Anti-union violence

Massachusetts militiamen with fixed bayonets surround a group of strikers during the Lawrence, Massachusetts Textile Strike of 1912

Anti-union violence may take the form of bullying of or aggression against union organizers or sympathizers in the workplace, or outside the workplace. It may happen at the instigation of management, may be committed by agents hired or recruited by management, by government bodies or others sympathetic to management's aims, or as a response to violent striking workers. Anti-union violence may occur with specific goals in mind, such as influencing a vote on unionization, eliminating an existing union, or in connection with a labor dispute or strike.

Violence against unions may be isolated, or may occur as part of a campaign that includes spying, intimidation, impersonation, disinformation, and sabotage.^[1] Violence in labor disputes may be the result of unreasonable polarization, or miscalculation. It may be willful and provoked, or senseless and tragic. On some occasions, violence in labor disputes may be purposeful and calculated,^[2] for example the hiring and deployment of goon squads to intimidate, threaten or even assault strikers.

Historically, labor spying upon workers has been widespread, and is closely connected to violence.^[3] Labor spying creates intense bitterness among workers,^[4] and the sudden exposure of labor spies has driven workers "to violence and unreason", resulting directly in at least one shooting war.^[5][6]

Incidents of violence during periods of labor unrest are sometimes perceived differently by different parties. It is sometimes a challenge to ascertain the truth about labor-related violence, and incidents of violence committed by, or in the name of, unions or union workers have occurred as well.

History

Union organizer Frank Little was pulled from his bed and lynched in 1917 because of his union activities

In the book Violence and the Labor Movement, Robert Hunter observed that workers have every reason to discourage violence, because "every time property is destroyed, or men injured, the employers win public support, the aid of the press, the pulpit, the police, the courts, and all the powers of the State. [Workers] do not knowingly injure themselves or persist in a course adverse to their material interests."^[7] Yet labor-related violence has been common throughout history.

Hunter believed that violence during a strike benefits the employer, in that they are able to characterize workers negatively. Writing in 1914, Hunter stated that some employers give vague instructions to their agents to "create trouble", and that there is evidence that some employers directly instruct "incendiaries, thugs, and rioters."^[8] With insurance to cover losses, Robert Hunter maintained, damage to property generally helps employers, and cannot hurt them.^[9] Hunter summarized, "If the workers can be discredited and the strike broken through the aid of violence, the ordinary employer is not likely to make too rigid an investigation into whether or not his 'detectives' had a hand in it."^[10]

We can identify specific examples of such circumstances, such as U.S. Senate testimony in 1936 about an employer who wanted to contract with the Pinkerton agency. Known personally to the author of the book The Pinkerton Story, this employer was characterized as a "sincerely upright and Godly man." Yet Pinkerton files record that the employer wanted the agency "to send in some thugs who could beat up the strikers."^[11] In 1936, the Pinkerton agency changed its focus from strike-breaking to undercover services.^[12] Pinkerton declined the request from this employer.^[13]

The argument that violence benefits employers is not just theoretical, it has frequently played out in a very specific manner. For example, mine owners have used violence as an excuse to demand intervention by state police, the national guard, or even the United States army.^[14][15][16] Such forces become an occupying army in a strike zone, thereby creating a protective shield for strike-breakers hired by the struck company in order to replace strikers. However, attacks on workers or their leaders could also backfire. "Rather than rendering workers docile, acts of violence frequently led to greater militancy and allegiance to [labor] leaders."^[17]

Historically, violence against unions has included attacks by detective and guard agencies, such as the Pinkertons, Baldwin Felts, Burns, or Thiel detective agencies; citizens groups, such as the Citizens' Alliance; company guards; police; national guard; or even the military. In particular, there are few curbs on what detective agencies are able to get away with.^[18] In the book From Blackjacks To Briefcases, Robert Michael Smith states that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-union agencies spawned violence and wreaked havoc on the labor movement.^[19] One investigator who participated in a congressional inquiry into industrial violence in 1916 concluded that,

Espionage is closely related to violence. Sometimes it is the direct cause of violence, and, where that cannot be charged, it is often the indirect cause. If the secret agents of employers, working as members of the labor unions, do not always investigate acts of violence, they frequently encourage them. If they did not, they would not be performing the duties for which they are paid, for they are hired on the theory that labor organizations are criminal in character.^[20]

