Reply #20: Violence is often a act of the reflection of the world people see......... [View All]

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Around them. There is nothing hidden about the fact that potentially the new governor of California is largely famed by the violence help depict, is also seen as gaining position by force, physically or otherwise. I am a Union member and in no way support any part of this type of behavior. But one also must question much of the governments double dealing on almost all fronts in which labor is involved.

IMO Labor support and legislation is one area which the federal government has little to be proud of, mostly it has always been dragged to the table by Business seeking relief. Mostly the laws we now have on the books about are a result of union pressure on business. Even more ridiculous is the problems that surround the ethics of US business that often would rather go under or out of business than negotiate with the workers and the unions they represent. This is world we live in, we didn't make it, but we all have to live in it. Think about it when you buy that ticket to next so called action movie

http://www.commondreams.org/views01/0212-04.htm

Published on Monday, February 12, 2001
Marc Rich's Hidden History as a Union-Buster
by Russell Mokhiber and Robert Weissman

Longtime fugitive from justice Marc Rich has become the most notorious recipient of a presidential pardon since Richard Nixon. President Clinton issued a pardon for the commodities trader in the final hours of his tenure in office.

What is now widely known about Rich has cast a dark cloud over what Clinton hoped would be a glorious exit from the presidency. Charged with income tax fraud and conspiracy, Rich fled to Switzerland, from which he could not be extradited. Living in the lap of luxury, he continued his wheeling and dealing in international commodities markets, including through trades with apartheid South Africa. He invested heavily in seeking a pardon, courting the Israeli government (dethroned Israel President Ehud Barak personally lobbied Clinton for Rich's pardon), hiring top-ranking officials from Democratic and Republican administrations to represent him, and relying on his ex-wife to lavish money on Democrats during the Clinton years.

What is not widely known, at least outside of West Virginia and certain labor circles, is that Rich played a central role in one of the highest profile union-busting efforts the United States has seen in recent decades.
In the early 1990s, Marc Rich was the power-behind-the-scenes at the Ravenswood Aluminum Corporation (RAC) facility in Ravenswood, West Virginia, site of one of the most embittered U.S. labor-management disputes of recent decades.
The Ravenswood conflict has been chronicled by Tom Juravich and Kate Bronfenbrenner in their inspiring account, Ravenswood: The Steelworkers' Victory and the Revival of American Labor (Ithaca, New York: ILR/Cornell University Press, 1999).
In 1990, in a premeditated effort to break the union, RAC locked out its 1,700 workers, members of the United Steelworkers of America, and hired permanent replacements.

As the contract deadline neared, RAC installed surveillance cameras, new security systems and a chainlink fence around the perimeter of the facility. The night of the lockout, the company brought in a goon squad security force equipped with riot gear, clubs, tear gas and video cameras used to constantly monitor the workers' pickets. The goons introduced a climate of fear and made violence on the picket lines, and in the town, an ever-present fear.
Caught unprepared, the Steelworkers' local was able to keep all but a handful of workers from crossing the picket line and union solidarity was strong and militant, but RAC was ready to wait the workers out.
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