Anti-union violence is physical force intended to harmunion officials, union organizers, union members, union sympathizers, or their families. It is most commonly used either during union organizing efforts, or during strikes. The aim most often is to prevent a union from forming, to destroy an existing union, or to reduce the effectiveness of a union or a particular strike action. If strikers prevent people or goods to enter or leave a workplace, violence may be used to allow people and goods to pass the picket line.
Violence against unions may be isolated, or may occur as part of a campaign that includes spying,intimidation, impersonation,disinformation, andsabotage.[1] Violence inlabor disputes may be the result of unreasonable polarization, or miscalculation. It may be willful and provoked, or senseless and tragic. On some occasions, violence in labor disputes may be purposeful and calculated,[2] for example the hiring and deployment ofgoon squads to assault strikers.
The practice of workers organizing, and meeting resistance for organizing, dates to antiquity.[3] The first known individual killed by authorities for labor activities is likely Cinto Brandini, executed with nine others in 1345 Florence for attempting to organize woolcombers.[4]
According to a study in 1969, the United States has had the bloodiest and most violentlabor history of any industrial nation in the world.[5] Mass labor violence in the U.S. peaked in the early 20th century and has largely subsided since the 1940s. But the deadly suppression of labor unions on a large scale persists into the new century, in the 2012Marikana killings in South Africa, in the ongoing assassinations oftrade union members in Colombia, and the South Korean government's response toKorean Confederation of Trade Unions protests.[6]
Since unions are organized to achievecollective bargaining power to begin with, most union conflicts have been motivated primarily by economic issues (wages, working hours, safety conditions, work rules, etc.),[7] and have engaged antagonists (employers, hired strikebreakers, replacement workers, local law enforcement) with economic goals in mind. In some instances, however, other causes emerge.
In South Africa the 1922Rand Rebellion also had underlying racial causes, taking on the slogan "Workers of the world, unite and fight for a white South Africa!",[8] before their strike grew to a small-scale rebellion at the cost of 200 lives. The behavior of South African police in the1946 African Mine Workers' Union strike is said to have led to the formation of theNorthern Rhodesian African Mineworkers' Union in 1949 as a cornerstone of the anti-apartheid movement.[9]
As with race, for some incidents there is no clear distinction between anti-union violence and political suppression. Polish labor unions were centrally involved in workers' uprisings and/or general strikes that challenged the sitting governments in1905,1923, and1937. In a similar way thestrike of Asturian miners in 1934, put down by right-wing Spanish government forces with great loss of life, amounted to an insurrection through work stoppage, not an economic labor action. Unions continued to play a political and military role in the subsequentSpanish Civil War.
Along withFranco in Spain, other totalitarian regimes in Europe brought their labor unions under government control, violently when necessary. After coming to power as chancellor in January 1933, Adolf Hitler declared May Day a national holiday, then on May 2, 1933, unexpectedly moved to outlaw labor unions as part of the Nazi "synchronization" process. Major unions such as theAllgemeiner Deutscher Gewerkschaftsbund were raided that day, their accounts seized, and their leaders (Gustav Schiefer,Wilhelm Leuschner, Erich Luebbe) arrested and sent to concentration camps. (The bodies of four murdered trade union officials in Duisburg were only found a year later, in April 1934.)[10] Every worker in the nation was then compelled to join the single party-controlled union, theGerman Labour Front. Similar coercive violence was exercised against labor unions in conquered nations, as in the Netherlands in 1941.[11]
Anti-union violence may be used as a means to intimidate others, as in thehanging of union organizer Frank Little from a railroad trestle inButte, Montana. A note was pinned to his body which said, "Others Take Notice! First And Last Warning!" The initial of the last names of seven well-known union activists in the Butte area were on the note, with the "L" for Frank Little circled.[13][14]
Anti-union violence may be abrupt and unanticipated. Three years after Frank Little was lynched, a strike by Butte miners was suppressed with gunfire when deputized mine guards suddenly fired upon unarmed picketers in theAnaconda Road Massacre. Seventeen were shot in the back as they tried to flee, and one man died.[15]
Other anti-union violence may seem orchestrated, as in 1914 when mine guards and the state militia fired into a tent colony of striking miners in Colorado, an incident that came to be known as theLudlow Massacre.[16] During that strike, the company hired the Baldwin Felts agency, which built an armored car so their agents could approach the strikers' tent colonies with impunity. The strikers called it the "Death Special". At the Forbes tent colony,