According to Morris Friedman, detective agencies were themselves for-profit companies, and a "bitter struggle" between capital and labor could be counted upon to create "satisfaction and immense profit" for agencies such as the Pinkerton company.^[21] Such agencies were in the perfect position to fan suspicion and mistrust "into flames of blind and furious hatred" on the part of the companies.^[22]

Agencies sell tactics including violence

Harry Wellington Laidler wrote a book in 1913 detailing how one of the largest union busters in the United States, Corporations Auxiliary Company, had a sales pitch offering the use of provocation and violence. The agency would routinely tell employers — prospective clients — of the methods used by their undercover operatives,^[23]

Once the union is in the field its members can keep it from growing if they know how, and our man knows how. Meetings can be set far apart. A contract can at once be entered into with the employer, covering a long period, and made very easy in its terms. However, these tactics may not be good, and the union spirit may be so strong that a big organization cannot be prevented. In this case our man turns extremely radical. He asks for unreasonable things and keeps the union embroiled in trouble. If a strike comes, he will be the loudest man in the bunch, and will counsel violence and get somebody in trouble. The result will be that the union will be broken up."^[24]

Different types of violence

Striking Pennsylvania mine workers began their protest march near Harwood. Many would soon be killed by the Luzerne County sheriff.

Some anti-union violence appears to be random, such as an incident during the 1912 textile strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, in which a police officer fired into a crowd of strikers, killing Anna LoPizzo.^[25]

Anti-union violence may be used as a means to intimidate others, as in the hanging of union organizer Frank Little from a railroad trestle in Butte, Montana. A note was pinned to his body which said, "Others Take Notice! First And Last Warning!" The initial of the last names of seven well-known union activists in the Butte area were on the note, with the "L" for Frank Little circled.^[26][27]

Anti-union violence may be abrupt and unanticipated. Three years after Frank Little was lynched, a strike by Butte miners was suppressed with gunfire when deputized mine guards suddenly fired upon unarmed picketers in the Anaconda Road Massacre. Seventeen were shot in the back as they tried to flee, and one man died.^[28]

Machine gun equipped armored car built with steel from CF&I's Pueblo steel works, known to the striking miners as the Death Special. "The machine gun was turned on striking miners and used to riddle the Forbes tent colony."^[29]

The unprovoked attack was similar to another event, which had occurred twenty-three years earlier in Pennsylvania. During the Lattimer massacre, nineteen unarmed immigrant coal miners were suddenly gunned down at the Lattimer mine near Hazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897.^[30][31] The miners, mostly of Polish, Slovak, Lithuanian and German ethnicity, were shot and killed by a Luzerne County sheriff's posse. In this group as well, all of the miners had been shot in the back.^[32][33] The shooting followed a brief tussle over the American flag carried by the miners. Their only crime was asserting their right to march in the face of demands that they disperse.

The sudden and unexpected nature of these two shooting incidents bring to mind another; in 1927, during a coal strike in Colorado, state police and mine guards fired pistols, rifles and a machine gun into a group of five hundred striking miners and their wives in what came to be called the Columbine Mine Massacre. In this incident as well, many of the miners were immigrants, and there had been a disagreement over the question of trespassing onto company property in the town of Serene, with the miners asserting it was public property because of the post office. There was, once again, a tussle over American flags carried by the strikers.

While the Columbine mine shooting was a surprise, newspapers played a deadly role in conjuring the atmosphere of hate in which the violence occurred. Lurid editorials attacked the ethnicity of the strikers.^[34] Newspapers began calling for the governor to no longer withhold the "mailed fist", to strike hard and strike swiftly,^[35] and for "Machine Guns Manned By Willing Shooters" at more of the state's coal mines.^[36] Within days of these editorials, state police and mine guards fired on the miners and their wives, injuring dozens and killing six.^[37]

