Defensive Gun Use of the Day: Union Organizers Edition

1. Usually its the unions doing the bullying.

   • It still is, apparently, but they are farming the job out to their lapdog government agency, the NLRB.

     • “Lawfare” Liberals and union types that prefer a disarmed populace don’t seem to have a problem with legal assault or framing their opponents with exaggerated or false charges.
       http://www.nationalreview.com/article/417155/wisconsins-shame-i-thought-it-was-home-invasion-david-french

     • Yeah. Makes me think about an incident near where I used to deliver milk, back when I was a trucker. There was a tire factory along my route that was having a lot of trouble out of union thugs trying to block the roads going into the factory. Even had a ‘protestor’ attack a driver when he tried to enter the facility with a load of material. Goodyear eventually fully shut the factory down when the union refused to submit to their demands.

       Fortunately for the city through another company bought the place and reopened it as a non-union shop. Last I heard the factory is doing great now. They even brought on most of the people back on at about the same pay rate. Benefits were quite as good, but they were still good.

2. I guess they don’t think turnabout is fair play. How many times have we heard of union organizers threatening workers (and families) that didn’t want to join up?

3. Maybe they were just getting back the thuggish intimidation those union thugs are known to apply when trying to spread their business killing club. But like any bully, when someone actually stands up to them, they fold like wet tissue paper in a high wind.

4. The union is making an “unfair labor practice” complaint against the workers they are trying to organize? I would say “what idiots” but given the nature of the NLRB in a Dem administration, the union probably has a good chance of winning. The sanction, of course will be to forcibly enroll those workers into the union and force the employer to withhold the dues out of their paychecks. And maybe deposit them directly into the DNC coffers.

5. This is not a defensive gun use. Organizing is not trespassing. We have a right to peaceably assemble, to organize. Knocking on a door and asking someone to sign a petition is a constitutionally protected activity, and pointing a gun at someone who is not a direct threat should land you in jail. Or at the very least an honorable mention on the irresponsible gun owners of the day awards show.

   • It all depends on what they were doing door to door.
     Were they simply asking for votes, or were they trying to intimidate workers at home?
     If the latter, I’d never brandish or threaten them, I’d just draw and shoot the moment they became threatening.

     • And that would be perfectly OK with me and the law. If the former, though, point a gun at me and I guarantee I’ll be pressing charges.

       • If you’re harassing me on my property, I’d do far more than point a gun at you. Unions had a place when company stores were a thing. These days, they are nothing more than self-serving lowlives who can’t be bothered to earn their pay and benefits on their own merits.

       • Preach it, pwrserge.

   • Sorry, but when a couple of Marxist thieves show up on someone’s property for ANY reason it’s a defensive gun use situation. Unions are organized criminal organizations and nothing more. Criminals should always be met with deadly force.

   • I have been around these big militant Bolshevik Thug Unions all my life. They use lots of threats and intimidation to get what they want. They hit my Mom with a club. They drove around my house thereatening me with death. They shot the windows out of a truck with the driver in it. They have burned cars. They flash their guns through their vests. They have ordered the destruction of video tapes for settlement purposes. They have actually had the corrupt cops on their side. They have filed for unemployment when they walked off the job, and the State of Ohio actually paid them. Hey, it is just another UAW day!

   • I think we should keep in mind that these guys are closely related to the panty wetters in our society. I would suppose the reason the cops don’t have any record of such a thing is that they knocked on somebody’s door and he answered while OCing (we should all home carry!), they pissed themselves and ran away, then called the cops, described what happened and were laughed at, then hung up on, the cops thought it was a prank call, nobody could really be such a wuss.

     Isn’t my story more fun? And fits the facts just as well.

     • I was thinking along the same lines when this story first broke. Of course, I’m always armed and usually bearing arms openly. I’ve had to tell several people to leave the property over the years and I happened to be armed. I can easily imagine how a union organizer would try to twist that into being threatened “at gunpoint” merely because I am an armed man. Add in the lack of any arrests or even police reports and it becomes even more plausible in this case.

6. Wait, so the workers can be opposed to the union, and the union goes to the NLRB and claims an “unfair labor practice”? So if it comes to worker vs. union, the NLRB is still just a union proxy. Good to know.

7. I’m a Teamster….

   Unions are on the wrong side of our fight! Their members are Conservative by and large so we vote Republican.

   And yes, I am very vocal at meetings and get rounds of applause AND the local reps are with me.

   There are no ‘no gun signs’ at the HQ!

   Like any and all politics…corrupt to the core!

   The union membership is pro-gun and pro-American. The national leadership supports everything opposite of my America! and they wonder why union membership is fading….

   • I was a Teamster at the start of my freight relocation career (I’ve only done local delivery routes, no long-hauls), and I couldn’t get out fast enough. In return for a chunk of my pay every four weeks, they protected the lazy drivers from discipline, based all personnel decisions on who had seniority rather than who was the best, and gave me a medical plan that covered next to nothing. I’m much happier without a union. I agree that there are mostly great guys in unions, but the leadership is rotten to the core.

