WINCHESTER, Va. (July 12, 2001) – National Right to Work Foundation attorneys have forced the payment of an undisclosed monetary settlement, in a case against the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, for involvement in a violence campaign against non-striking workers at Abex Friction Products (now Federal-Mogul Friction Products, a General Motors supplier) in 1996.
Five employees and the spouse of an employee, who were terrorized during a four-week strike at the Winchester brake manufacturing plant, settled multiple civil conspiracy lawsuits pending in the Circuit Court of the City of Winchester against UAW Local 149 and the UAW international union. (As part of the settlement, the employees and their attorneys are barred from revealing specific details of the agreement.)
“The union has finally been forced to pay a price for its involvement in a bloody campaign that left a massive trail of violence and vandalism in its wake,” said Stefan Gleason, Vice President of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, a charitable organization that provides free legal aid to victims of compulsory unionism abuse.
As part of the violence campaign aimed at the non-striking workers, union militants dumped a severed, bloody cow’s head on the hood of a worker’s car and another in a worker’s backyard. In addition to the claims against the union itself, the lawsuits charged several union militants with civil conspiracy and other counts for making death threats, shooting out windows, sending obscene mail, acts of stalking, theft of property, and harassing workers on the job to coerce them into quitting their jobs.
Foundation attorneys also helped introduce evidence to a Virginia special grand jury that ultimately found that union members met at the union hall to organize the violent crimes and distributed newsletters that encouraged acts of retaliation against non-striking workers. Additionally, the General District Court found several union militants guilty of multiple counts of harassment and violence.
In earlier court documents in the case, Winchester Circuit Court Judge John E. Wetsel Jr. commented, “the workplace is not a jungle in which coemployees may prey upon weaker coemployees.”
The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation is a nonprofit, charitable organization providing free legal aid to employees whose human or civil rights have been violated by compulsory unionism abuses. The Foundation, which can be contacted toll-free at 1-800-336-3600, assists thousands of employees in about 200 cases nationwide per year.
