NLRB Chairman’s Former Law Partner Defends Union Violence

A little over a month ago, in a case that drew national attention, a man was targeted at his home, shot and injured, all because he dared to run union free business. Now, in Buffalo, New York, a case involving outrageous allegations of labor-racketeering and union violence aimed at non-union construction workers and company owners is proceeding through the judicial process. Its outcome, however, may have wide-ranging ramifications on a national level.

Forget for a moment that a man was stabbed in the throat, hot coffee thrown on non-union workers, sand put into gas tanks and a woman threatened with sexual assault. Forget the fact that the judge presiding over the federal racketeering case against Operating Engineers, Local 22, in Buffalo, NY ultimately rejected the AFL-CIO’s attempt to file a amicus brief, the sheer fact that the national AFL-CIO even attempted to intervene speaks volumes:

“We’re not condoning the allegations or arguing that union officials are completely immune from prosecution,” said Jonathan D. Newman, a lawyer for the AFL-CIO. “Instead, we simply want to make sure that the [federal law] is not interpreted in a way that could have a chilling effect on legitimate union activity.” (more…)

From the Associated Press:

Union activists aren’t backing off demands to work at a new Washington state grain terminal after hundreds of Longshore workers stormed the facility, overwhelmed guards and dumped grain.

U.S. District Judge Ronald Leighton issued a preliminary injunction to restrict union activity, saying there was no defense for the aggressive tactics used in recent days.

Workers have been battling for the right to work at the new terminal in Longview. Protesters twice blocked the pathway of a train carrying grain to the terminal at the Port of Longview on Wednesday, and on Thursday hundreds of carried out the aggressive raid, police said.

The dispute halted work at four other Washington ports, including Seattle, on Thursday as hundreds of longshoremen refused to show up or walked off the job.

(more…)

Asks Bill Frezza over at RealClearMarkets:

Things sure turned ugly fast in the recent Verizon strike. The Associated Press reported 70 acts of sabotage in the first week. A New Jersey judge had to issue an injunction banning members of the Communications Workers of America from “Dropping, spreading, throwing, placing or otherwise causing nails, glass, cinder block, spikes, feces, clubs, rocks, screws, or puncture devices of any kind, or other object or debris to be thrown or strewn in, on, or about Verizon’s driveways, parking lots, entrances, exits, vehicles and adjoining roads to any of Verizon’s property or at any work site.” Investigative reporters may be nowhere to be seen, but thanks to cell phone cameras some nasty videos are beginning to pop up on the web.

According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research there have been 4,400 recorded acts of labor violence since 1991. The Teamsters lead the pack with 454, as one would expect from an organization once infiltrated by organized crime. The Teamsters have plenty of company, yet few offenders are called to account. In the Homestead tradition, law enforcement tends to melt away when a union goes on a rampage. Barely three percent of violent crimes committed by union members lead to an arrest or conviction.

This can only happen due to public acceptance.

(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…)

As the CWA picketing of Verizon continues it seems some of the union leadership is becoming more and more unhinged. Apparently one member of the union leadership went so far as to instruct his members, by way of publicly accessible telephone hotline, that it is now “open season” on “managers and scabs”. The thug went on to say that union members should “follow them” and “torture them, torture them with chants and noise”. (h/t Moon Bat Tracker)

The best part of WSYR’s report, though, has to be when they call another union boss to ask them about the ridiculous instructions and the guy basically says they’re cool with it. According to him there’s nothing wrong with “militancy”. How insane can you get? Is it any wonder that unions have such a terrible reputation anymore? Have they not earned it?

The sad thing, as the Verizon rep WSYR interviewed alluded to, is most union members aren’t violent nuts. Most of them just want to go to work, make a living, and support their families. It’s thugs like this that give them all a bad name.

(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.]
(more…)

As expected, I won few friends within the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) administrations by exposing the communist indoctrination that occurred in their respective classrooms.

In response to a threatening letter I received from UMSL demanding that I meet with them for questioning, I submitted a Sunshine Law records request to the University of Missouri system. The emails below constitute UMSL’s reply.

UMSL fix ii

Large portions were redacted under the questionable pretense that they contained privileged communications between UMSL and its attorney.

What I learned from the visible portions was quite disturbing: numerous high-level university officials conspired in an attempt to punish me.

When this strategy proved unsuccessful, they engaged in a smear campaign against me, partly relying on inaccurate liberal blogs as “evidence.” Because senior UMSL administrators refused to take responsibility for their blatant failure of oversight in their labor studies classes, they resorted to maligning the student who spoke out about the unprofessional behavior of his professors. (more…)

SEIU DRAGGED IN BOGUS WITNESS TO SMEAR GLADNEY!

After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating.

On Tuesday, the two SEIU goons who beat Gladney were found not guilty of any wrongdoing.

I wrote about the SEIU’s “surprise witness” from left field. This surprise witness, who is also an SEIU activist, testified on Tuesday that she witnessed Kenneth Gladney “starting the fight” with two SEIU goons who were twice his size.