     • The cruddiest company I ever worked for was, oddly enough, the only unionized outfit I ever worked for.

   • “…Their members are Conservative by and large so we vote Republican…”

     Mmmm, not sure I agree with that. ALL the union supports I know will simple pull the straight ticker Democrat handle in a voting booth. No question about it. We even heard of local stories where the union worker was harassed by other union workers because he wasn’t man enough to force his wife to vote pro-union at the voting booth.

     A very good friend (gun supporter as well) of mine says he’d pay his union dues before he’d pay his mortgage.

     I worked summer jobs while going to college. One union, one not. Very eye opening to say the least.

   • It just shows that a lot of people vote Democrat out of tradition or habit, although ideologically they have nothing in common with the Dems. FDR gave their grandparents the New Deal and they are Democrats forever more. If we could somehow break this habit we could break the Dems.

     I doubt it will happen. I could never break my father of his habit of reading the New York Times although he was Republican to the core. Too bad.

     We need Scott Walker.

8. BULLSHIT, Heretical Politik. You don’t have the right to peacefully assemble or organize on somebody’s porch when you’ve been told to leave. As for pointing a gun, why didn’t they call the cops…. probably they were the aggressor.

   • Were they asked to leave? Nothing in this story says they were… Most people put up a no solicitation sign up, but that only applies to door-to-door sales, NOT political organizing. If I want to get a petition signed, generally speaking only signatures of those residing within the political district in question are valid. The ONLY way to gather those signatures with any degree of validity is door to door.

     Martin v City of Stuthers: “Freedom to distribute information to every citizen wherever he desires to receive it is so clearly vital to the preservation of a free society that … it must be fully preserved. To require a censorship through license which makes impossible the free and unhampered distribution of pamphlets strikes at the very heart of the constitutional guarantees.”

     Watchtower Society v Village of Stratton: “It is offensive, not only to the values protected by the First Amendment, but to the very notion of a free society that in the context of everyday public discourse a citizen must first inform the government of her desire to speak to her neighbors and then obtain a permit to do so.”

     • I’m fairly sure that people generally exchange words before firearms are drawn. Union thugs should learn to recognize where and when they are not wanted.

     • Depending on how they were acting, SC 41-7-70 may come into play.

       South Carolinians don’t sit back and take when outsiders try to push them around, either. Union thugs don’t like people putting guns in their faces, maybe they should go back to their leftist urban utopias.

       That they did not call the cops says it all; either this gun being pulled is a total fabrication or an investigation would show the union guys were ‘less than innocent.’

       • 1) I am a South Carolinian. My parents were South Carolinians, my grandparents and great grand parents were South Carolinians… Going back to my family’s land grant from King George II, we are South Carolinians. Last I checked, South Carolinians were a kind and hospitable people, at least that was the way I was raised.

         2) I know a lot of Union organizers. Most of them are idealistic kids, fresh out of college, who grew up in Union families. Knowing them, who they are, and their character- regardless if you agree with them-The idea that someone would pull a gun on them to me is simply sickening.

       • “The idea that someone would pull a gun on them to me is simply sickening.”

         Depends on what they were actually doing, eh?

         Not quite so sure why, with such insufficient and ambiguous information, you seem to take it as a foregone conclusion one very narrowly defined version of what could have happened in this particular case.

         And that does not even take into account that strictly speaking, we don’t even know a gun was pulled in the first place. So, maybe a gun was pulled. Maybe the gun puller was the aggressor; or maybe it was a DGU.

         For example, how do you know that the Union folks had not already threatened the gun puller (at work, for example) and then showed up on his property…his home?

         All we have is some vague Union ‘accusations,’ and I hope you’ll forgive me for saving my disgust for a situation with more clear evidence.

     • “Freedom to distribute information to every citizen wherever he desires to receive it ”

       Did you not figure out this individual did NOT desire to receive it? Makes the remainder of your post kinda non-applicable.

9. Years ago, when I worked at a window plant, the union came a courting. Our employer was giving us a better deal than the union offered. We signed a letter and told the union we weren’t interested. They left us alone.
   My next job was in commercial construction and that is union. I’ve been a union carpenter for 32+ years. I’m proud to be union and a member of Seattle Carpenters’ Local 41.

   • It perplexes me when someone says they’re proud to be a union member.

     You have joined an organization that will accept anyone as a member, and generally fights to keep those members who prove to be unfit for the job, violate safety procedures and endanger the lives of other union members.

     There’s pride in that?

     • I have seen unions literally cost their employers millions of dollars because certain work had to be done by certain people. I’ve seen a production line down for almost a week because minor wiring issues needed to be fixed by a union electrician rather than the team of installation engineers who identified and were more than qualified to correct the problem.

