A recent story in the Providence Journal serves as a stark reminder of union bosses' historical ties to the mafia and the propensity of union militants to mask their corruption and violence under pleasant-sounding goals like social justice.

U.S. District Court Judge William E. Smith gave Nicholas Manocchio, a former director of the Laborers' New England Region Organizing Fund, three years' probation for accepting cash, liquor, rental cars and gift certificates from an undercover FBI agent posing as a contractor seeking business in Rhode Island.

Before being sentenced, Manocchio told Smith that he was "ashamed and embarrassed and repentant." He had worked for social justice causes, he said, and had tried to break through the labor movement’s culture of favoritism. "I hope you don’t define me by that single act."

While Manocchio may have committed just a "single act" of corruption, union bosses across the country think they're above the law. This Right to Work video report shows that union violence is all too real, and that often the victims are rank-and-file workers.

Compulsory unionism itself is to blame.  With all the special privileges -- including immunity from federal prosecution for union-related violence -- union bigwigs have garnered through their political power, why wouldn't they think they're above the law?

Late last week, notoriously corrupt Service Employee International Union (SEIU) Local 1000 brass sent a clear message to those who object and attempt to expose their shady underbellies.  When California state employee and part-time reporter Ken Hamidi, a vocal critic of SEIU boss corruption, arrived at a SEIU Local 1000 meeting as in preparation for a cable access show exposing the local's misconduct, SEIU union thugs assaulted him:

Hamidi says he came to the hall to expose how he says SEIU union leaders are spending tens of thousands of dollars on a political race, he claims, they have no right to do.  After he and a photographer walked in to the meeting, it didn't take long for Hamidi to be right out the door and on his way to the hospital.

After Hamidi entered the meeting, SEIU union bosses ordered union militants to "beat the hell out of him." Three or four union thugs then held Hamidi down and beat him until he was "covered in blood."  SEIU union toughs then reportedly warned Hamidi that if he ever showed up again, they would probably kill him.

Hamidi was treated at the hospital for lacerations to his head and face and the district attorney is investigating the incident.

Sadly, if workers in California were protected by a Right to Work law, this incident may have been adverted.  Right to Work laws promote accountability of union officials to rank and file workers, thereby reducing union boss corruption.  If SEIU Local 1000 officials were obligated to be accountable to their members, it would have been much less likely Mr. Hamidi would have reason to investigate them and their questionable political schemes.

The woefully misnamed Employee Free Choice Act (better known as the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill) isn't the only proposed union boss power grab pending in Congress. Big Labor's high command is always looking for new ways to force more workers into dues-paying ranks -- pushing bills from Card Check Forced Unionism to Police and Fire Monopoly Bargaining.

Now, Teamsters union bosses and UPS executives are lobbying Congress to grease the rails for unionization at FedEx, UPS' chief rival (for background, see this article in Wednesday's Wall Street Journal).  Collusion between Teamsters union brass and UPS is nothing new -- in fact, independent-minded UPS employees have frequently turned to staff attorneys with the National Right to Work Foundation reporting violations of their rights by both union bosses and the company, including coervice card check campaigns approved by UPS executives.

Many UPS employees who have exercised to refrain from formal union membership have nonetheless been forced to contribute to a "Strike and Defense Fund," which bars benefits to nonmembers. Of course, it was Teamsters union bosses who had no choice but to settle a lawsuit filed by UPS driver Rod Carter, a man union militants severely beat and stabbed for choosing to work during a strike to support his family (union officials also used union funds to bail the assailants out of jail).

With stories like these, it's little wonder Americans oppose giving union bosses even more government-granted special privileges.

Last week, Big Labor's bought-and-paid-for politicians in both the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate introduced the Card Check Forced Unionism Bill. This Big Labor-endorsed compulsory unionism scheme is intended to give federal government bureaucrats the unprecedented power to impose wages and working conditions, including forced union dues, on employees and employers after workers are herded into union collectives without even a secret ballot election.

Neal Catlett, former union president at a Whirlpool plant in Arkansas, spoke out against Big Labor's card check coercion:

Catlett, now retired from Whirlpool, opposes card check. He told The City Wire that he has seen plenty of “nonsense” among Whirlpool leaders and union leaders to know that anything other than a secret ballot will lead to intimidation, coercion and corruption on all sides.

“I strongly support secret ballots. Period. It doesn’t matter at what level, whether it is voting for a union or the president or your congressman,” Catlett said. “Your ideas should be personal as to if you want a union or don’t want a union.”

Card check is a dangerous encroachment on workers' rights in the workplace and opens up the door for a flood of union intimidation and coercion to force more workers into forced-union-dues-paying ranks. Carlett, discrediting any claim that the legislation protects workers based on his own personal experience as a union president, hit the nail on the head when he stated:

“Doing away with the secret ballot is not good for the unions. It’s not good for any business... Open voting creates an atmosphere of intimidation. It creates an atmosphere where people will use your opinion against you. I’ve seen the threats and I’ve actually seen the physical conflict, if you know what I mean, come from the business side and from the union side,” Catlett said. “I just don’t see how any process that is not private will protect the worker.”

Frankly, we suggest Cartlett hire a bodyguard immediately.  We're not kidding.  Union retribution can be swift and ugly.

On Friday, a United States District Court judge sentenced a former union organizer to six months in prison and three years of probation for his participation in an arson against a nonunion concrete plant. The Albany Times Union has the details:

The May 2003 arson was part of an organized effort by two union officials to sabotage companies that were using non-unionized workers at construction sites.

The sentencing of Michael Kwarta, 32, who had served as a labor organizer and sergeant-at-arms for Local 190 of Glenmont, marked the culmination of a meandering federal investigation into the underworld of Albany's politically connected laborers' unions.