In all of the above incidents, the perpetrators were never caught, or went unpunished. An exception resulted from a shooting of strikers at the Williams & Clark Fertilizing Company near the Liebig Fertilizer Works at Carteret, New Jersey in 1915. One striker was killed outright, and more than twenty were injured in an unprovoked attack when deputies fired on strikers who had stopped a train to check for strikebreakers. The strikers found no strikebreakers, and were cheering as they exited the train. Forty deputies approached and suddenly fired on them with revolvers, rifles, and shotguns. As the strikers ran, "the deputies ... pursued, firing again and again."^[38] According to attending physicians, all the strikers' wounds were on the backs or legs, indicating the guards were pursuing them.^[39] A local government official who witnessed the shooting called it entirely unprovoked.^[40] Four more of the strikers, all critically injured, would die. Twenty-two of the guards were arrested and the crime was investigated by a Grand Jury; nine deputies were subsequently convicted of manslaughter.^[41]

Other anti-union violence may seem orchestrated, as in 1914 when mine guards and the state militia fired into a tent colony of striking miners in Colorado, an incident that came to be known as the Ludlow Massacre.^[42] During that strike, the company hired the Baldwin Felts agency, which built an armored car so their agents could approach the strikers' tent colonies with impunity. The strikers called it the "Death Special". At the Forbes tent colony,

"[The Death Special] opened fire, a protracted spurt that sent some six hundred bullets tearing through the thin tents. One of the shots struck miner Luka Vahernik, fifty, in the head, killing him instantly. Another striker, Marco Zamboni, eighteen ... suffered nine bullet wounds to his legs... One tent was later found to have about 150 bullet holes..."^[43]

After deaths of women and children at Ludlow,

[T]he backlash was vicious and bloody. Over the next ten days striking miners poured out their rage in attacks across the coalfields...^[44]

The U.S. Army was called upon to put an end to the violence, and the strike sputtered to an end that December.^[45]

Anti-union violence may be devious and subtle, as when union busting specialist Martin Jay Levitt assigned confederates to scratch up cars in the parking lot of a nursing home during an organizing drive, and then blamed it on the union as part of an anti-union campaign.^[46]

Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. Many of the approximately 146 who died were forced by the flames to jump, and died when they hit the sidewalk. Locked doors were meant to keep the workers from pilfering. Triangle was "an exceptionally anti-union company".^[47]

Violence against working people can be an unintentional result of management policy but still deadly, as when garment workers were trapped in the building during the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire. The doors were locked to allow managers to check the women's purses as they left, to deter theft.^[48] Triangle had been the target of a prolonged strike two years before the fire. At least one hundred forty-three workers were killed while trying to escape the flames.^[49] The company had "employed extreme measures against strikers who demanded higher wages and safer working conditions."^[50]

In this photo, approximately 1,300 striking miners and others are being deported from Bisbee. The men are being forced into cattle cars at gunpoint prior to being dumped in the New Mexico desert, and warned never to return to their homes.

Another type of violence against unions is devastating to the worker, the family, and entire segments of a community. During the Bisbee Deportation, some 1,300 striking Arizona mine workers were deported from their community at rifle point by 2,000 vigilantes in 1917. The workers and any suspected supporters were loaded onto cattle cars and transported 200 miles (320 km) for 16 hours without food or water. The deportees were dumped in the New Mexico desert without money or transportation, and ordered never to return to Bisbee.

Anti-union violence may take the form of sabotage, for example, the effort to destroy a union's finances during a strike, or to create dissension between the strikers and the union. Bill Haywood, Secretary Treasurer of the Western Federation of Miners, wrote in his autobiography about anti-union sabotage during a strike:

I had been having some difficulty with the relief committee of the Denver smelter men. At first we had been giving out relief at such a rate that I had to tell the chairman that he was providing the smelter men with more than they had had while at work. Then he cut down the rations until the wives of the smelter men began to complain that they were not getting enough to eat. Years later, when his letters were published in The Pinkerton Labor Spy, I discovered that the chairman of the relief committe (sic) was a Pinkerton detective, who was carrying out the instructions of the agency...^[51]

In such an event, the violence impacts only the union's bank account and those dependent on it. However, spying may be combined with violence to sabotage a strike by brutally targeting and intimidating key individuals. In 1903-04, the Pinkerton Agency infiltrated the top ranks of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA).^[52] The UMWA declared a strike, which seemed destined to succeed. However, whenever the union sent an organizer to talk to miners, groups of thugs would learn about it. Morris Friedman, the former stenographer of the Pinkerton Agency in Colorado, explained:

Famous Western Federation of Miners flyer entitled "Is Colorado in America?" includes a photo of a union miner chained to a telegraph pole.

