Date: Sat, 11 Jan 1997 10:57:49 GMT
Subject: Creating a free labour market


>>From 65535  Tue Jan  7 21:41:53 1997
>Date:         Tue, 7 Jan 1997 12:22:04 -0800
>Reply-To: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L-AT-YORKU.CA>
>Sender: Forum on Labor in the Global Economy <LABOR-L-AT-YORKU.CA>
>From: D Shniad <shniad-AT-SFU.CA>
>Subject:      Creating a free labour market
>Comments: To: Progressive Economists' Network <pen-l-AT-anthrax.ecst.csuchico.edu>
>To: Multiple recipients of list LABOR-L <LABOR-L-AT-YORKU.CA>
>
>UAW Solidarity - December, 1996
>
>GOONZ in the 'HOOD
>
>     By Michael Funke
>
>Sharon Fisher's voice quivers when she talks about it.
>Ed Platt gets angry still. Ron Heller was shocked when
>the police looked the other way. Debbie Shallenburger
>says it's un-American, what happened to the hard-
>working citizens of her community.
>
>It's been a year since UAW members recessed their 17-
>month strike at Caterpillar plants in three states. But
>in and around East Peoria, Illinois, home of
>Caterpillar's corporate offices, Local 974 members and
>spouses still talk about the gang of thugs who brought
>terror to their quiet communities.
>
>They would cruise up and down the streets of Peoria,
>East Peoria, and suburbs like Washington, Pekin, and
>Metamora, often parking in front of the homes of UAW
>members. They would videotape family members in front
>of their own homes, at restaurants and stores, while
>they were driving.
>
>They learned the names of children, and called to them
>by their first names. They even left a flashlight
>inside the locked car of one worker's daughter, just to
>show that they had been there.
>
>It was all part of a huge intimidation campaign, and it
>got even rougher on the picket line where gang members
>assaulted women, provoked men to fight back, and used
>videotape to get workers fired.
>
>When they went to the local police for help, they were
>treated like criminals. Later they learned that the
>state police were against them, too.
>
>Who are these goons who roamed the streets of working
>class neighborhoods, protected by the law while
>terrorizing decent, law-abiding people?
>
>They're employees of Vance International--the same gang
>of thugs hired to clamp down on coal miners in West
>Virginia, school teachers in Cleveland, aerospace
>workers in St. Louis, and, today, newspaper workers in
>Detroit.
>
>
>While many of security guards are
>hired to protect banks, patrol shopping
>malls, or watch apartment buildings,
>a growing number are employed by
>companies like Vance--a $90 million
>company built on the premise that
>the only good strike is one that's broken,
>the only good union is one that's busted.
>
>
>America Today: More Guards than Cops
>
>Vance is a key player in a growing industry. In 1990,
>$52 billion was spent on private security, compared to
>$30 billion on law enforcement. More than 10,000
>private security agencies employ 1.5 million people--
>triple the 554,000 state and local police officers
>across the nation.
>
>While many of these people are hired to protect banks,
>patrol shopping malls, or guard apartment buildings, a
>growing number are employed by companies like Vance--a
>$90 million security company built on the premise that
>the only good strike is one that's broken, the only
>good union is one that's busted.
>
>Vance and its subsidiary, Assets Protection Team Inc.
>(APT), have pioneered the use of surveillance in
>strikes, trying to provoke workers to violence, and
>then using videotapes and photos as "evidence" for
>employers who want to fire strike leaders.
>
>When spying and provocation aren't enough, Vance's APT
>goons resort to violence like the assault that has left
>Detroit newspaper striker Vito Sciuto permanently
>scarred and still suffering violent seizures more than
>a year after brain surgery.
>
>Sciuto, a mailer, was smashed in the skull with a heavy
>piece of wood when 20 APT thugs formed a tight V-shaped
>wedge and marched out of a distribution center gate
>into a circle of peaceful pickets. The goal that night,
>a Vance employee told a reporter, was "to hurt people."
>Detroit police watched the Vance riot, but no arrests
>were made.
>
>Arsonists for Hire?
>
>Three weeks before the assault on Sciuto, at a
>newspaper printing plant north of Detroit, Vance showed
>how far it would go to provoke a community reaction
>against strikers.
