Unions for the Little Guy? Yeah Right!

From BIGGOVERNMENT.COM:

KENOSHA – Apparently there’s no room for free thought or disagreement within the Wisconsin Education Association Council.

We suppose that’s not terribly surprising for a group that has to force its members to join.

Still, it’s troubling to hear that Kristi LaCroix, the courageous public school teacher who had the guts to film a television ad supporting Gov. Scott Walker’s reforms, is being harassed by union zealots to the point where she wants to change careers.
LaCroix, who teaches at Lakeview Technology Academy in the Kenosha school district, recently posted the following on her Facebook page, according a news story from WISN 1130:

“Going through and deleting my daily amount of hate mail that is sent to my work email. I have now been assured, by one of the emails (all of which I forward to my Principal) that there is an online movement called ‘Fire Kristi‘ where they are going to email, post and talk to everyone (telling) millions of stories to ruin my reputation, career and life.

“Kind of hard to keep my head up with stuff like this. I have said for a couple of years that I really need to leave teaching. I think that it is time for me to move on.”

Here’s a sample of an email that’s been sent to LaCroix:

“On Facebook there are lots of people willing to join the Fire Kristi movement. You are alone in a wilderness. Your financial help from the likes of the Koch brothers will dry up once your liabilities outweigh your assets, which will be very soon. Your best bet is to start a job search soon. Enjoy your isolation.”

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Here are just a few — of the MANY — examples of leftist violence through unions:

  • In 1905, Governor Frank Steunenberg (D-Idaho) was assassinated by members of the militant Western Federation of Miners, due to his refusal to cave to their demands.
  • In 1990, the Teamsters Union in New York City struck against the New York Daily News, and pelted replacement drivers with bricks, rocks, and baseball bats, and one Teamster was charged with transporting Molotov cocktails.
  • In 1991, Steelworkers Local 5668 in West Virginia was found responsible for committing over 700 act of violence against strikebreakers, including two house bombings, six house shootings, four arsons, and 43 death threats.
  • In 1993, 16,000 members of the United Mine Workers went on strike in West Virginia. Non-union subcontractor Eddie York refused to walk out, and was shot in the head by union thugs. Callously endorsing the murder, Richard Trumka (now head of the AFL-CIO, and widely known as Obama’s puppet-master), said “if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you’re going to burn your finger.”
  • In 1997, Teamsters Local 769 in Miami ordered a strike against UPS, and UPS driver Rod Carter, refusing to strike, was stopped and stabbed with an ice pick while on his route. Another driver testified that union bosses sanctioned the stabbing.
  • In 2005, Andrew Shomers of Laborers Union Local 91 in Buffalo, N.Y. pleaded guilty to vandalizing local housing authority offices and firebombing workers on an asbestos-removal project.

HotAir h/t – This is more video from previous incidents:

Attack on FOX Reporter

Another Attack Caught on Video… police refused to do his duty:

Richard Trumka is a thug’s thug, and a crafty one at that.

The AFL-CIO boss believes the end justifies the means. Breaking the law is acceptable if it advances the cause. Unions should “forget about the law; this is about more than that,” he said at the “Future of Unions” roundtable in Detroit on April 7.

[….]

Trumka encouraged and approved acts of violence by UMW strikers during a labor dispute in the late 1980s. As Virginia Circuit Court Judge Donald McGlothlin, Jr. declared, “The evidence shows beyond any shadow of a doubt that violent activities are being organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”

(FRONTPAGE)

Michelle Malkin has an outstanding post today on Unions and all the various connections and violence that naturally ensues from such connections and view of the world. By view, I mean a class warfare point of view on history and economics – Marxist in other words. Here is Michelle’s post/article:

….My syndicated column today takes on the rise of President Obama’s best new Big Labor buddy, Richard Trumka — whose looming presence on the political scene I first flagged in April. As we noted last week, he’s got a combined $88 million war chest with his labor alliance and a Marxist get-out-the-vote force behind him. When they are through, they’ll make the SEIU Purple Army’s political expenditures (and its thuggery) look like a pittance.

On a related note, the NLRB (with SEIU attorney Craig Becker recess-appointed onto the catbird’s seat) is set to launch an assault on workers’ rights to a secret ballot to remove an unwanted union. See here. Card check through the back door. Who needs the legislative front door?

And yesterday on Megyn Kelly’s show, I noted that union members can opt out of having their hard-earned dues used for political purposes. Several readers e-mailed that they had never heard of the process by which this was possible and wanted to know how they could do it. Here are your rights as a union worker. Here is a backgrounder on the permissible use of forced dues. Here’s my 1999 column on how public school teachers in Washington state National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation guarantees the right to full financial disclosure from a union and a right to challenge the figures in court if they disagree. Spread the word. challenged their union over their political dues power grab. Free speech not only means the freedom to voice your political views, but also the freedom from being forced to pay for someone else’s. U.S. Supreme Court precedent established by the D.C.-based

[….]

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The new Obama/AFL-CIO power alliance — underwritten with $40 million in hard-earned worker dues — is a midterm shotgun marriage of Beltway brass knuckles and Big Labor brawn. Trumka warmed up his rhetorical muscles this past week with full-frontal attacks on former GOP vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin. He indignantly accused her of “getting close to calling for violence” and suggested that her criticism of Tea Party-bashing labor bosses amounted to “terrorizing” workers.

Trumka and Obama will cast Big Labor as an unassailable force for good in American history. But when it comes to terrorizing workers, Trumka knows whereof he speaks.

Meet Eddie York. He was a workingman whose story will never scroll across Obama’s teleprompter. A nonunion contractor who operated heavy equipment, York was shot to death during a strike called by the United Mine Workers 17 years ago. Workmates who tried to come to his rescue were beaten in an ensuing melee. The head of the UMW spearheading the wave of strikes at that time? Richard Trumka. Responding to concerns about violence, he shrugged to the Virginian-Pilot in September 1993: “I’m saying if you strike a match and you put your finger in it, you’re likely to get burned.” Incendiary rhetoric, anyone?

A federal jury convicted one of Trumka’s UMW captains on conspiracy and weapons charges in York’s death. According to the Washington, D.C.-based National Legal and Policy Center, which tracks Big Labor abuse, Trumka’s legal team quickly settled a $27 million wrongful death suit filed by York’s widow just days after a judge admitted evidence in the criminal trial. An investigative report by Reader’s Digest disclosed that Trumka “did not publicly discipline or reprimand a single striker present when York was killed. In fact, all eight were helped out financially by the local.”

In Illinois, Trumka told UMW members to “kick the s**t out of every last” worker who crossed his picket lines, according to the Nashville (Ill.) News. And as the National Right to Work Foundation (pdf), the leading anti-forced unionism organization in the country, pointed out, other UMW coalfield strikes resulted in what one judge determined were “violent activities … organized, orchestrated and encouraged by the leadership of this union.”….

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Watch the many videos of union violence and intimidation HERE.