"[The Death Special] opened fire, a protracted spurt that sent some six hundred bullets tearing through the thin tents. One of the shots struck miner Luka Vahernik, fifty, in the head, killing him instantly. Another striker, Marco Zamboni, eighteen ... suffered nine bullet wounds to his legs... One tent was later found to have about 150 bullet holes..."[17]
Sometimes, there is simultaneous violence on both sides. In an auto workers strike organised byVictor Reuther and others in 1937, "[u]nionists assembled rocks, steel hinges, and other objects to throw at the cops, and police organizedtear gas attacks and mounted charges."[18]
There have been cases where violence has been perpetrated or encouraged by agents of management, intending it to be blamed on the union.[19]
in theLena massacre hundreds of striking goldfield workers were killed by tsarist government forces in northeastSiberia near theLena River on 17 April [O.S. 4 April] 1912
on 17 May 1869, a labor action of Welsh colliers (forcibly delivering the mine's new operator to the police station) developed intoThe Mold Riot, a confrontation between a mob of 1500 workers and citizens, versusKing's Own Royal Regiment. When pelted with stones, the King's Own fired into the crowd, killing four
Spain
Repression an violence against the Spanish labour movement was widespread during various of the 19th and 20th century political regimes:
On 4 January 1888, in the Plaza de la Constitución ofMinas de Ríotinto (Province of Huelva,Andalusia) around 200 people were shot dead by two companies of theSpanish Army when they protested for better wages and the end of the emission of toxic fumes in the mines. Protestors were mainly workers of the local mines, led by anarchist Maximiliano Tornet. The massacre lasted only 15 minutes and the bodies of the dead were probably buried under the slag of some mine in the region.[20]
On 5 January 1932 a group of workers, organized by the socialist unionUGT, strike in a shoe factory in theRiojan town ofArnedo. Guardia Civil broke the strike and killed 11 workers during a protest, part of the strike, in the local Plaza de la República.[26]
A brutal campaign of repression against union members was unleashed during theWhite Terror (known in Spain asRepresión franquista). A large portion of the 150,000-400,000 deathly victims of the terror were members of the two main unions at the time:UGT andCNT. Both organizations were almost destroyed by this mass campaign of repression.
3 workers were killed by theArmed Police during a construction strike in the city ofGranada.[27]
The 10 of March 1972 2 workers (Amador Rey and Daniel Niebla, members of the clandestine unionCCOO) were killed by theArmed Police in the city ofFerrol. Another 16 were injured by bullets, 160 workers were fired, 101 arrested, 60 incarcerated and 54 fined with between 50,000 and 250,000pesetas. 10 March is officially commemorated inGalicia as Day of the Galician Working Class.[28][29]
in theVitoria massacre 5 striking workers were killed by the Armed police,[30][31][32] and another two people were killed in the protests against police violence after the incident, one inTarragona and another inBasauri.[33]
Sweden
in theÅdalen shootings of May 1931, Swedish military forces opened fire against labour demonstrators in theSwedish sawmill district ofÅdalen, killing five people, including a young woman
Historically, violence against unions in the United States has included attacks by detective and guard agencies, such as thePinkertons,Baldwin Felts,Burns, orThiel detective agencies; citizens groups, such as theCitizens' Alliance; company guards; police; national guard; or even the active duty military.[34] In the bookFrom Blackjacks To Briefcases, Robert Michael Smith states that during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, anti-union agencies "spawned violence and wreaked havoc" on the labor movement.[35] According toMorris Friedman, detective agencies were themselves for-profit companies, and a "bitter struggle" between capital and labor could be counted upon to create "satisfaction and immense profit" for agencies such as the Pinkerton company.[36] Harry Wellington Laidler wrote a book in 1913 detailing how one of the largest union busters in the United States,Corporations Auxiliary Company, had a sales pitch offering the use of provocation and violence.[37]
During theLattimer massacre, nineteen unarmed immigrant coal miners were suddenly gunned down at the Lattimer mine nearHazleton, Pennsylvania, on September 10, 1897.[38][39] In theColorado Labor Wars, martial law was imposed by the Colorado National Guard in order to put down striking miners. A study ofindustrial violence in 1969 concluded, "There is no episode in American labor history in which violence was as systematically used by employers as in the Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904."[5] In 1914, mine guards and the state militia fired into a tent colony of striking miners in Colorado, an incident that came to be known as theLudlow Massacre.[16] During that strike, the company hired the Baldwin Felts agency, which built an armored car so their agents could approach the strikers' tent colonies with impunity. The strikers called it the "Death Special". In 1917,union organizer Frank Little was hanged from a railroad trestle inButte, Montana, with a note pinned to his body which carried a "warning" to other labor activists.[40][14] In 1927, during another coal strike inColorado, state police and mine guards fired pistols, rifles and a machine gun into a group of five hundred striking miners and their wives in what came to be called theColumbine Mine Massacre.