As a result of Operative Smith's "clever and intelligent" work, a number of union organizers received severe beatings at the hands of unknown masked men, presumably in the employ of the company.^[53]

Friedman offers examples of these incidents:

About February 13, 1904, William Farley, of Alabama, a member of the [UMWA] National Executive Board ... and the personal representative of [UMWA] President Mitchell ... addressed coal miners' meetings ... [on their return trip] eight masked men held them up with revolvers, dragged them from their wagon, threw them to the ground, beat them, kicked them, and almost knocked them into insensibility.^[54]

And,

On Saturday, April 30, 1904, W.M. Wardjon, a national organizer of the United Mine Workers, while on board a train enroute to Pueblo, was assaulted by three men at Sargents, about thirty miles west of Salida. Mr. Wardjon was beaten into unconsciousness.^[55]

Morris Friedman accused the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company (CF&I), operated by John D. Rockefeller and his lieutenant in Colorado, Jesse Welborn, of responsibility for the beatings during the 1903-04 strike.^[56]

Anti-union violence can take the form of abuse and humiliation. During the Telluride strike in 1901, a union man named Henry Maki had been chained to a telegraph pole. Bill Haywood used a photo of Maki to illustrate a poster displaying an American flag, with the caption, "Is Colorado in America?"^[57] The poster was widely distributed, and gained considerable attention for the WFM strike. Peter Carlson, author of a book about Bill Haywood, described the "desecrated flag" poster as famous, and "perhaps the most controversial broadside in American history."^[58]

Anti-union violence has existed for a very long time, and even when carried out in the name of the law, it may be cruel and indifferent to workers' rights. The Tolpuddle agricultural workers were arrested in 1832, found guilty, and transported as criminals from their homes in England to Australia, simply on the accusation of having sworn an oath to support each other toward improving their lot in life.^[59]

Sometimes, there is simultaneous violence on both sides. In an auto workers strike organised by Victor Reuther and others in 1937, "[u]nionists assembled rocks, steel hinges, and other objects to throw at the cops, and police organized tear gas attacks and mounted charges."^[60]

Notable perpetrators

General Sherman Bell. Photo from The Pinkerton Labor Spy, published in 1907.

Karl Linderfelt, center. Photo caption reads: "OFFICERS OF THE COLORADO NATIONAL GUARD From left to right: Captain R. J. Linderfelt, Lieut. T. C. Linderfelt, Lieut. K. E. Linderfelt, (who faced the charge of assault upon Louis Tikas, the dead strike leader), Lieut. G.S. Lawrence and Major Patrick Hamrock. The last three were in the Ludlow battle of April 20, 1914."

A study of industrial violence in 1969 concluded, "There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904."^[61] On September 10, 1903, the Colorado National Guard under Adjutant General Sherman Bell began "a series of almost daily arrests" of union officers and supporters during a strike in the Cripple Creek District.^[62] When District Judge W. P. Seeds of Teller County held a hearing on writs of habeas corpus for four union men held in the stockade, Sherman Bell's response was caustic. "Habeas corpus be damned," he declared, "we'll give 'em post mortems."^[63] Bell justified the ensuing reign of terror as a "military necessity, which recognizes no laws, either civil or social."^[64]

About the middle of February, 1904, leadership of the Colorado National Guard became concerned that the Mine Owners were failing to cover the payroll of the soldiers. General Reardon ordered Major Ellison to take another soldier he could trust to "hold up or shoot the men coming off shift at the Vindicator mine" in order to convince the mine owners to pay.^[65] The implication of the secrecy was, the incident would then be blamed on the union.

