After two weeks of striking, it appears that the red shirts at the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are heading back to work without a contract in hand.

According to the CWA’s website:

Members of CWA and IBEW at Verizon Communications will return to work on Tuesday, Aug. 23, at which time the contract will be back in force for an indefinite period.

We have reached agreement with Verizon on how bargaining will proceed and how it will be restructured. The major issues remain to be discussed, but overall, issues now are focused and narrowed.

We appreciate the unity of our members and the support of so many in the greater community. Now we will focus on bargaining fairly and moving forward.

CWA and IBEW represent 45,000 workers at Verizon covered by this contract from Virginia to New England.

This back to work agreement comes just before the CWA would begin paying up to $300 per week in strike benefits to its striking members, saving the union up to $10 million per week out of its union treasury. (more…)

This is a developing story as police are still investigating the shooting of a non-union business owner, John King, by what appears to be a union assailant.

With around 25 employees, John King owns one of the largest non-union electrical contracting businesses in the Toledo, Ohio area. As a non-union contractor, his business happens to be doing well at a time when unions in the construction industry are suffering. This, it seems, has made the usual animosity unions have for him even greater, making him a prime target of union thugs. So much so, that one of them tried to kill him last week at his home.

John King didn’t plan on being an enemy of unions. In fact, he says all he’s ever wanted to do is work at something he loves doing and be successful at it—something that most normal Americans would call ‘The American Dream.’

After high school and some college, Mr. King briefly worked for an IBEW contractor before being drafted into the military. Following his service in the early 70s, King became his own boss by going into business as the youngest electrical contractor in Toledo.

Over the years, King Electrical Services had always been a small business. However, during the Great Recession, King’s business has actually improved as his union competitors have priced themselves out of work.

Unfortunately, being a non-union electrical company, King has always been on the radar of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW). In fact, in 2006, he won a significant case against the IBEW at the US Court of Appeals, after the union had improperly promised his electricians jobs on union sites if they voted the union into King’s company.

Since he’s been in business, in addition to the legal battles and verbal abuse, King’s company has been vandalized and threatened on numerous occasions.

“Back then, it was nothing to have to regularly buy a new set of tires.” King said during a telephone interview on Tuesday. “The ice pick was the weapon of choice.” (more…)

Since the union strike against Verizon began a little more than a week ago, incidents of sabotage and property damage have been reported, homes of company executives swarmed upon by union protesters, and injunctions issued.

While the unions, the Communications Workers of America (CWA) and International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) are trying to insist their strike against the telecommunications giant is a “fight for middle class jobs,” an e-mail purportedly sent by a CWA boss in Pennsylvania sheds some insight into the tactics the unions are deploying.

Within days after the strike began, an e-mail surfaced allegedly sent by Jon Remington, Unit 44 President of CWA Local 13000 (which covers much of Pennsylvania). In the e-mail, Remington shares the union strategy of bending the interpretation of an injunction, picketing Verizon Wireless stores to keep customers out and decrease company profits, as well as jamming Verizon’s repair lines.

While recipients’ names and Verizon numbers have been removed, here is the e-mail (with emphasis added): (more…)

….Well, actually, it’s feces and other objects like “nails, glass, cinder block, spikes, feces, clubs, rocks, screws, or puncture devices of any kind, or other object or debris…”

On Friday, a judge in New Jersey granted Verizon some relief from its striking unions by granting an injunction against International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW) Local 827–one of the two unions that has pulled 45,000 union members out on strike.

While injunctions are often issued during strikes when there are instances of mass picketing and the blocking of entrances and exits, the New Jersey injunction is somewhat unusual in that it also specified the aforementioned feces.

According to the Toms River News, NJ Supreme Court Justice Marybeth Rogers ordered that there should be no vandalism, violence, harassment, obstruction, intimidating, threatening, blocking, or trespassing. (more…)

It’s only been a few days since 45,000 CWA and IBEW members walked off their jobs at Verizon, however, incidents of harassment, sabotage, and illegal picketing have already begun to pile up.

