Union Violence, Harassment, and Intimidation of Workers

Many union officials have ordered or approved of violent, coercive, and harassing conduct aimed at making an example of employees who don't toe the union line. The National Institute for Labor Relations Research has compiled a list of incidents of union violence that average nearly 300 per year for the last 30 years. The following cases are just a few examples.


		West Virginia miner shot dead for working during a strike On the orders of the United Mine Workers (UMW), 16,000 miners went on strike in 1993. One subcontractor, Eddie York (who was not a UMW member), decided it was important to support his wife and three children and crossed picket lines to get to his job. He was shot in the head as he left the job site to go home. UMW President Richard Trumka (now Secretary-Treasurer at the AFL-CIO) told The Washington Times that "if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you're going to burn your finger." UMW strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe was found guilty of weapons charges and conspiracy in York's death, and York's widow Wanda sued the union for her husband's wrongful death. The UMW fought the lawsuit for four years, but settled with Wanda York only two days after federal prosecutors announced that they would share evidence from the criminal trial with York's attorneys. [read full story]

		Virginia women targeted for working during a strike In 1996, when the United Auto Workers Local 149 called a strike against Abex Friction Products in Winchester, VA, several of the workers decided they needed their paychecks and crossed the picket lines to work. They were targeted for harassment and intimidation. In one instance, an employee who crossed the picket line found a severed cow's head placed on the hood of her car. Later, someone made up a photograph with her face superimposed over the dead cow's head and mailed it to her. The union paid a substantial settlement to six women for its members' harassment of them. [read full story]

		UPS driver beaten and stabbed by fellow union "brothers" In 1997, Teamsters Local 769 in Miami ordered a strike against United Parcel Service. One driver, Rod Carter (a former star linebacker for the University of Miami), announced that he did not support the strike and intended to continue working to support his family. His wife received a threatening phone call, but Rod went to work anyway. While driving his route, he was stopped and stabbed with an ice pick. When Carter sued the union, another unionized UPS driver testified in a court deposition that the violence had been approved of by union officials. [read full story]

		Worker who opposed unionization has his house "put on the map" In 2004 Jeff Ward, an employee at the Thomas Built Bus Company plant in High Point, NC, led a successful legal challenge to the unionization of the plant where he worked. Without a vote, the company had recognized the United Auto Workers as the exclusive representative of the workers, just on the basis of cards signed under what Ward called coercion from both the company and the union. After the company was compelled to cancel its recognition of the union, flyers went up in the plant, giving Ward's phone number and detailed directions to his home. At the bottom of the flyer was the message, "Jeff Ward lives here. Go tell him how you really feel about the union." No one claimed responsibility for the threatening flyers, but one union official said that Ward "put himself in the limelight." [read full story]

		Math teacher fired for challenging union president George Parker taught math in Washington, DC and was a member of the Washington Teachers Union. In 1997, he challenged union president Barbara Bullock's financial administration with the Department of Labor -- and she allegedly had him fired for doing so. But Parker's suspicions were proven correct. Bullock was later convicted of embezzling $4.6 million of member dues money and sentenced to jail. [read full story]

		Laborers Union thug attacks union and non-union workers alike Laborers Union Local 91 in Buffalo, NY often relied on Andrew Shomers to harm and intimidate workers -- union or not -- who weren't paying dues to the local. Shomers pleaded guilty in June 2005 to a series of crimes involving violence and sabotage. His offenses included vandalizing the offices of the local housing authority (because it didn't use Local 91 labor to install a small section of sidewalk outside its offices), participating in a group assault on workers from another union, stalking and attacking non-union workers on an asbestos-removal project (by throwing a homemade firebomb through a window), and destroying work that had been done by workers from another union and ruining their tools. Shomers was just one of fifteen former Local 91 leaders indicted by authorities in 2003. Following his plea bargain, seven other former leaders pleaded guilty. [read full story]

		Electrician fired for asserting his rights George Galley is an electrician who has worked for Colt Industries in Hartford, CT since 1961. When the union that represented him (the United Auto Workers) called a strike in 1985, he stayed off the job for just over one month, and then decided he needed to support his family and returned to work -- as was his right. (Galley's decision was a good one, because the strike dragged on for four years.) After the strike, Colt asked all the workers to sign cards authorizing the automatic deduction of union dues from their paychecks. Galley declined to sign and asked for information about his legal options. Neither Colt nor the UAW complied with his request, but the company began taking out dues anyway. When Galley eventually got Colt to stop the deductions, the UAW had the company fire him. With legal help, Galley was able to get the National Labor Relations Board to declare that his firing was wrongful, and he was reinstated after being off the job for eighteen months. The union was later forced to pay Galley almost $31,000 in back pay. [read full story]

		Workers' families, pets threatened because they didn't want the union Scott Barnes did not want to be represented by the California Nurses Association, which sought to impose itself on the nurses at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in 2002. To express his opinion, he posted these words on a website: "If the CNA is voted in, membership will NOT be voluntary, and YOU WILL have to give them $80 per month whether you like it or not. If the CNA really cared about any of us, they would let their reputation speak for itself, but they have no reputation and they have to force you to join." Subsequently, Barnes began to receive anonymous threatening calls saying that he should stop "f**ing with the union" and that his pet dogs might come to harm if he didn't. Threatening calls were also made to Christine Foxon, another nurse with whom Barnes had co-founded an independent nurses' group. One caller said he knew she "had two young daughters" and she needed to "think about her family and her girls and back off." After one of these calls, Foxon dialed 69 and discovered that she had been called from an office of the CNA. After reviewing the evidence, the National Labor Relations Board found that the union's menacing behavior had made a fair election impossible and overturned the narrow election win by the union. [read full story]