However, Major Ellison reported that the miners took a route out of the mine that would not make ambush possible. Reardon ordered Ellison to pursue an alternative plan, which was shooting up one of the mines. Major Ellison and Sergeant Gordon Walter fired sixty shots into two mine buildings.^[66] The plan worked, and the mine owners paid up. Ellison would later testify (in October 1904) that General Reardon informed him Adjutant General Sherman Bell and Colorado Governor James Peabody knew about the plan.^[67]

A plot by detectives to derail a train, which would then have been blamed on the union, failed when court testimony implicated the detectives more so than the union officials they'd accused.^{[68][69][70][71]}

Major Ellison, who had been under the leadership of Adjutant General Sherman Bell, testified in October 1904,

At about the 20th of January, 1904, by order of the adjutant of Teller County military district, and under special direction of Major T. E. McClelland and General F. M. Reardon, who was the Governor's confidential adviser regarding the conditions in that district, a series of street fights were commenced between men of Victor and soldiers of the National Guard on duty there. Each fight was planned by General Reardon or Major McClelland and carried out under their actual direction. Major McClelland's instructions were literally to knock them down, knock their teeth down their throats, bend in their faces, kick in their ribs and do everything except kill them. These fights continued more or less frequently up to the 22d of March.^[72]

Major Ellison's testimony about the shooting plot, and about the staged attacks on striking miners, was corroborated by two other soldiers.^[73]

Four months after the Colorado National Guard shooting plot, an explosion killed thirteen miners. The Colorado National Guard, the Mine Owners Association, and the Citizens' Alliance laid blame on the union, and used the explosion as a pretext to beat or kill union members, round up union supporters, ransack and burn the contents of union cooperative stores, and to clear Colorado mining communities of any suspected members or supporters of the Western Federation of Miners.

During a coal strike just a decade later and less than two hundred miles away, Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt told a civilian who had been abused by a soldier, "I am Jesus Christ, and my men on horses are Jesus Christs — and we must be obeyed." Professor James H. Brewster, a faculty attorney with the University of Colorado who was investigating the strike for Governor Ammons, was aware that Karl Linderfelt was guilty of abuse and beatings of innocent citizens, including a small Greek boy "whose head was split open".^[74][75] Referring to Linderfelt's character, Brewster would later testify,

...[Linderfelt's] moral character is bad ... he is such a brute, as officer after officer will tell you, that he is totally unfit to be in the company of anyone... I foresaw that Linderfelt's retention in the militia... would surely lead to bloodshed.^[76]

Professor Brewster sent a telegram to Governor Ammons requesting Linderfelt's removal. No action was taken. In a subsequent face to face meeting with the governor, three months prior to the Ludlow Massacre, Brewster again insisted that Linderfelt be removed, but again, Ammons declined. In later testimony, Professor Brewster stated that Linderfelt was the reason for the massacre.^[77]

On the day that the Ludlow Massacre occurred, Lieutenant Karl Linderfelt, commander of one of two companies of the Colorado National Guard, had Louis Tikas, leader of the Ludlow tent colony of striking miners, at gunpoint. Tikas was unarmed, and the miners would later explain that he approached the militia to ask them to stop shooting.^[78] While two militiamen held Tikas, Linderfelt broke a rifle butt over his head. Tikas and two other captured miners were later found shot dead. Tikas had been shot in the back.^[79] Their bodies lay along the Colorado and Southern railroad tracks for three days in full view of passing trains. The militia officers refused to allow them to be moved until a local of a railway union demanded the bodies be taken away for burial. A court martial found Lieutenant Linderfelt guilty of assaulting Tikas with a Springfield rifle, "but attaches no criminality thereto. And the court does therefor acquit him."^[80]

Professor Brewster also testified, "K. E. Linderfelt has two brothers (in the militia) who are quite reputable; don't confuse them."^[81]

Congressional investigation

In 1916, the Commission on Industrial Relations, created by the U.S. Congress, issued a final report on its investigation of industrial unrest. The main report concluded, in part,

The greatest uncertainty exists regarding the legal status of almost every act which may be done in connection with an industrial dispute. In fact, it may be said that it depends almost entirely upon the personal opinion and social ideas of the court in whose jurisdiction the acts may occur.

