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Union violence has occurred in the context of industrial unrest. Violence ranged from isolated acts by individuals, to wider campaigns of organised violence to further union goals within an industrial dispute.

Anti-union violence has also occurred frequently in the context of industrial unrest, and has often involved the collusion of management and government authorities in organising violence against unions and their members.

Union violence as concept

Union violence is formally studied within several academic disciplines as a recognised phenomenon, including industrial relations research, criminology, and wider cultural studies. In Union Violence: The Record and the Response by Courts, Legislatures and the NLRB, by Armand J. Thieblot, Jr. and Thomas R. Haggard in 1983, the US legal system's handling of union violence was examined, and found to be lacking in areas.

In American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome, it was claimed that the United States has had the bloodiest and most violent labor history of any industrial nation in the world.

US government usage

The US government formally uses the term Union violence. For example, as cited within the 1998 US government publication: Closing the legal loophole for union violence: hearing before the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Fifth Congress.

Union violence

Union violence is rarely aimed at managers or employers. Attacks on employers' property do occur - the word sabotage derives from French workers' practice of hurling their clogs (sabots) into machinery as a form of protest - in the furtherance of industrial disputes. A modern example was the destruction of electrical transformers by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, depriving 400,000 Alaskans of power in the middle of winter.

The targets of true union violence are normally nonunion workers. Protest and verbal abuse are routinely aimed against union members or replacement workers who cross picket lines during industrial disputes ("blacklegs"), and occasionally this erupts into violent confrontation. The inherent aim of a union is to create a labor monopoly so as to balance the monopsony a large employer enjoys as a purchaser of labor. Strikebreakers threaten that aim and undermine the union's bargaining position.

Bitterness against such actions may break out into violence. Occasionally such a violent dispute can involve entire unions, when one union breaks another's strike. In 2004, the murder of Keith Frogson in the village of Annesley Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire in England may have been the result of a feud dating from the coal-miner's strike in the 1980s, when Mr Frogson and his alleged killer were members of two opposed unions, the established and militant National Union of Mineworkers and the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers.

False flag operations

False flag operations are efforts to turn public opinion against an adversary, while pretending to be in the camp of that adversary. Historian J. Bernard Hogg, who studied agencies hired by companies to undermine unions, and who wrote "Public Reaction to Pinkertonism and the Labor Question," observed:

A detective will join the ranks of the strikers and at once become an ardent champion of their cause. He is next found committing an aggravated assault upon some man or woman who has remained at work, thereby bringing down upon the heads of the officers and members of the assembly or union directly interested, the condemnation of all honest people, and aiding very materially to demoralize the organization and break their ranks. He is always on hand in the strikers' meeting to introduce some extremely radical measure to burn the mill or wreck a train, and when the meeting has adjourned he is ever ready to furnish the Associated Press with a full account of the proposed action, and the country is told that a "prominent and highly respected member" of the strikers' organization has just revealed a most daring plot to destroy life and property, but dare not become known in connection with the exposure for fear of his life!

While such practices may seem outdated, some apparently still subscribe to just such tactics. For example, Deputy Prosecutor in Indiana's Johnson County, Carlos Lam, suggested in an email that Governor Walker should mount a "false flag" operation to undermine protesters involved in the 2011 Wisconsin protests, which would make it appear as if the union was committing violence. After initially claiming that his email account was hacked, Lam admitted to sending the suggestion and resigned.

Incidents

Examples of union violence include:

• 1997 - On August 7, 1997, teamsters Orestes Espinosa, Angel Mielgo, Werner Haechler, Benigno Rojas, and Adrian Paez beat, kicked, and stabbed a UPS worker (Rod Carter) who refused to strike, after Carter received a threatening phone call from the home of Anthony Cannestro, Sr., president of Teamsters Local 769.

• 1996 - On 19 August, 1996, Australian unionists physically broke into the Australian Parliament & fought Australian Federal Police during the 1996 Parliament House Riot.

• 1993 - Eddie York was murdered for crossing a United Mine Workers (UMW) picket line at a coal mine in Logan County, West Virginia, on July 22, 1993.

• 1990 - on the first day of The New York Daily News strike, delivery trucks were attacked with stones and sticks, and in some cases burned, with the drivers beaten. Strikers then started threatening newsstands with arson, or stole all copies of the Daily News and burned them in front of the newsstands. James Hoge, publisher of the Daily News, alleged that there had been some 700 serious acts of violence. The New York Police Department claimed knowledge of 229 incidents of violence.

• 1986 - During protests by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547 against a non-unionized workforce getting a contract, picketers threatened and assaulted workers, spat at them, sabotaged equipment, and shot guns near workers. In 1999, the Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the union had engaged in "ongoing acts of intimidation, violence, destruction of property", awarding the plaintiff $212,500 in punitive damages.

• 1984 - Taxi driver David Wilkie was killed by striking miners while driving a non-striking worker during the NUM UK mining strike of 1984-85.

• 1926 - In the context of the 1926 United Kingdom general strike, striking miners derailed The Flying Scotsman on May 10.

Legal status

People who commit acts of violence in the furtherance of industrial disputes can be prosecuted under the normal laws of all countries. In several countries, however, unions have accused state prosecutors of taking either no or insufficient steps against the alleged perpetrators of violence against union leaders, leaving a significant majority of the crimes in partial or total impunity; at present such accusations are most often made in respect of Colombia, and in particular the case of the murder of Isidro Gil is currently (2004) being pursued in a court in Miami, Florida.