The SEIU “witness” was not at the scene. She came walking up with a cane after the fight was already broken up.

24th State wrote more about the surprise SEIU witness.

(more…)

Phil Christofanelli, the student who leaked videos of a radical “Introduction to Labor Studies” course at University of Missouri-St.Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC), has obtained internal emails that reveal UMSL’s attempts to mislead the public and target the whistleblower.

Christofanelli, who had cross-registered in the UMSL course and has since graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, will release the emails later today on BigGovernment.com.

UMSL and UMKC were plunged into crisis on April 25, 2011, when BigGovernment.com published an article about violent union tactics being taught in the course (see related posts below). The post included a video of highlights from the course, as prepared and provided by Insurgent Visuals.

UMSL Chancellor Tom George and UMSL Provost Glen Cope defended the course–which included instructions on how to carry out industrial sabotage and personal intimidation; in-class recruitment by the Communist Party; and pro-union propaganda. George and Cope claimed to have watched all 30-plus hours of course video.

Internal emails reveal, however, that Cope had not even begun to view the videos when she prodded UMKC Vice Provost and Chief Information Office Mary Lou Hines Fritts for the name of the student responsible for “ripping” the videos. “Since the semester is nearly over, we need to act quickly,” Cope wrote to Hines Fritts on May 4.

Hines Fritts could not provide Cope with any direct evidence. However, she and her staff quickly singled out Christofanelli for his political views. She sent Cope a list of links about Christofanelli, highlighting his leadership of the Washington University Young Americans for Liberty, as well as his conservative opinions. (more…)

NOT GUILTY- SEIU GOONS CLEARED IN GLADNEY BEATING!

I just spoke with Kenneth Gladney and his wife outside the courtroom. Here is their first reaction—

“I couldn’t beat them; I didn’t have the resources they had. They had all the money in the world and the backing… I’m just an average man.”

Video of first reaction after the verdict:

** It was the prosecutor’s first jury trial.

The Kenneth Gladney beatdown case continued this morning in St. Louis County Court.
After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney spent the night in the hospital after the beating.

(more…)

After a health care town hall meeting in August 2009 St. Louis native Kenneth Gladney was beaten, kicked and called racist names by Rep. Russ Carnahan’s SEIU supporters. Gladney was beaten so badly that he was hospitalized for the night.

Gladney, a cancer survivor, was selected by the Carnahan supporters for the beatdown because he was handing out “Don’t Tread On Me” flags and because he was black.

The St. Louis Post Dispatch reported at the time:

(more…)

My name is Philip Christofanelli. I was a student in the University of Missouri’s “Introduction to Labor Studies” course.  The class was taught simultaneously by Professor Don Giljum of University of Missouri-Saint Louis (UMSL) and Professor Judy Ancel of University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) through the use of a live video feed that linked the two classrooms. The class met every other Saturday for seven hours, including breaks. All of the classes were recorded and put on the class website.

Class slide by Prof. Judy Ancel instructing students on how to "re-frame" messages for "State Battles" against right-to-work legislation in Missouri and elsewhere

Since that time, an organization known as Insurgent Visuals has released videos of the class, which have gained considerable media attention.  To be clear, I am not Insurgent Visuals, nor am I associated with them.  I did not edit any videos or put them online. I did, however, download the original videos off of the class website and give them out in their entirety to a number of my friends in order to obtain other opinions on the propriety of what occurred in the class, and of the steps I should take moving forward.

In this post, I will try to describe, with careful attention to context and accuracy, what occurred in these public classrooms over the course of the semester.  I believe that any reasonable person who takes the time to read this post in full will come to the same conclusion that I did: Professors Giljum and Ancel used a public university class to promote their own radical political opinions and organizations, and to train students and union members in negotiating tactics that are apparently illegal, and profoundly unethical.  Their behavior was highly unprofessional and inappropriate, and the University of Missouri should simply admit that fact and take steps to ensure that classes are not taught in that way ever again.

(more…)

Earlier this week I went to University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) to try and get the Chancellor to comment on the controversial videos that had come from Professor Judy Ancel and Don Giljum’s Labor Studies class. I visited Wood’s Hall and spoke to several high-ranking University officials on camera. Never once was I told I was trespassing, or that I could not film.

Because of that positive experience at Wood’s Hall, I felt comfortable returning to UMSL on Saturday, April 30th, in an attempt to interview Don Giljum, arriving at UMSL at approximately 2:15 pm. The class was scheduled to take a break at 2:30. I found Giljum’s classroom, waited outside quietly and not approaching the door so as not to disrupt the class.  I had waited several minutes when Giljum (I recognized him from the videos) and another man exited the classroom, walking by me as they proceeded down a hall.  I stayed put as I realized Giljum would have to return to his classroom at some point.

Giljum and the other man parted ways and he started to head back to his classroom.