The general effect of the decisions of American courts, however, has been to restrict the activities of labor organizations and deprive them of their most effective weapons, namely, the boycott and the power of picketing, while on the other hand the weapons of employers, namely, the power of arbitrary discharge, of blacklisting, and of bringing in strikebreakers, have been maintained and legislative attempts to restrict the employers' powers have generally been declared unconstitutional by the courts. Furthermore, an additional weapon has been placed in the hands of the employers by many courts in the form of sweeping injunctions, which render punishable acts which would otherwise be legal, and also result in effect in depriving the workers of the right to jury trial.^[82]

On the question of violence in industrial disputes, the Commission stated, in part,

Violence is seldom, if ever, spontaneous, but arises from a conviction that fundamental rights are denied and that peaceful methods of adjustment can not be used. The sole exception seems to lie in the situation where, intoxicated with power, the stronger party to the dispute relies upon force to suppress the weaker...

The origin of violence in connection with industrial disputes can usually be traced to the conditions prevailing in the particular industry in times of peace, or to arbitrary action on the part of Governmental officials which infringes on what are conceived to be fundamental rights. Violence and disorder during actual outbreaks usually result from oppressive conditions that have obtained in a particular shop or factory or in a particular industry. Throughout history where a people or a group have been arbitrarily denied rights which they conceived to be theirs, reaction has been inevitable. Violence is a natural form of protest against injustice.

The principal sources of an attitude leading to violence are ... arrogance on the part of the stronger party. This may result immediately in violence through the use of force for the suppression of the weaker party... Such physical aggression is seldom used by employees, as they are strategically the weaker party and the results are negative; only under exceptional circumstances can an employer be coerced by the use of force or intimidation...

Many instances of the use of physical force by the agents of employers have ... come before the Commission, indicating a relatively wide use, particularly in isolated communities... The instruments of industrial force belong chiefly to the employer, because of his control of the job of the worker. Their use is more common and more effective than any other form of violence at the command of the employer. The most powerful weapon is the power of discharge, which may be used indiscriminately upon mere suspicion, which under certain conditions may be almost as potent, either in use or threat, as the power of life and death. It is the avowed policy of many employers to discharge any man who gives any sign of dissatisfaction on the theory that he may become a trouble maker or agitator...

The immediate cause of violence in connection with industrial disputes is almost without exception the attempt to introduce strikebreakers...^[83]

Two alternate reports were also issued by the Commission. One of these reports noted violence by labor unions, most notably a campaign of violence by the structural iron workers which included the Los Angeles Times bombing, ostensibly in defense of the closed union shop.^[84]

Contemporary anti-union violence

By the early 1900s, public tolerance for violence during labor disputes began to decrease. Yet violence involving strikebreaking troops and armed guards continued into the 1930s.^[85] The level of violence that anti-union agencies engaged in eventually resulted in their tactics becoming increasingly public, for there were a very great number of newspaper and muckraking articles written about such incidents.^[86] Resources that once were allocated to overt control over workforces began to be assigned to other methods of control, such as industrial espionage.^[87] After the Great Depression in 1929, the public no longer considered companies unassailable.^[88] Yet legislation related to employer strategies such as violent strike breaking would have to wait until after World War II.^[89] Beginning in the 1950s, employers began to embrace new methods of managing workers and unions which were still effective, but much more subtle.^[90] In 1973, Warren R. Van Tine observed that from a very early period,

The more sophisticated anti-unionists perceived a more subtle and respectable means of doing away with unwanted labor leaders—through legal prosecution, and, when possible, imprisonment. With the aid of anti-union judges like John J. Jackson—who in one decision labeled labor leaders "vampires" who "have nothing in common with the workingman"—harassment of union officers under the facade of justice proceeded at a pace.^[91][92]

While the level of violence in the United States decreased significantly by the 1950s, it did not drop to zero. Violence still occurs in labor disputes, for example, when one side miscalculates. Bringing in outside security forces, as one example, can lead to violence in modern labor disputes.^[93]

The use of cameras and camcorders may have an impact on levels of violence in labor disputes today.^[94]

Recent examples

• Victor Reuther, a leader of the United Auto Workers in Detroit, survived an assassination attempt in 1949, with the loss of his right eye.^[95]

Internal union violence

There are occasions that violence may be committed against a union or union member by other unions, or even within a union.

