Posted on 03/15/2011 12:33:39 PM PDT by Michael van der Galien
Exploiting the battle between the governor and public employees in Wisconsin, frequent White House visitor, AFL-CIO Chief Richard Trumka has been trying to resuscitate a critically ill labor movement by setting up the entire conservative movement as the “enemy.” Trumka argues that the $14+ trillion dollar deficit is no big deal and that the GOP is trying to take money away from the middle class, only give it to those rich Wall Street CEOs.
As Trumka’s participation in the public workers’ union protests grew, so did the number of incidents of union violence and thuggery associated with the them. This is not to say that the Grand Poobah of the union movement had anything to do with the violence, but it does seem to follow him around. His inflammatory rhetoric led to bloodshed and death during his reign as president of the United Mine Workers Union.
The AFL-CIO demagogue’s behavior was not unusual; the history of the labor movement is littered with extremists who have used violence to get their their way. At this moment, it is fair to say that union violence/thuggery has gone full circle. At the beginning of the movement the violence was outer directed; toward the government, management, or the police who were using violence themselves to destroy the labor movement. As the movement matured the violence became directed inward, targeted towards keeping the rank and file “in line,” going after replacement workers, or sabotaging the particular company under siege.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsrealblog.com ...
Vincent Chin was beaten to death in the 80s by two out of work UAW members. They thought he was Japanese. The perps got a slap on the wrist.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Chin
These unions are little scale model Soviet Unions.
I had forgotten about the Chin beatdown...probably because, as I recall, it wasn’t talked about much on the news back then and what little of the story was there quickly died.
Organized crime has been a part of union history — something no one wants to admit. How much actual presence the mob has in unions today is questionable, but there is no denying that mob tactics are still the norm. Of course, we don’t hear much about them. What we hear about is how oppressed the union workers are.
The thugs actually paid someone to find Chin for them. How they walked away without a day in jail is beyond me.
They hunted him down and beat him to death with a baseball bat.
Come on, people! The Herrin Massacre, anyone? The Battle of Blair Mountain? Sorry, but in the history of labor violence in America, these stories are minor.
It only takes one citizen to put a stop to the nonsense...
The union heads are only figureheads. The real leaders split their time running the Gambino, Luchese, Bonnano, etc crime families and the unions they own and run.
When in fact AFL-CIO affiliate unions in the US are tentacles of orgaized crime (aka, the mafia). Automatically deducted union dues from pay checks just gives the mafia thugs more power.
Actually Ebens, the one who wielded the bat while his stepson held Chin, wasn't UAW. He was a plant superintendent and was considered management. Nor was he unemployed. Chrysler put him on vacation after the incident and the UAW threatened to strike if he wasn't fired. Chrysler eventually used his guilty plea as a reason to get rid of him. He later sued Chrysler for wrongful termination, but it was dismissed.
No mention of the 1970s era Teamsters union riots. My father (management) had a gun pulled on him by a pack of wild Teamsters. People were upset and demanding that ‘something be done’ to stop these riots. I don’t think the Unions counted on the Right to Work laws being passed as that something.
It seems to me that the author missed more than a few acts of violence by labor unions. I’d like to fill part of that gap with a story of what happened to my family.
My grandfather was the top tool and dye maker at RCA in the forties. He was what was called, “the model maker”, what we would call someone who made the prototypes for all the design engineers, like the first mass produced color tv or radar for the military. The design engineers thought it up and he made whatever they asked for, exciting stuff in those time.
Well, the CIO(A) had been trying to get into RCA for years, they already had Philco, right next door and wanted RCA badly; after the war they got their wish without a strike. The men elected my grandfather to be the first president of the electrical and machinists at RCA. The union bosses had a fit and tried to persuade RCA to move my grandfather into management. My grandfather refused, he loved his job and just wasn’t interested in more money.
Shortly after that, my grandparents were both run down by a hit and run driver as they stood on the curb in front of their home.
My grandfather didn’t die, thanks to a battlefield trained surgeon at Cooper Hospital in Camden who put him back together with steel rods and pins. When he recovered, the people of Camden County supported him by electing him to the NJ State Assembly but he only served one term. The union wasn’t finished with him. They got a union member to report my grandfather the HUAC as a communist. Their evidence? The man had once seen him perusing the headlines on a communist newspaper at a news stand by his bus stop.
Of course the investigation didn’t come to anything, but my grandfather’s political career was cut short and five years later, at his funeral, the FBI were still checking out everyone that knew him.
Darn, DIE, not DYE.
I forgot to mention that the 1970s is when Teamsters leader Jimmy Hoffa went ‘missing’. Funny that isn’t in this list.
This is not at the top of the national scale, but one event stands out at the top of my personal scale for union violence. When I was barely old enough to work legally part time, I declined to join the union, which was technically allowed where I lived and worked. Two union thugs, both built like weight lifters, cornered me (barely 5’ tall and skinny back then) and informed me that I should join the union because that would protect me from “getting hurt”. I quit, got in shape, learned to fight and shoot, and never backed down from thugs again. It was not my last encounter with the thugs, but it’s the last one that I lost.
In the late 1800’s, in Shoshone County, Idaho, labor unrest against the management of several hard-rock mining companies was building. It hit its peak when a train was commandeered in Burke Canyon, a side tributary of the Coeur d’Alene River. The train was taken down canyon onto the mainline tracks and headed west, toward Wardner, Idaho.
On the way, it picked up more and more armed union miners and a substantial amount of dynamite.
Before days end, the massive Bunker Hill & Sullivan ore concentrator had been blown to match sticks, setting off several days of hot shooting between union elements and mining/mill ownership.
Before it was all over, Frank Stuenenberg had authorized federal troops into town and martial law was declared. Black troops lead by white officers. These are the events that lead to Stuenenberg’s assassination some year later. Trumka is nothing more than the Pettibone, Haywood and Moyer (union leaders of the time) of our present time. A thug at heart. Well connected, but a thug, nonetheless.
I live in the middle of where all this took place. The echos of those times still reverberate through the community.
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