The arson triggered a federal grand jury investigation of the union's ties to elected officials, public contracts and organized crime figures, and also whether top union leaders had authorized the firebombing.

Even though just about everybody in the union knew about Kwarta's role in the arson -- when an accomplice "hurled two Molotov cocktails at an operations trailer filled with computer equipment and it caught fire" -- union hierarchy gladly kept him on the payroll for five years until just days before he entered his guilty plea.  (Apparently he was just doing his job.)

For all their government-imposed special privileges, union thugs aren't above the law. Oh, actually, in many ways, they are:

The most egregious example of organized labor's special privileges and immunities is the 1973 United States v. Enmons decision. In it, the United States Supreme Court held that union violence is exempted from the Hobbs Act, which makes it a federal crime to obstruct interstate commerce by robbery or extortion. As a result, thousands of incidents of violent assaults (directed mostly against workers) by union militants have gone unpunished. Meanwhile, many states also restrict the authority of law enforcement to enforce laws during strikes.

Make no mistake, union violence is anything but dead.

Last week, the New York Times reported that Manhattan Federal District Court Judge Charles S. Haight Jr. ordered a one-year continuation of governmental oversight of the New York City carpenters’ union, citing recent bribery convictions of several local bosses, extensive off-the-books work, and an incident where union militants beat up a worker outside a Catholic school until he was unconscious (because he had the gall to challenge the insiders in a union election).

The union has spent the last 14 years under government supervision after signing a consent decree in a civil racketeering case alleging organized crime figures were favored for high-pay but no-show jobs. Regardless, union officials felt it necessary to argue in court that they do not need supervision. Their thugs all but erased any chance of that when they assaulted a dissident candidate.

Judge Haight agreed with the United States attorney’s argument that supervision would end when the union’s corruption had been eradicated. However, as blogger Warner Todd Huston noted, “The judge did mention that the union had done better since it originally went into government oversight, but that it is way too early to claim that the Mob influence and corruption is excised from the union.”

Indeed, the only reliable way to end this union corruption would be to end compulsory unionism.

For two weeks now, Freedom @ Work has covered the indictment of twelve union officials in Upstate New York for a laundry list of criminal activity that includes a stabbing and death threats. Nonunion employers and employees were targeted in an effort to push more workers into the union officials' forced dues-paying ranks.

A local paper even compared the acts depicted in the indictment to an episode of the HBO hit TV show The Sopranos.

The latest video added to the National Right to Work Foundation's YouTube video channel shows just how brutal these union officials' acts were by simply quoting word for word from the 62-page indictment.

A Foundation Action subscriber recently brought this developing story to our attention. Reports of union-related violence and intimidation have surfaced in Bakersfield, California, where members of the local United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners are accused of physically abusing a project manager at a local construction site. Police have responded to reports of union-related violence by opening an investigation into the incident.

Associated Builders and Contractors, Inc. intends to file a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board charging the union with physical violence, coercive behavior, and invasion of a job site. The organization represents non-union contractors nationwide.

This incident is only the most recent example of union members threatening non-striking co-workers with violence and intimidation. In case you missed it, Freedom@Work has been covering a campaign of union-instigated harassment at a Volvo auto plant in Pulaski County, Virginia. Data compiled by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research suggests that these confrontations are symptomatic of a wider problem, as union violence is often under-reported and difficult to prosecute.

Here is a copy of the indictment of twelve Operating Engineers Local 17 union officials we first discussed last week.

The 62-page indictment details a brutal and sustained campaign by union officials to terrorize employees and employers, in an effort attack employers whose workers haven't chosen unionization, and to force employees into forced-union dues paying ranks. Included in the indictment is a 33 page list of 75 individual acts of thuggery that includes:

• A stabbing
• A broken windshield that cut an employee's face
• Hundreds of thousands of dollars in vandalized construction equipment
• Threats against nonunion workers
• Running the license plates of nonunion employees
• Slashed tires
• Threats against going to the police
• Locking employees in and out of their workplace
• Throwing coffee at employees and their vehicles
• Sabotaging construction equipment
• The use of "star nails" to flatten employees' tires
• Death threats

In Upstate New York non-union workers were targets of a campaign of violence and intimidation by Operating Engineers Union Local 17 thugs:

The indictment accuses Local 17 leaders and members of dozens of threats and instances of vandalism and harassment against non-union workers and contractors. At times, members of other unions were also targeted.

Much of the activity took place at major publicly funded construction projects, including the expansion of Roswell Park Cancer Institute and renovations at Ralph Wilson Stadium, Buffalo State College and the Buffalo Sewer Authority’s treatment plant on Bird Island, prosecutors said.

One of the disturbing aspects to the case, in Flynn’s view, is that members of the local repeatedly used the Web site of the state Department of Motor Vehicles to find out the addresses of people they intended to harass.

Union members went to construction sites and took photos of the license plates of vehicles used by construction company executives or non-union workers, Flynn said.

“Then, they would use that information to find out where these people lived, and where their families lived,” Flynn said. “They would then make threats against people, mentioning their home addresses.”

At times the union officials' actions seem to be out a script for a Hollywood mafia movie:

According to prosecutor Charles B. Wydysh, [union organizer] Larson had a conversation in 2003 with an official of a construction firm, STS. The conversation took place about two months after a union member had stabbed the owner of STS in the neck in an Orchard Park bar.

The STS representative is quoted in court papers asking Larson what his company would gain by hiring members of the union.

“What are the positives?” the company official asked Larson. “You guys slash my tires, stab me in the neck, try to beat me up in a bar. What are the positives in signing? There are only negatives.”

“The positives,” Larson answered, “are that the negatives you are complaining about would go away.”