• In 1978, William Anthony "Tony" Boyle, President of the United Mine Workers, was tried and found guilty of the 1969 murder of fellow United Mine Workers challenger Joseph Yablonski.^[96]

Threats

Sometimes, threats of violence cause damage to union members or supporters. Other times, threats against unions or their members may backfire. For example, Indiana Deputy Attorney General Jeffrey Cox was fired after suggesting that Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker should use live ammunition against pro-union protesters involved in the 2011 Wisconsin protests. More recently, a Deputy Prosecutor in Indiana's Johnson County, Carlos Lam, suggested that Governor Walker should mount a "false flag" operation which would make it appear as if the union was committing violence. After initially claiming that his email account was hacked, Lam admitted to sending the suggestion and resigned.^[97][98]

Cullen Werwie, press secretary for Governor Walker, states that Walker's office was unaware of Lam's email. According to CBS News, Werwie also commented, "Certainly we do not support the actions suggested in (the) email. Governor Walker has said time and again that the protesters have every right to have their voice heard, and for the most part the protests have been peaceful. We are hopeful that the tradition will continue."^[99][100]

Violence in Latin America

• The Banana massacre in Colombia in 1929.
• 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 other union leaders in Colombia.

Violence in other parts of the world

• 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 January 22, 2004.^[101] He had 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.

• Shankar Guha Niyogi, a leader of the Mukti Morcha union movement in the Indian state of Chhattisgarh was killed in Bhilai, on September 27, 1991,^[102] 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.

• On 27 March 1984, a suitcase bomb was left in the foyer of the Trades Hall in Wellington.^[103] The Trades Hall was the headquarters of a number of trade unions, and it is most commonly assumed that they were the target of the bombing, although other theories have been put forward. Ernie Abbott, the building's caretaker, was killed when he attempted to move the suitcase, which is believed to have contained three sticks of gelignite triggered by a mercury switch.^[104] To this day, the perpetrator has never been identified. Those elements of the New Zealand Police responsible for preventing and investigating such crimes were headquartered in the building across the street.

• Thunder Bay, Ontario, Canada has a long, disturbing history of anti-union violence, from the murders of pro-union organizers Viljo Rosval and Janne Voutilainen in 1929 to ongoing targeted physical assaults. Sadly to this day many self serving unions members participate in anti-union violence against pro-union members.

See also

• Labor spies
• Union busting
• Union violence
• Murder of workers in labor disputes in the United States
• Battle of Blair Mountain
• Sheep Wars
• Railroad Wars
• West Virginia Coal Wars
• Illinois coal wars
• Colorado Labor Wars
• Harlan County War
• Mining in the United States
• Copper Country strike of 1913–1914
• Cripple Creek miners' strike of 1894
• Molly Maguires
• Coal strike of 1902

References

Major armed conflicts in American labor union history 19th century Great Railroad Strike of 1877 Rock Springs massacre, 1885 Bay View Massacre, 1886 Haymarket affair, 1886 Thibodaux massacre, 1887 Morewood massacre, 1891 Homestead Strike, 1892 Coeur d'Alene, Idaho labor strike of 1892 Pullman Strike, 1894 Streetcar strikes in the United States, 1895–1929 Lattimer massacre, 1897 Illinois Coal Wars, 1898-1899 20th century Streetcar strikes in the United States, 1895–1929 Colorado Labor Wars, 1903–04 1905 Chicago Teamsters' strike Pressed Steel Car Strike of 1909 Westmoreland County coal strike of 1910–1911 Paint Creek–Cabin Creek strike of 1912 Colorado Coalfield War, including the Ludlow Massacre, 1913–14 Copper Country strike of 1913–1914, 1913-1914 Everett massacre, 1916 Bisbee Deportation, 1917 1920 Alabama coal strike Battle of Matewan, 1920 Battle of Blair Mountain, 1921 Herrin massacre, 1922 Hanapepe massacre, 1924 Columbine Mine massacre, 1927 Harlan County War, 1931–32 Auto-Lite strike, 1934 Minneapolis general strike of 1934 1934 West Coast waterfront strike Memorial Day massacre of 1937 Portal:Organized Labour