Happy Union Goon Day

According to the Web site of the U.S. Dept. of Labor, “Labor Day” became a national holiday in 1894 in order to celebrate “the union movement.”  Not workers, or the work that they have done, or the wealth and prosperity they helped American capitalists to create.  By “the movement” is meant, specifically, union bosses, the political impetus behind the creation of labor day in the first place.  They sought and got a national holiday to celebrate themselves.  So, in the spirit of American unionism, go ahead out and celebrate by setting off a “nail bomb” in the parking lot of a non-union construction site; sabotage the non-union oil refinery in the area; vandalize all the cars of the “scab” workers at the local non-union grocery store; threaten to rape the wives and girlfriends of the hated “scabs”; or maybe just go out with your union brothers and beat the living daylights out of a random non-union “rat” or “scab.”

And don’t worry about the cops.  According to the 1973 US. Supreme Court case, U.S. versus Enmons, violence, property damage, and extortion are allowable if they are done in pursuit of “legitimate union objectives.”  That’s why professors Armond Thieblot and Thomas Haggard were able to publish a 540-page book under the auspices of the University of Pennsylvania entitled Union Violence: The Record and the Response by the Courts, Legislatures, and the NLRB.  The book, write the authors, “is full of examples of murder, assault with intent to kill, destruction of property, arson, sabotage, mayhem, shooting, stabbing, beating, stoning, dynamiting, intimidating, threatening . . .”  All in pursuit of “legitimate union objectives.”

Violence is an inherent feature of American unionism because, as economist Morgan Reynolds explained in is book, Power and Privilege: Labor Unions in America:  “A union’s problem is painfully obvious: organized strikers must shut down the enterprise, close the market to everyone else . . . in order to force wages and working conditions above free-market rates.  If too many individuals defy the strikers . . . then unionists often resort to force . . . .  Unions must actively interfere with freedom of trade in labor markets in order to deliver on their promises.”

And “interfere” they do.  According to the National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NLIRR), since 1975 ,203 deaths, 5,868 incidents of personal injury, 6,435 incidents of vandalism, and tens of millions of dollars in property damage inflicted by unions has been reported by police to the media.  About 90 percent of all such incidents go unreported to the media, however, according to the NLIRR.

 

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1:28 pm on September 1, 2014