By the early 1900s, public tolerance for violence during labor disputes began to decrease. Yet violence involving strikebreaking troops and armed guards continued into the 1930s.[35] Legislation related to employer strategies such as violent strike breaking would have to wait until afterWorld War II.[41] Beginning in the 1950s, employers began to embrace new methods of managing workers and unions which were still effective, but much more subtle.[41]
United Farm Workers of America
During the 1960s, unfair working conditions presented themselves inside the agriculture industry. Because of this an American labor leader namedCesar Chavez formed the organizationUnited Farm Workers. This organization was founded to fight for rights ofFarmworkers in the United States. It helped push for better wages and working conditions and to unionize farm workers.[42] During this time they went on strikes and boycotted different farming companies such as Schenley Industries and the DiGiorgio Corporation. These strikes helped gain labor contracts with an increase in wages and improved working conditions.[43] These strikes later lead to the death of two individuals named Nagi Daifallah and Juan de la Cruz.[44] These men were filled by the County Sheriffs for protesting at the California grape strike.
Canada
With casualties as one indication of its national history, a union pamphlet published in 2006 counted a total of 24 "Canadian Labour Martyrs" since 1903, a number that includes Joseph Mairs of the Vancouver Island War of 1912–1914, coal minerAlbert Goodwin killed in 1918, minerBill Davis of Nova Scotia (namesake of theWilliam Davis Miners' Memorial Day), and the 1929 case ofRosvall and Voutilainen inThunder Bay, Ontario.[45]
Rosvall and Voutilainen were murdered for their pro-union efforts resulting in the authorities in Thunder Bay conducting a major cover up in an attempt to conceal the truth. Thunder Bay remains a hot bed of anti-union violence against pro-union individuals resulting in Thunder Bay being labelled the Capital of Anti-union Violence of Canada.
Mexico
theCananea strike of organized mine workers in June 1906, and theRío Blanco strike of unionized textile workers in January 1907, became two linked symbols of the corruption and civil repression of the administration of Mexican presidentPorfirio Díaz. They became "household words for hundreds of thousands of Mexicans".[46]
Colombia has been identified as one of the most hazardous for present-day labor unionists.[48] According to theInternational Trade Union Confederation, over 2800 unionists were killed between 1986 and April 2010.[49]
Isidro Gil, a leader of theNational Union of Food Industry Workers at theBogotá,Colombia bottling plant of theCoca-Cola company who was shot dead at the plant on December 5, 1996. Four other leaders of the union have been killed since 1994, as have other union leaders in Colombia.
El Salvador
Estimates of the number of labor union members killed in the four first years of theSalvadoran Civil War (1979–1983) range from 3,000 to 8,000.[50] The 2004 murder of a visiting Teamsters organizer from New Jersey brought international attention to the country's "long record of hostility to union labor".[51]
Venezuela
As of 2010, some 75 union organizers and union members had been killed in the prior two years, according to figures compiled by the Catholic Church. New unions flourishing under theChavez administration challenged established unions for lucrative memberships. One common tactic was public assassination.[52]
the 1922Rand Rebellion expanded from a strike into a small-scale rebellion at the cost of 200 lives, and the events of the1946 African Mine Workers' Union strike indirectly led to the development of the anti-apartheid movement.[53]
Chea Vichea, leader of the Free Trade Union of Workers of the Kingdom ofCambodia (FTUWKC), was shot in the head and chest while reading a newspaper at a kiosk inPhnom Penh on January 22, 2004.[54] He had been dismissed by the INSM Garment Factory (located in the Chum Chao District of Phnom Penh), as a reprisal for helping to establish a trade union at the company.