Under the United States Supreme Court's 1973 Enmons decision (United States v. Enmons), the actions of union officials in organizing strikes and other united acts of workers are exempt from prosecution under US federal anti-extortion law. Similar legal protections are enjoyed by unions in other democratic countries. These protections do not however confer any immunity from prosecution for violent acts.

Management violence

Management violence usually takes the form of bullying of or aggression against union organisers or sympathisers in the workplace. It is rarely if ever delivered by employers or senior managers directly, but by front-line managers (e.g. chargehands or foremen) or by other employees incited by management. In a number of well-known cases, however, violent action has been taken against union workers, and unions have charged that this was at the instigation of management or of government bodies sympathetic to management's aims.

See also

• Opposition to trade unions
• Labor spies
• Union busting

References

1. ^ The Wall Street Journal, November 2, 1990.
2. ^ Michael Gartner, “Nation Shrugs as Thugs Firebomb Freedom,” The Wall Street Journal, November 29, 1990.
3. ^ The New York Times, November 15, 1990.
4. ^ Smith, Robert Michael (2003). From blackjacks to briefcases: a history of commercialized strikebreaking in the United States. Athens OH: Ohio University Press. p. 179. ISBN 0821414666.
5. ^ Norwood, Stephen Harlan (2002). Strikebreaking & intimidation: mercenaries and masculinity in twentieth-century America. UNC Press. p. 328. ISBN 0807853739.
6. ^ Gall, Gregor (2003). "Employer opposition to union recognition". In Gregor Gall (ed.). Union organizing: campaigning for trade union recognition. London: Routledge. pp. 79–96. ISBN 0415267811.
7. ^ ITUC. "2010 Annual survey of violations of trade union rights". International Trade Union Confederation. Retrieved 13 June 2010.
8. Brinker, Paul, Violence by U.S. labor unions, Journal of Labor Research, 1985-12-01, Volume 6, Number 4, p. 417-427
9. Pinto, Susan; Wardlaw, Grant R. "Australian Institute of Criminology - Political violence". Aic.gov.au. Retrieved 2011-03-27.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
10. Rhodri Jeffreys-Jones (1979), Theories of American Labour Violence, Journal of American Studies, 13, pp 245-264, doi:10.1017/S0021875800011439
11. Armand J. Thieblot, Jr. and Thomas R. Haggard, 1983, Union Violence: The Record and the Response by Courts, Legislatures and the NLRB, Industrial Research Unit, Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
12. Philip Taft and Philip Ross, "American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome," The History of Violence in America: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, ed. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, 1969.
13. Closing the Legal Loophole for Union Violence: Hearing Before the Committee On the Judiciary, United States Senate, One Hundred Fifth Congress, First Session, On S. 230 ... September 3, 1997, Washington: U.S. G.P.O., 1998.
14. "Miner 'killed during strike row'". BBC News. 2004-08-03. Retrieved 2009-04-14.
15. "Public Reaction to Pinkertonism and the Labor Question," J. Bernard Hogg, Pennsylvania History 11 (July 1944), 171--199, page 175, citing Journal of United Labor, July 12, 1888. Hogg block-quotation contains a typo, interpretation is assumed as a single quote rendered as a comma.
16. Debra Cassens Weiss, American Bar Association Journal, posted Mar 25, 2011, http://www.abajournal.com/news/article/a_second_indiana_prosecutor_is_out_of_a_job_for_unusual_advice_to_wisconsin/ retrieved April 2, 2011
17. CBS News, posted March 25, 2011, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-503544_162-20047130-503544.html retrieved April 2, 2011
18. "Beaten UPS Driver Wins Teamsters Settlement - Los Angeles Times". Articles.latimes.com. 1997-08-02. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
19. "Foundation Attorneys Sock Teamsters with Racketeering Suit". NRTW. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
20. http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/dailys/ds200896.pdf
21. "Title". Anu.edu.au. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
22. "65 F.3d 1137: United States of America, Plaintiff-appellee, v. Jerry Dale Lowe, Defendant-appellant :: US Court of Appeals Cases :: Justia". Law.justia.com. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
23. Fitzgerald, Randy, “Murder in Logan County”, Reader’s Digest, Feb. 1995
24. ^ Kent Morlan. "Alaska Utility Construction Inc. v. International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, Local 1547". Morelaw.com. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
25. ^ "Nos. S-8207, S-8247. - INTERNATIONAL BROTHERHOOD OF ELECTRICAL WORKERS LOCAL 1547 v. ALASKA UTILITY CONSTRUCTION INC - AK Supreme Court". Caselaw.findlaw.com. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
26. "BBC ON THIS DAY | 16 | 1985: Miners jailed for pit strike murder". BBC News. Retrieved 2011-03-27.
27. Tim Jones, "Miners get life for taxi murder", The Times, 17 May 1985
28. http://www.railwaysarchive.co.uk/documents/MoT_AnnitsfordCramlington1926.pdf
29. "GCSE Bitesize: Chronology of events - the basics". BBC. 1926-05-04. Retrieved 2011-03-27.

External links

• BBC report on arrests in the case of Chea Vichea
• The Independent report on the murder of Keith Frogson

• Labor disputes
• Union violence