On Tuesday, Verizon obtained an injunction in Pennsylvania and filed for one in Delaware “to prevent ‘illegal’ and ‘reprehensible’ strike activities such as keeping managers out of buildings.”

In one deplorable incident, a foul-mouthed IBEW member in New Jersey put his young daughter in front of a Verizon truck turning into a driveway as he berated the driver using expletives.

[Language Warning]

[Note: After this video of an IBEW striker using his daughter as a roadblock was posted and began circulating the internet, it was removed by the user.]
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Today, we reached out to John Rizzo, business manager of IBEW Local 1220 and asked for his reaction to President Obama’s birthday bash being staffed by non-union labor. His response:

As President Obama’s 50th birthday celebration is being held in Chicago, IBEW Local 1220 would be highly disappointed if the decision to record the event or provide video support was done with non-Union labor.

When we contacted Mr. Rizzo, he was unaware that President Obama was even visiting Chicago today. Interesting. Stay tuned for further developments.

It is rather ironic that, last week, union bosses used the anniversary Rev. Martin Luther King’s assassination to try to drum up support for the union cause. You see, even after all these years, racism and discrimination within the walls of the House of Labor is still very real. As noted by UnionFacts.com, since 2000, there have been over 4,200 complaints filed against unions for racial discrimination with the Equal Employment Opportunities Commission. In some cities, it is a bigger problem than in others. However, the one area where union racism seems to rear its ugly head the most often is with the construction trade unions, where African Americans are often excluded from work.

Systemic racism in the building trades has been built into the construction industry as Harry Alford, President & CEO of the National Black Chamber of Commerce, has noted.

Due to the Jim Crow laws of the South, there were many Black southern craftsmen who would travel to perform their skills.  Many would go to places like New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, etc. and would out compete local white contractors who could not perform as well as they did and could not settle for their affordable pricing.  It was because of this, that construction unions in the North were formed to block out Black crews from coming into communities and providing a better service for a cheaper price.  Soon after the unions were formed they set in motion the Davis-Bacon Act (named for two New York congressmen).  This act set up arbitrary labor wage scales so that Black craftsmen could no longer under price their white counter parts.  They all had to pay a certain price, prevailing wage, at a minimum and competition became no more.  With the price competition out of the way, the whites moved in through political favor and blatant racism.  This would be followed with Project Labor Agreements which meant some projects would be declared “Union Only”.  With the construction unions discriminating against Blacks, PLO’s [sic] would also mean “Whites Only”.

This exclusionary racial system is still prevalent today and has been the subject of much controversy in the City of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia. (more…)

Remember back in late March when we caught Harry Reid astroturf “supporters” throwing eggs at the Tea Party Express bus?

And remember how we caught them on camera blaming me for the act they perpetrated, even calling the local police?

Remember then Harry Reid’s local police force driving away when they found out the Democratic Party-directed union astroturf squad was behind throwing the eggs — and not me?

Remember how we caught on tape Nevada Democratic Party Field Director Brian DiMarzio organizing the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 357 who were the ones who threw the eggs?

And remember a befuddled DiMarzio telling a police officer that I was the one who threw the eggs, and speaking to the IBEW Local 357 on a first-name basis?

Well, Mr. DiMarzio, formerly an employee of the AFL-CIO — go figure! — is still employed with the Nevada Democrtic Party even though his nefarious exploits made it on to national TV.

According to the Nevada State Democratic Party website, Mr. Dimarzio is still employed as their Field Director. Until March, I didn’t know what Democratic Party political field directors were until I saw one directing union thugs in the field.

How much money does that pay in this tough economy?

Speaking of big-time salaries within the Democrat/Big Labor Axis:  Remember Eddie Gering?

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As perverted as this may seem, there is almost no company that is too small to become a target of a union, as long as there are at least two employees.

Even worse, adding to the already-lengthy trail of industrial carnage left by unions, American labor law gives today’s unions the right to destroy small companies under the guise of unionizing employees. This is particularly true in the construction industry where, all too often, unions and their unionized employers compete for work against non-union companies in a Darwinian death dance.