>
>Just after midnight, as strikers picketed outside the
>plant, a delivery truck inside burst into flames.
>Striker Kate DeSmet, outside the fence and about 100
>feet away, told police a half-dozen Vance guards were
>close to the truck when it caught fire.
>
>"It was like an Olympic torch," she said, "and they
>were all standing around like it was a campfire."
>
>The truck fire showed up on television sets throughout
>the Detroit area just a few days later--the final shot
>in a Detroit Newspaper commercial condemning striker
>violence. It was a powerful image, repeated over
>several days, and it cost strikers some community
>support.
>
>Almost six months later a county prosecutor absolved
>strikers of blame for the arson and said, "It is highly
>likely that somebody on the Detroit Newspaper Agency
>side of the fence was responsible." Vance, famous for
>videotape surveillance, offered no footage showing who
>set the fires.
>
>
>Detroit striker Vito Sciuto needed
>major surgery after he was brutally
>attacked by a Vance guard at a newspaper
>distribution center.  A Vance employee
>admitted that the goal that night was
>"to hurt people."
>
>Just a few weeks before the Detroit truck fire, back in
>Peoria, gunshots were fired at the homes of two
>Caterpillar officials. Vance had a tight security net
>over the homes of company officials, and UAW members--
>hounded by Vance spies at their own homes--couldn't get
>near them without being stopped or videotaped.
>
>"I find it amazing that they didn't catch the
>perpetrators on film," read one letter to a local
>newspaper. Bargaining was underway at the time, and
>Vance thugs stood the most to lose in a settlement
>because they'd be out of work. The UAW deplored the
>shootings, Cat never said a word, and Vance never
>produced any film.
>
>Gunfire is a traditional strikebreaking tool that dates
>back to the late 1800s when Pinkerton detectives were
>employed by robber barons to crush strikes, frame
>miners like the Molly Maguires on murder charges, and
>shoot down steel workers at Andrew Carnegie's Homestead
>works.
>
>Today, Vance/APT offers employers teams armed with
>"assault rifles or shotguns, gas masks, portable
>radios, tear gas munitions, counter-sniper equipment,
>intrusion detection devices, special illumination
>devices, armored vehicles, and K-9 teams." Special
>Response Corp. (SRC), an APT competitor, bluntly sells
>itself as "a private army when you need it most."
>
>A War on Families
>
>In Peoria, Vance's violence and intimidation was met
>with brave resistance by UAW families, often under some
>scary circumstances.
>
>Sharon Fisher and Debbie Shallenburger, wives of
>strikers, were pushed and grabbed by a Vance guard when
>pickets massed on a river levee next to a Caterpillar
>building.
>
>"It's something I don't even like to think about," says
>Fisher. "Debbie was indignant when she was pushed, and
>filed charges. After he grabbed my breast all I wanted
>was safety. I didn't say anything. I just wanted
>safety."
>
>There were at last 10 Vance cameras on the scene,
>Shallenburger says, and Vance was clearly trying to
>provoke the men to fight back so they could get it on
>tape. "I wanted to file charges, and the police said
>they'd get the film. But when Vance handed it over,
>three minutes were missing. The police ignored the
>charges."
>
>A few weeks later, Sharon and her husband Jim were out
>of town and got a frantic phone call from their
>daughter who had arrived at their home with two young
>children to find two Vance thugs parked not 10 feet
>away from the driveway. The next day, when she returned
>from a visit to neighbors, she found a flashlight just
>like those used by Vance on the front seat of her car.
>The car was locked, just as she had left it an hour and
>a half earlier.
>
>
>When he wasn't taking photos
>of UAW strikers, this Vance guard
>reportedly pushed and grabbed the
>wives of strikers on a picket line
>at Caterpillar.
>
>
>Earlier, the Fishers' daughter had gone to a plant gate
>looking for her parents and a security guard called to
>her by name and told her where she could find her
>parents. "Think of it," says Sharon Fisher. "Our
>daughter. For a Cat guard to know our family on sight
>was overwhelming. She had nothing to do with the strike
>at all."
>
>Ed Platt, a striker with 29 years at Caterpillar,
>confronted Vance spies who videotaped his wife in the
>yard of their Washington, Illinois home. "This is our
>town and you ain't going to take it over," Platt told
>them. "But when I went to the police, they said, "Screw
>you.' I've been a citizen here all my life and they
>treated me like a criminal."
