelmed by the number of participants in union violence, who sometimes lash out by blaming the company targeted by union militants for trying to continue its legal operation in the face of illegal violence." More at:

http://www.nilrr.org/node/54

Originally Posted by Bestworking:

Skippy, when I was younger they had a trucker's strike. Remember that? They shot and killed a man somewhere around the shoals area. It's been so long I can't remember all the details, thought maybe you would.

 

 

 

Those were not union truckers; those were independent truckers protesting the price of fuel and federal regulations of the trucking industry. Independent truckers have held several of these "strikes" since the first gas shortage in 1973. One of the worst and longest was in 1979. They "went on strike" (against whom was never determined) and wanted all the Teamsters who drove for established companies to join them. The Teamsters didn't, because they had labor contracts and couldn't strike unless there was a major contractual dispute.

 

When the Teamsters didn't join the strike, the independents embarked on a wave of violence in an attempt to prevent Teamster driving through intimidation and fear. My father-in-law was a Teamster driver who had his tires flattened when somebody passed him on the highway and threw roofing tacks in front of his truck.

 

This account tells of a non-participating trucker killed near Tuscumbia.

 

Truckers’ strike.

The nationwide independent truckers’ protest in June led to sporadic incidents of violence and also blocked major highways in the state. Northern Alabama was hard hit by the stoppage, since most of the gasoline trucked into the area from Birmingham is carried by independents. The resulting gas shortage led to long lines at the pumps, numerous station closings, and escalating gas prices. Truckers not participating in the protest were fired upon and otherwise intimidated, and one truck driver, Robert C. Tate, Jr., was killed by a rifle shot in late June as he was driving his rig near Tuscumbia, in northwest Alabama. Shortly after Tate’s murder, the strike fizzled out, partly in a reaction against the killing.

http://astheysawit.com/13129-1979-alabama.html?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=1979-alabama


More on the 1979 independent trucker strike:


Times- Daily, December 31, 1979

http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1842&dat=19791227&id=I8khAAAAIBAJ&sjid=EJ4FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1320,7584256


Various articles:

video

http://www.newsnet5.com/dpp/ne...es-and-gas-shortages


http://www.time.com/time/magaz...,9171,916817,00.html


http://www.time.com/time/magaz...,9171,916814,00.html


http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu...=32527#axzz1Z5qzxBNg


http://search.brainerddispatch.com/fast-elements.php?type=standard&profile=brainerd&querystring=%22INDEPENDENT%20TRUCKER%22




Last edited by The Propagandist

More Union Violence.

     

Over 500 people "storm" private property, break windows and vandalize other property, wield baseball bats and crowbars, make death threats, and allegedly hold six guards hostage. Fifty law enforcement officers respond. U.S. Marshalls are placed on standby to enforce a related injunction issued by a federal judge.

It happened September 9th,2011 at a grain terminal at Port of Longview in southwest Washington State. The perpetrators? Members of the International Longs**** and Warehouse Union (ILWU). The local police chief was quoted as saying, "A lot of the protesters were telling us this is only the start."

       Not surprisingly, the incident didn't garner much national attention. Imagine how the coverage by the so-called mainstream media would have differed had anything even remotely similar occurred at a gathering of people of a different political persuasion, say those Tea Party SOBs.

Union violence is not rare. The National Institute for Labor Relations (NILR) has collected over 9,000 reports of union violence since 1975 and the actual number is much higher--by as much as a factor of ten. Only a fraction of such offenses result in arrest and conviction.

       On Monday, Teamsters Union president James Hoffa proudly declared, "The one thing about working people is we like a good fight." (Fight, not good, being the operative word.). Echoing Hoffa, ILWU President Bob McEllrath said "It shouldn't be a crime to fight for good jobs in America." Without any regard for person or property. If this kind of behavior is acceptable to you Union supporting libs then we are a lot further apart than I thought.

http://www.americanthinker.com...terest_to_media.html

Skippy

So Propie, do you believe that an employer should not have the right to bring in replacement workers if the "unionized" employees walk off the job?  Does that employer also not have the right to protect their investments (tools, equipment, machinery)?  This is what the Pinkertons were doing, you said so yourself.

I know of a company in this region that had a strike several years ago.  One of the union employees bragged to me about how they gathered together and went thru the parking lot with a file to "scab's" cars and pickups.  They purposefully took tools and dies from the company floor to prevent the new workers from being able to continue withthe manufacture of the parts.  One of the employees told me he thought their arguments were weak, but he had been threatened that if he did not strike, and continued to work, that he "would have to watch his back, because accidents frequently happened".

If this is the kind of organization you represent, you are no different that the Mafia you referenced above.

 

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