Will ‘shocking acts of violence’ by unions go unpunished?
Washington Examiner
September 23, 2019
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/op-eds/will-shocking-acts-of-violence-by-unions-go-unpunished
Nearly four years ago, two officers of Iron Workers Local 395 allegedly led a savage assault on tradesmen employed at a church-owned construction site in northwestern Indiana. Their aim was to convert the union-free project into a union-only one.
During the assault, union goons allegedly threw to the ground Scott Kudingo, an employee of the Cary, Illinois-based firm D5 Iron Works Inc. They then began “clubbing, kicking, and punching” him “in the face, arms, back, and body.”
Kudingo’s jaw was “shattered in part” and broken in “two other places.” At least some of the union toughs who kicked him in the face and back are believed to have been wearing “steel-toe boots.”
Evidence gathered by the police immediately after the incident in January 2016, in Dyer, Indiana, shows that top officers of Local 395, based in Portage, Indiana, participated in the attack. Witnesses identified union President Jeffrey Veach, union business agent Thomas Williams and roughly 10 accomplices as those who attacked D5 Iron Works tradesmen.
Moreover, prosecutors plan to present evidence placing the union defendants at the scene of the attack based on their own cell phone location records, via the testimony of an expert witness.
Within the next few weeks, Veach and Williamson are expected to be tried in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana, Hammond Division, on charges of conspiracy to commit extortion and attempted extortion.
It seems like an open-and-shut case. But unfortunately, even if a unanimous jury concludes Veach and Williamson led the assault near the Dyer Baptist Church — after which Kudingo had to be hospitalized and have his jaw wired shut for roughly three months — the lawless Local 395 bosses and their goons may never be held fully accountable for their crimes.
The obstacle to justice in the federal criminal case against Veach and Williamson is the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial, 46-year-old decision in United States v. Enmons.
In 1973, a 5-4 majority of the justices who heard Enmons exempted threats, vandalism, and violence perpetrated to secure “legitimate” union goals from prosecution under the federal Hobbs Act, which otherwise prohibits the use of extortionate threats and violence in interstate commerce. The legal loophole created in Enmons makes it extraordinarily difficult to prosecute union thugs.
Not surprisingly, the criminal lawyers defending Veach and Williamson have already repeatedly invoked Enmons in their attempts to get their Big Labor clients off the hook.
In a joint motion filed this March, for example, the union lawyers contended that the charges against Veach and Williamson “should be dismissed because the facts alleged” describe “'legitimate union objectives,’ which were specifically exempted from the reach” of the Hobbs Act by Enmons.
Fortunately, this strategy has not been successful so far. In an opinion and order issued in June, U.S. District Judge Theresa L. Springmann, who is currently presiding over the case, acknowledged that union thugs who target non-striking employees or the property of a unionized business don’t have to follow the law. But she added that Enmons doesn’t protect Veach and Williamson because their targets were a non-union business owner and his employees.
Thanks to Springmann’s order, Veach and Williamson won’t be able to invoke Enmons at trial as the reason why they shouldn’t be punished for committing, in the prosecution’s words, “shocking acts of violence against ordinary workers.” But if they are convicted, their attorneys will almost certainly appeal the verdict on the grounds that Springmann interpreted the Enmons precedent too narrowly.
It’s simply intolerable that Veach and Williamson could get away with leading this brutal assault because of a misbegotten Supreme Court ruling nearly half a century old.
That’s why, last week, I introduced on Capitol Hill a common-sense reform known as the Freedom from Union Violence Act. This measure would overturn Enmons and hold union bosses who orchestrate and/or commit threats and violence accountable under the Hobbs Act.
Because Enmons was a matter of statutory, not constitutional, interpretation, Congress retains power to reverse it legislatively. Who can seriously defend a status quo in which one small group of citizens, union officials and their militant followers, are largely exempt from obeying a federal statute all other citizens must unconditionally obey?
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