>
>For striker Ron Heller and his wife Sandy, the strike
>took a bizarre twist when they were driving home from
>picket duty. Workers had learned to monitor police
>conversations on scanners when they were in the strike
>zone, and the Hellers picked up an exchange that
>included a squad car that was following them at the
>time.
>
>One cop mentioned that Ron Heller was "on that
>troublemakers list they send out." Heller promptly
>drove to the Washington police department and demanded
>a copy of the list. He didn't get it, but Freedom of
>Information Act (FOIA) efforts helped uncover a trail
>of court documents, police records, tapes, and
>testimony that suggests collusion between Vance, local
>police, Illinois State Police, and Caterpillar to
>undermine the rights of UAW members and their families.
>
>"Caterpillar had state and local officials in its back
>pocket," Ron Heller charges. "The police will not
>protect us," adds Sharon Fisher. "I just can't believe
>this goes on," says Debbie Shallenburger. "It's not the
>American way." What happened to them, they say,
>happened to many friends and neighbors.
>
>Although the Caterpillar strike is recessed and Vance
>has left town, UAW families still face a private police
>force in the form of David Hirtz and Associates, which
>is made up of former FBI agents and retired local and
>state police who have close friends in law enforcement
>and the courts.
>
>Hirtz, like John Anthony, the man who heads up security
>for the Detroit Newspapers, is former FBI. That's not
>unique in the security industry. Chuck Vance has
>parlayed his years as a Secret Service agent into the
>multimillion-dollar Vance operation.
>
>
>Vance security in wedge formation at
>a Detroit newspaper distribution center. . .
>...and attacking pickets just moments later.
>
>'Security' at a Terrible Price
>
>Vance's millions come at a terrible price, of course.
>Employers hellbent on breaking unions, spend millions
>more on security than they'd end up settling for in a
>contract. While there are no precise figures on what
>Vance charges, a lawsuit filed against the Detroit
>Newspapers reveals the startling sums paid to another
>agency that supplied security and replacement workers.
>
>Over a four-month period, at the start of the 17-month-
>old strike, the newspapers paid Huffmaster and
>Alternative Work Force over $2.3 million to provide 480
>guards and 580 scabs. Huffmaster/AWF is suing for
>another $1.6 million it says the newspapers owe them.
>That's just under $1 million a month, on top of what
>Detroit Newspapers pays Vance and scabs who still
>produce the Detroit News and Free Press.
>
>The cost to taxpayers is high as well. Detroit
>Newspapers met with the police chief in suburban
>Sterling Heights, site of their largest printing plant,
>four months before contracts expired and agreed to pay
>the city for police overtime and other costs of strike
>duty.
>
>A year later, Sterling Heights billed Detroit
>Newspapers over $2.1 million for what amounts to scab-
>herding and union-busting, including over $7,000 for
>pepper spray and tear gas grenades. Other suburban
>police departments have billed Detroit Newspapers for
>smaller amounts.
>
>An even greater cost, impossible to calculate, is paid
>by the workers and the community. Workers, of course,
>suffer the loses of their jobs, infringement of their
>rights, even physical injury. The community suffers
>when uniformed, armed private cops invade
>neighborhoods, stalk the streets, follow cars, spy on
>citizens, and work hand-in-glove with local police.
>
>With labor laws stacked against workers and their
>unions, security agencies like Vance become the "law"
>by default. They are the enforcers in management's
>disputes with labor--the ugliest and most dangerous of
>employer advantages.
>
>So long as employers can refuse to bargain, prolong
>strikes through endless hearings and court appeals, and
>hire "permanent" scabs to take the jobs of strikers,
>they have no reason to settle.
>
>Hiring their own private army is a logical extension of
>their fight against workers.
>Labor law reform--including a ban on all permanent
>replacements, faster National Labor Relations Board
>(NLRB) action, stiffer penalties for unfair labor
>practices, and public disclosure of the full cost of
>anti-union campaigns--will go a long way towards
>putting the bosses' private armies out of business.
>
>===================================>Solidarity would like to acknowledge Dick Blin,
>Tom Johnson, John   Lippert, and Mike Zielinski, whose
>articles served as sources for this     report.
>
>



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