Very often, because of their costly benefits and often-underfunded pension plans, union contractors fail to get the work while non-union contractors get the work. This leaves union tradesmen unemployed–sitting “on the bench.”

With less construction being done these days, the high rate of unemployment among construction unions has led many of them to target non-union contractors for the sole purpose of unionizing them in order to get the work.  In other words, because they already have enough unemployed members, they don’t want the  workers–they want their work.

One of the more insidious ways that unions are allowed to unionize companies is through the practice of “salting.” Salting is the union tactic of sending one or more union members into a non-union company for the sole purpose of unionizing the company from within.

A union salt’s job is to infiltrate, as well as to spy on the company and its employees, to report back to the union bosses, as well as agitate and unionize the workers.  Then, once the job of unionizing the company is finished, the salt typically moves on—often to the next vulnerable company.

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It’s been about a week since eggs thrown by Harry Reid supporters exploded onto the windshield of the Tea Party Express bus as it rolled through his hometown of Searchlight, NV. The crime, reported to police just moments after it happened, was ignored by local authorities, who wouldn’t return phone calls and dodged responsibility with a line stolen from bad police movies, “Nothing we can do, that’s not our jurisdiction.”

With egg yolk dripping down his windshield and obscuring visibility, Tea Party Express bus driver Jerry Ragle pulled to the side of the road and told an officer what had happened, giving a brief description of the thrower. In the days following, Jerry has followed up with repeated calls to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, yet was unable to get any law enforcement to take interest in the attack. On the first call to LVMPD, he was told he’d have to call back later – the person that takes reports was at lunch.  Evidently crime takes a regular lunch break in Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, which must be remarkably convenient.  Jerry left a message, and waited all day for a return call that never came. (more…)

This is a rush transcript from “Hannity,” April 2, 2010.

RICH LOWRY, GUEST HOST: Good evening, I’m Rich Lowry in tonight for Sean Hannity. It seems that those on the left feel that the First Amendment applies only to themselves. Members of the Tea Party movement saw that firsthand last weekend as they attempted to travel to a rally in Harry Reid’s hometown of Searchlight, Nevada.

Reid supporters lined the streets throwing eggs at the Tea Party buses as they passed by. There are even reports that some of those Reid supporters intentionally redirected buses in the wrong direction as they approach the rally.

Journalist Andrew Breitbart was there and watched it all go down. Take a look:

ANDREW BREITBART, BIGGOVERNMENT.COM: They throw eggs. They’re throwing eggs. Lovely. They threw eggs, isn’t that nice.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Everybody on the bus.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Get them out of here or I’m going to jail today. Get him out of here.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Out of my way.

BREITBART: What did you just say?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I said I love you! In spite of what you are! You heard what I said.

BREITBART: You’re going to jail if I don’t get out of here? (more…)

This just in…Potential identification of the man who threatened to behave in a way which would necessitate his imprisonment if Andrew Breitbart was allowed to remain on a public sidewalk in Searchlight, Nevada.

Last night we received an email from blogger Liberty Chick potentially identifying the man who threatened Andrew Breitbart:

Can’t say 100% but I think the dude from Searchlight that threatened Andrew (said to keep him away from him or “I’m goin to jail”) might be Jim Nardi, who belongs to a whole slew of progressive groups in Nevada, for example:
http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1239570278&ref=mf
http://www.facebook.com/OFA.Nevada#!/profile.php?ref=sgm&id=1239570278
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Join-the-Coffee-Party-Movement-in-Las-Vegas-NV/321014126431

So, I went back to the second video posted on http://biggovernment.com/amarcus/2010/03/30/video-the-egg-man-of-seachlight-nevada .  You have to listen and watch really carefully – at 1:51 in that video, the black guy in the dark wool cap & dark coat on the right (holding the rolled up American flag) says “Come on, Jim” and holds him back just as he steps in between the “or I’m goin to jail” guy and Andrew to try and calm the situation.  You have to listen a few times to hear it.

Anyway, take it for what it’s worth.  Maybe someone else can confirm for you 100% whether it’s Jim Nardi.

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