I asked, ”Are You Don Giljum?” as he approached. ”Yes,” he responded, coming towards me. A press pass hanging around my neck was cleary visible. He walked up to me and stood in front of my camera with his back to the classroom door. I asked “When was the last time you committed industrial sabotage, or threatened the use of industrial sabotage to gain leverage in a Union negotiation?” “Never, said Giljum, “that was all taken out of context.”

He asked me my name and I told him. He then asked me who I was with. I told him SharpElbows.Net. “Are you the one who did the internet hatchet job on me?” he asked.  “I didn’t see any hatchet job, just your words on video” I said. That’s when Giljum appeared to lose it!

(more…)

Big Government was forwarded the following statement in an email:

I am Judy Ancel, director of the Institute for Labor Studies at the University of Missouri-Kansas City. While my university prepares its response, I feel compelled to answer the attacks by Andrew Breitbart on my character. I am speaking as an individual and certainly not for UMKC. I am speaking out of my strong lifelong commitment to educating working people to better understand the world they live in. Labor education is a vital part of anyone’s education. All Americans, especially our youth, need to understand the contributions working people have made and make in building our communities and nation. Labor education gives them the skills and vision to make a better world.

My students and I are outraged at Mr. Breitbart’s invasion of our classroom and his attempts to intimidate us and my colleagues at the university. Mr. Breitbart’s chop shop manufactured videos from 30 hours of classroom recordings that were posted for the course, “Labor, Politics, and Society,” on the university’s Blackboard system. Presumably these were delivered to him by a student, in possible violation of the University Standards of Conduct and the Federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. These videos were recorded for the use of students enrolled in this course, and for them only. Breitbart disassembled the material, and reassembled it; arranging them to give the appearance that instructors of the class advocate violence. This is in fact the opposite of the position both instructors took in class. Any examination of labor’s past would be incomplete without discussion of violence, (which for the most part was directed at workers) and analysis of its roots. At no time did my co-instructor, Don Giljum, nor I advocate violence.

There’s no doubt that Breitbart’s attacks are politically motivated, part of a broad agenda to weaken unions and the public sector as well as public education. His fabrications have been exposed numerous times in the mainstream media. Yet he and his echo chamber at Fox News continue to cause great harm to educators and other public servants.

(more…)

Earlier today, Big Government brought you video footage of a disturbing college course from University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC). In the course, Professors Judy Ancel and Don Giljam instruct students on how fear, intimidation and, even, industrial sabotage are important and, often, necessary tools for union activists.

In this new video, the professors make clear that they aren’t just speaking in theoretical terms. Union official Don Giljum recounts several anecdotes where he, or other union officials, used threats to strengthen their negotiating positions (or simply get two-weeks paid time off work). Professor Ancel recounts favorably a tactic used by a friend of hers in a union protest in Peru. (Her story will be particularly interesting to any cat lovers out there.)

(more…)

If you are wondering why some folks are starting to question whether a college education is worth the cost, the video below goes a long way towards explaining it. Recently, the University of Missouri-St. Louis (UMSL) and the University of Missouri-Kansas City (UMKC) sponsored two college courses: Introduction to Labor Studies and Labor Politics and Society, to be taught simultaneously through a video conference between to two campuses.

The Professors are Judy Ancel, Director of Labor Studies at UMKC and  Don Giljum, business manager for the International Union of Operating Engineers at Ameren UE in St. Louis. (Bonus: he is a member of the Communist Party.)

In the class, the Professors not only advocate the occasional need for violence and industrial sabotage, they outline specific tactics that can be used. As one of our colleagues pointed out, its the matter-of-factness of it all that is so disturbing.

(more…)

h/t the Underground Conservativeand Real Debate Wisconsin for bringing this to my attention via Twitter.

The teacher is Jack Senzig, music teacher at Gifford Elementary School. Senzig runs a blog for the Gifford choir as well as parents of choir members.

The quote and image below are from elementary school music teacher Jack Senzig’s political blog “WI The People.” Not content to spew his hate anonymously, Senzig acknowledges his identity and links the political blog from another blog - his home blog based upon his role as a music teacher and available to his young students.

Senzig’ home blog, “Jack Senzig’s Weblog,”  with the raw url of http://joinchoir.wordpress.com/ is based upon his work as choir director at the Gifford Elementary School in Racine, Wisconsin.

On February 20th Senzig used the blog to announce the cancellation of certain music activities and directed readers to his hate-filled political blog. No doubt the same union that continues to fight for the ability to compel membership and extort dues from every current, or future teacher in Wisconsin will now fight for the right of a Jack Senzig to expose Wisconsin elementary school students to violent, blood filled cartoons and accusations of rape against sitting Governor Scott Walker.

(more…)

UNION THUGS CRASH TEA PARTY RALLY – ASSAULT CONSERVATIVE PROTESTERS–
Far left thugs get out and get a little bloody…

Former Massachusetts Republican Congressional candidate Marty Lamb was assaulted and knocked to the ground by a union thug yesterday at a tea party rally.
VA Right reported:

DaTech Guy has more on this rally and latest assault by a leftist thug. He says the union members were signing in (so they could get paid?).

(more…)