Violence in industrial disputes
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Violence in industrial disputes occurs within conflicts between employers and employees (labor) about pay or conditions at work. Such conflicts are normally resolved by economic power, or by bargaining if the two sides are of roughly equal power. Sometimes, however, one or both sides will attempt to enforce their position by violence. This is typically referred to as Management violence by those on or in support of the employers' side in the dispute, and Union violence by those on or in support of the labor side, especially if one or more trade unions is involved. Since the situations involve conflict, descriptions of events are frequently polemical rather than accurate, and the facts of who instigated what violence against whom are often difficult to ascertain.
In particular, in situations of industrial dispute, the term "violence" is frequently applied to behaviour that would not be so described in other contexts, for example verbal abuse or attacks on property. In this article it will be restricted to its normal meaning, physical attacks on persons. Similarly, actions of governments within their current laws are excluded, even though they would often be polemically described as violent.
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[edit] Management violence
Management violence usually takes the form of bullying of or aggression against union organisers or sympathisers in the workplace. It is rarely if ever delivered by employers or senior managers directly, but by front-line managers (e.g. chargehands or foremen) or by other employees incited by management. In a number of well-known cases, however, violent action has been taken against union workers, and unions have charged that this was at the instigation of management or of government bodies sympathetic to management's aims. This is invariably denied by management. Well known examples include:
- Chea Vichea, leader of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom of Cambodia (FTUWKC) was shot in the head and chest while reading a newspaper at a kiosk in Phnom Penh on 22 January 2004; he had recently been dismissed by the INSM Garment Factory (located in the Chum Chao District of Phnom Penh), as a reprisal for helping to establish a trade union at the company.
- Isidro Gil, a leader of the National Union of Food Industry Workers at the Bogotá, Colombia bottling plant of the Coca-Cola company who was shot dead at the plant on December 5, 1996. Four other leaders of the union have been killed since 1994, as have many other union activists in Colombia.
- Shankar Guha Niyogi, a leader of the Mukti Morcha union movement in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh; following well publicised death threats, he was killed in Bhilai, on September 27, 1991, allegedly by a hired assassin, in the middle of a major dispute about the regularisation of workers' contracts in the steel and engineering industries. The alleged assassin and two industrialists were convicted of his murder but released on appeal; their release is itself now subject to appeal.
- Victor Reuther, a leader of the United Auto Workers in Detroit, who survived an assassination attempt in 1949, with the loss of his right eye.
As these examples show, violence against union leaders usually occurs within a highly charged political context, and is rare in straightforward industrial disputes - not least because historically, management has often had ready recourse to the law to enforce its position; the Tolpuddle martyrs were transported by due process of law rather than by management violence, and in a strike organised by Victor Reuther and others in 1937, the workers were attacked with tear gas and firearms by the police.
[edit] Union violence
Union violence is rarely aimed at managers or employers. Attacks on employers' property do occur - the word sabotage derives from French workers' practice of hurling their clogs (sabots) into machinery as a form of protest - in the furtherance of industrial disputes. A modern example was the destruction of electrical transformers by members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, depriving 400,000 Alaskans of power in the middle of winter. Sabotage is clearly objectionable, but to refer to it as "union violence" is tendentious, since the term "violence" is not normally used for actions against inanimate objects.
The targets of true union violence are normally fellow-workers. Protest and verbal abuse are routinely aimed against union members or replacement workers who cross picket lines during industrial disputes ("blacklegs"), and occasionally this erupts into violent confrontation. The inherent aim of a union is to create a labor monopoly so as to balance the monopsony a large employer inevitably enjoys as a purchaser of labor; strikebreakers threaten that aim and undermine the union's bargaining position. Bitterness against such perceived treachery occasionally breaks out into violence. Occasionally such a violent dispute can involve entire unions, when one union breaks another's strike; the 2004 murder of Keith Frogson in the village of Annesley Woodhouse, Nottinghamshire in England is thought to be the result of a feud dating from the coal-miner's strike in the 1980s, when Mr Frogson and his alleged killer were members of two opposed unions, the established and militant National Union of Mineworkers and the breakaway Union of Democratic Mineworkers (which took a more accommodating approach to the employers).
Examples of union violence include:
- 2004 AFL-CIO push their way into a Republican field office in Orlando FL, breaking the wrist of one staffer. AFL-CIO member Van Church is unrepentant: "If his wrist was fractured, it's a result of his own actions in jerking the door the way he did"
- 1999 - During protests by the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1547 against a non-unionized workforce getting a contract, picketters threatened and assaulted workers, spat at them, sabotaged equipment, and shot guns near workers. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled that the union had engaged in "ongoing acts of intimidation, violence, destruction of property".
- 1999 - During protests by Laborers' International Union of America Local 310, picketters punched a worker, and threw coffee cups at workers.
- 1999 - Members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 120 were convicted of striking a worker, and imprisoning another one in a truck trailer.
- 1998 - Teamsters Orestes Espinosa, Angel Mielgo, Werner Haechler, Benigno Rojas, and Adrian Paez beat, kicked, and stabbed a UPS worker (Rod Carter) who refused to strike, after Carter received a threatening phone call from the home of Anthony Cannestro, Sr., president of Teamsters Local 769.
- 1998 - During the Communications Workers of America U.S. West strike a worker was threatened with a gun, and a manager was hit in the head with a rock.
- 1990 - on the first day of The New York Daily News strike, trucks were attacked with stones and sticks. One union member was immediately arrested for transporting Molotov cocktails. Strikers followed replacement laborers and threatened them with baseball bats. Strikers then started threatening newstands with arson, or stole all copies of the Daily News and burned them in front of the newsstands. Independent sources estimated over a thousand reports of threats. The newspaper recorded over two thousand legal violations. The Police Department, recorded more than 500 incidents. 50 strikers were arrested. Bombings of delivery trucks became common, with 11 strikers arrested on one day in October.
- 1983 - Eddie York was murdered for crossing a United Mine Workers (UMW) picket line.
[edit] Legal Status
People who commit acts of violence in the furtherance of industrial disputes can be prosecuted under the normal laws of all countries. In several countries, however, unions have accused state prosecutors of taking either no or insufficient steps against the alleged perpetrators of violence against union leaders, leaving a significant majority of the crimes in partial or total impunity; at present such accusations are most often made in respect of Colombia, and in particular the case of the murder of Isidro Gil is currently (2004) being pursued in a court in Miami, Florida.
Under the United States Supreme Court's 1973 Enmons decision, the actions of union officials in organising strikes and other united acts of workers are exempt from prosecution under US federal anti-extortion law. Similar legal protections are enjoyed by unions in other democratic countries. These protections do not however confer any immunity from prosecution for violent acts.
