Companies Assert RICO Claims Against Unions

Kris Maher reports in yesterday's Wall Street Journal:

Employers are using laws originally aimed at organized crime to combat aggressive union organizing efforts that they claim amount to extortion.

Two lawsuits filed by employers in the past two months invoked the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to claim unions have tried to damage their reputations and businesses through public-relations campaigns and other tactics.  In both suits, the companies claim the unions are spreading false and damaging information through flyers and the Internet and at demonstrations.
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In October, Smithfield Foods Inc. filed suit against the United Food and Commercial Workers, which has been trying for more than a decade to organize 4,600 hourly workers at the company's Tar Heel, N.C., plant.  The suit claims that the union's campaign, which includes calls to boycott all Smithfield products, is "designed to destroy Smithfield's public image and inflict maximum economic damage."  [Smithfield additionally grounds its RICO suit on the UFCW's claim that Smithfield's Tar Heel workers face "poverty wages, brutal conditions, and crippling injuries," a claim the company disputes.]

Wackenhut, a U.S. unit of London's Group 4 Securicor PLC, filed suit last month accusing the Service Employees International Union, which has been trying to organize the company's security guards, of using "strong-arm" tactics that have caused it to lose contracts with customers.

This tells me that the UFCW & SIEU's tactics are working.  One can hardly blame unions for using unconventional organizing tactics, given that organizing law is so heavily stacked against them.

For more, see Firms Use RICO to Fight Union Tactics.

rb