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…)

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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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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