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Do "union thugs" really exist?

colfax

colfax

Council Member
My neighbor is what we call a "weekender" in my community, as distinguished from those of us "permanents" who live here all the time. He has a cabin here.

He is a union employee of the GM assembly plant in Arlington, Texas and is a "shop steward" for the union, i.e. he's a worker there and the "go to guy" for employees who have have complaints about GM not honoring their contract.


He a small man, not muscular at all, not taller than 5'9" and probably weighing 150 or less.


I socialize with that guy and tease him that he cannot possibly make "union thug" without working out. I asked if he knows any "union thugs", and he tells me he's never met one.


You would think the UAW's "shop steward" for an auto plant would be a "union thug" himself or at least know some. Sorta makes me doubt "union thugs" really exist except in a conservative's mind.

Does anyone here actually know a "union thug"?
 
Most of the people crying about "union thugs" are old white men remembering times of Hoffa and the AFL-CIO I assume......Bringing up events from the past to justify their crazed fear mongering
 
Sure they exist - but that doesn't mean that every steward or B.A. is "a union thug". Thuggery, btw, is not defined by stature.

I know plenty of union folks of many, many differing trades. Many are great folks, some are not, a few are bullyish, strongarm tactician types - ever searching for a grievance. Human nature is like that - it penetrates just about every institution.
 
Perhaps, but

Unions do not HAVE to have actual thugs,
All they need is to have men LOOK like thugs.
I know.
I had the experience in Balt.
Some of the union people there would scare the crap out of you
 
I have friends who have been non-union employees who have been pressured by unions to join the union. To me that is being a union thug. Two of them felt very intimidated/threatened, and reported it. In another instance a client's company got a contract in another state. That state is heavily unionized for their type of work, but in MD that industry is not heavily unionized. Their site and trailer was continually vandalized and union employees of other contractors on the site where aggressive frequently tried to start trouble with these employees.

I would not think of a "union thug" as the guy who is sort of a union rep/employee sort. Unless he was applying undue influence or pressure for non-union folks to join.

connie
 
Personally, I don't open my doors for them or Jehovah's Witnesses. Actually, if I don't know you I just don't answer the door or the phone. I didn't know the mormon's threatened you with actual physical harm though. They look pretty skinny though.. I think I could take 'em.
 
fxstc said:
Unions do not HAVE to have actual thugs,
All they need is to have men LOOK like thugs.
I know.
I had the experience in Balt.
Some of the union people there would scare the crap out of you
Click to expand...
Are you just intimidated by working class people with confidence?
 
Hmmm can it be a shot of tequila and a cup of Sumatra? Lupe... I think you may be onto the best hangover remedy ever invented!
 
Once upon a time, the Teamster's union allied itself with organized crime in order to have enough muscle to fight back against strikebreakers, who beat, intimidated and killed union members and union organizers. The strikebreakers lost the war, but it left the union pretty much permanently attached to the mob.

My dad was a Teamster late in this period, from 1961 to 1992. He actually knew some of the Kansas City mobsters that were attached to the union -- people who might have been accurately described as "union thugs." He once told me that he was having a conversation in a bar with one of them, when a third party, unknown to my father, came to the table. Before the third man could speak, the "union thug" said to him, "I want you to meet my good friend 'Trapdoor's Dad'." He's a straight man." Basically meaning "he's not in the mob, don't talk business."

My cousin, meantime, was a union steward at the trucking company where he, Dad, and another uncle all worked. Although big and physically imposing, he probably wasn't the sort of person you'd call a union thug. But one man's thug is another man's defender, when you're talking about the American labor movement. The mafiosi in partnership with Teamsters and the UAW were no worse than the thuggish machine-gun toting guards defending the Ford plants when Ford faced labor riots, nor the similar muscle employed by strike-breaking companies throughout U.S. history.

I don't know if there are union thugs now, but I know there's a place in the world for them.
 
Mr. Colfax,

Sounds like a typical shop steward. Not many union workers can afford a weekend cabin, unless of course, you're one that can dip into the union pension funds to, ahem, finance your union activities.

And I'm not surpised he says he knows no union thugs. I sure an organized crime capo would tell you there is no mafia as well
 
ya-ta-hey said:
Mr. Colfax,

Sounds like a typical shop steward. Not many union workers can afford a weekend cabin, unless of course, you're one that can dip into the union pension funds to, ahem, finance your union activities.

And I'm not surpised he says he knows no union thugs. I sure an organized crime capo would tell you there is no mafia as well
Click to expand...


A UAW man with 20+ years of time in the union is probably knocking down low six-figures. He can afford a cabin without dipping into union funds. He makes more, of course, if he's a tool and die man, a millwright, or in another of the unionized skilled trades in addition to being the shop steward.
 
NightSwimmer said:
Do "union thugs" really exist?

Yes. In history books.
Click to expand...

Past union thuggishness, though real, was tame compared to past management thuggishness -- they used to hire thugs to crack skulls during strikes. "A People's History of the United States," by Howard Zinn, is a real eye-opener about the real physical danger labor organizers faced in the process of building the American middle class.
 
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