India
Shankar Guha Niyogi, a leader of theMukti Morcha union movement in theIndian state ofChhattisgarh, was killed inBhilai, on September 27, 1991,[55] allegedly by a hired assassin, in the middle of a major dispute about the regularisation of workers' contracts in the steel and engineering industries. The alleged assassin and two industrialists were convicted of his murder but released on appeal; their release is itself now subject to appeal.
one striking union worker was killed outright, and forty wounded by gunfire, when police shot into a crowd in the 1929Rothbury riot,New South Wales, described as "the bloodiest event in national industrial history."[58]
New Zealand
Only three people have been killed in New Zealand's industrial history:Fred Evans, killed in 1912 in theWaihi miners' strike, Christine Clarke, the wife of a picketing worker struck by a car on New Year's Eve 1999,[59] and the victim of a suitcase bomb was left in the foyer of the Trades Hall in Wellington, 27 March 1984.[60] The Trades Hall was the headquarters of a number oftrade unions, and it is most commonly assumed that they were the target of the bombing, although other theories have been put forward. Ernie Abbott, the building's caretaker, was killed when he attempted to move the suitcase, which is believed to have contained three sticks ofgelignite triggered by amercury switch.[61] To this day, the perpetrator has never been identified. Those elements of the New Zealand Police responsible for preventing and investigating such crimes were headquartered in the building across the street.
^Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, 2003, p. 87
^Robert Hunter, Violence and the labor movement, Macmillan, 1914 (1919 version), page 318
^John Romer,Ancient Lives; the story of the Pharaoh's Tombmakers. London: Phoenix Press, 1984, pp. 116-123 See also E.F. Wente, "A letter of complaint to the Vizier To", inJournal of Near Eastern Studies, 20, 1961 and W.F. Edgerton, "The strikes in Ramses III's Twenty-ninth year",Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 10, 1951.
^abPhilip Taft and Philip Ross, "American Labor Violence: Its Causes, Character, and Outcome," The History of Violence in America: A Report to the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence, ed. Hugh Davis Graham and Ted Robert Gurr, 1969.
^Egea Bruno, P. M. (1986b). Movimiento obrero en la sierra de Cartagena (1875–1923).Anales de Historia Contemporánea (Universidad de Murcia) (5): 123-144. ISSN 0212-6559.
^Casanova, J. (2007).República y guerra civil (volumen 8 de la colección Historia de España dirigida por Joseph Fontana y Ramón Villares). Madrid, Crítica Marcial Pons.
^Ruiz, R. M. (1996). La significación histórica de la huelga de la construcción de Granada (21-29 de julio de 1970). InFuturo del sindicalismo (pp. 15-44). Diputación Provincial de Granada.
^Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, 2003, p. 12.
^abRobert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, 2003, p. xvi.
^The Pinkerton Labor Spy, Morris Friedman, Wilshire Book Company, 1907, pp. 21–22.
^Harry Wellington Laidler, Boycotts and the labor struggle economic and legal aspects, John Lane company, 1913, pages 291-292
^Anderson, John W.Transitions: From Eastern Europe to Anthracite Community to College Classroom. Bloomington, Ind.: iUniverse, 2005.ISBN0-595-33732-5
^Miller, Randall M. and Pencak, William.Pennsylvania: A History of the Commonwealth. State College, Penn.: Penn State Press, 2003.ISBN0-271-02214-0
^Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All, A History of the Industrial Workers of the World, University of Illinois Press Abridged, 2000, pages 223-224
^abRobert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, 2003, p. xvii.
^The Cambridge History of Latin America, by Leslie Bethell, Cambridge University Press, 1986, page 66
^Asociación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos y Mártires por la Liberación Nacional (Bolivia), Fundación Solón, and Capítulo Boliviano de Derechos Humanos, Democracia y Desarrollo.Informe sobre las desapariciones forzadas en Bolivia. La Paz: ASOFAMD, 2008. p. 20
