IT BEGAN IN COURT

It all began, according to the Committee, with a 1973 Supreme Court decision. The case involved Gulf States Utilities Company and members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. The company charged that, during the course of a strike, several workers had blown up one of its transformer substations, and brought suit against the workers in federal court. Its case turned on a creative reading of the Hobbs Act, a federal statute regulating interstate commerce. The law provides stiff penalties for obstructing commerce through extortion, which is defined as "obtaining property from another … by wrongful use of actual or threatened force, violence, or fear." Gulf States argued that the defendants had used violence to "extort" higher wages (the company’s "property") for the striking workers.

The Court didn’t buy the argument and, in a decision that enraged conservatives, ruled that strike violence did not meet the definition of extortion. Since then, the NRWC claims, unions have been virtually immune from prosecution, free to vandalize, assault, even murder their opponents with the blessing of the federal government. "Protected thuggery," according to a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal.

RIGHT-WING SEEKS
CONGRESSIONAL HELP

While its research institute cranks out hysterical reports purporting to show a steep rise in union violence, particularly by strikers against replacement workers (we prefer to call them scabs), the National Right to Work Committee has taken its message to Congress. With the help of Senators Orrin Hatch and Strom Thurmond, Committee personnel have drafted the Freedom from Union Violence Act (FUVA), designed to make strike violence a form of extortion within the meaning of the Hobbs Act.

The purpose of the bill, explains Michael Gottesman, a law professor at Georgetown University, is to exact severe penalties for conduct already a crime in every state. "It’s a classic showboating effort that would not add anything to the law other than imposing the death penalty in cases of union violence that result in death, which is not the case in any state law. Moreover, it’s totally one-sided since it doesn’t address violence by agents of the employer."

Gottesman testified at a Senate hearing on the bill, one of two unfriendly witnesses. The other, Julius Getman, a law professor at the University of Texas–Austin, sees an even more dangerous precedent. "Proponents’ definition of violence is so broad that it would include the tactics of the civil rights movement," Getman warns. "Behind all the rhetoric about ‘crime’ is an assault on the right to strike."

Getman’s concern is borne out by FUVA’s language, which broadens the definition of extortion to include "the obtaining of property … by wrongful use of fear not involving force or violence." He notes proponents’ liberal use of the term "violence," applied to egg throwing, spitting, shoving, chanting slogans, raising fists, glaring, and kicking tires, among other nefarious deeds documented in Union Violence Lookout, a publication of the NRWC’s research institute.

REAL TARGET:
UNION MANAGEMENT

But if all this seems laughable, proponents’ real target is union management. The Hobbs Act, and thus FUVA, provides penalties for conspiracy to extort as well as actual extortion, and proponents hope the bill can be used to haul union officials into federal court on conspiracy charges whenever violence occurs during a strike. At the FUVA Senate hearing, NRWC president Reed Larson invoked the "blood on union officials’ hands." A less melodramatic appraisal is offered by Hillock: "Union officials create an atmosphere among striking workers that this sort of activity is tolerated. With the conspiracy framework, we can show that the union is often behind these individual acts of violence."

FUVA is currently stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee. Hatch has distributed a "Dear Colleague" letter to all senators asking for support. Then the plan, as outlined by C. J. Tosto of NRWC, is to work with the Majority Leader to bypass debate and force a vote in the Senate.

FUVA is just one of several antilabor bills introduced by Republicans in the 106th Congress. Also on the agenda: the Truth in Employment Act, targeting "professional organizers" who "infiltrate" nonunionized workplaces; and an amendment to the National Labor Relations Act that would repeal sections requiring union membership as a condition of employment in unionized occupations. The latter, drafted by Thurmond, Jesse Helms, and others, is intended "to preserve and protect the free choice of individuals and employees to form, join, or assist labor organizations, or to refrain from such activities."

All of these bills are designed to cripple the institutional capacity of unions and discredit worker dissent. They bolster the power of anti-union employers while weakening the ability of unions to organize. Their purpose is to undermine the essence of unionism itself — solidarity based in collective action. Whether Republicans and right-wing organizations like the National Right to Work Committee can garner enough votes for passage is debatable (although the Truth in Employment Act already has 83 congressional sponsors).

Clearly, though, we cannot rely on Democrats to put up a fight. This will be left to workers exercising those rights — to associate, to disrupt — so despised by Republicans and their wealthy supporters around the country.

— Philomena Mariani