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…)

….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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