       • More often than not, the union electrician will show up at the very end of the union contract response ‘window’ (IE, the 14th min. of the 15 min. window), take his/hers sweet-ass-time diagnosing the problem, sure-as-hell won’t hurry to the stockroom to fetch the replacement part, will double or triple check their work during the installation, (safety, don’t ya know) and damn sure take their scheduled break even if it is less than 1 min. from completing the repair.

         You think I’m kidding?

         I wish I was.

         NYNEX. New York, New England Exchange. (The New York City Phone Company)

     • I’ve been in three unions– IBEW was decent, SAG/AFTRA was meh, and SEIU can kiss my…

       Some unions are better than others, and from what I hear, the local carpenter’s union (Seattle) is a bit better than most. That said, my cousin is in the machinist union at Boeing, and the first month he was there he complained almost daily on Facebook about all the complaining… he was mind-blown at how great they had it and how he loved the job (and still does), and how he made more money than he ever had, but all anyone else there ever seemed to do was complain and whine about it.

     • I had to pass a math and physical test to become an apprentice. Our employers expect and pay for quality and production, if you don’t meet they’re standards, you get laid off. Work runs out, you get laid off. It’s called employment-at-will. There’s a difference between construction work and government work.

       • Correction: their standards.

     • Curtis,
       With all due respect, I’m as passionate about my union, and our right to organize, as I am about our constitution.

       • You have a right to organize. Your employer has a right to fire you for disrupting their business. You do not have a right to come on to other people’s property and haras them to the point where they feel they need to draw on you.

       • My late grandfather, who was a WW2 vet, was proud to be in a union. His union fought his employers for 2 decades into the 70s to get such fancy workplace luxuries as heat and restrooms. Those poor executives had to go without a new Caddy for that year, the shame. Would like to see you anti-union guys like to work without heat, A/C, or restrooms so your betters can have a wider wage gap.

       • Slicer, I would work elsewhere, unless they paid a lot, and then I would simply piss on the floor. Your story isn’t very sad.

   • No disrespect to your window plant, but it probably wasn’t hooked-in to an income stream of federal money. That’s why the unions want in. $$$$$ A union is not, and never was, about labor. It’s about money and power. And who, or rather, what, has obscene, overflowing supplies of both?

     • Or any Government money.

       Local gov.union pension contracts are wrecking the budgets of municipalities and many are too scared to confront it.

       A big ugly fiscal bomb is gonna blow.

   • Congratulations on your support for organized crime. Something to be proud of, indeed. Only when the law starts to hold guys like you responsible for financially supporting criminal enterprises – like like people who send money to terrorists – will things start to change.

10. Boeing was wise to pick South Carolina. It’s a miracle they’re still in business after all the money the unions have cost them.

11. Hmmm… arguably, the workers who chased the union off were defending themselves- if not their lives, then their livelihood. They want to keep their jobs. Boeing would probably leave if the union got in.

12. Unless the union or someone else has this on video, I don’t believe it. No union rep is going to turn down a chance to call the cops right away and scream bloody murder….unless this is some kind of planed event. Who are the “homeowners”? Are they known to be anti-union?

    • Also notice how the police were not contacted even though the union alleged guns were pointed at their reps for no good, legal reason?

      “A Charleston police spokesman said there have been no reports of organizers having guns pulled on them in the city.

      “We haven’t heard of any such reports,” the spokesman. “If it happened, they didn’t call the police.”

      A spokesman for the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office also said there had been no reports of gunpoint threats directed at union workers.

      “I am unaware of this type of incident occurring in the unincorporated area of Charleston County,” he said.”

      It sounds like a lie on the union’s part.

      • This is a typical Union tactic to trump up imaginary charges if they do not get their little Bolshevik way. If anything, it would have been the organizers intimidating with the guns in their little vests.

    • “unless this is some kind of planed event.”

      My nomination for typo-that-inadvertently-makes-a-pun of the day. Given that Boing makes airplanes.

13. The AFL-CIO is about as anti 2a as demanding moms, or in the case of the unions demanding mother-s so for them it’s a double dip. Poor, poor workin’ class heroes threatened wif a gun, and see, guns are bad, m’kay? Unions are the front runners of the communist-socialist gun grabbing tyrants.

14. The e real kicker is that the union is trying to organize a facility that they tried to CLOSE before the first plane was built because it was not in the state of washington. Yeah, way to win friends. Guess they think south carolinas have short memories

15. “unfair labor practice”

    That’s unionspeak for “I don’t like what they’re doing so this is my statutory temper tantrum.”

16. It should be noted that I’m writing this within eyesight of the Boeing 737 plant, so I find this particularly funny.

    That said, I just want to get this straight… it’s an unfair labor practice when the people you’re trying to unionize chase you off their personal, private property you weren’t invited onto because they don’t want to unionize?

    Mmmmkay…

17. “South Carolina law (Section 16-23-410) says it’s “unlawful to present or point loaded or unloaded firearm at another person” unless you’re doing so in self-defense or defense of other innocent life.”

    Having seen first-hand what a “Union” can do to a company and its employees, self-defense applies.

    Put me on that jury, it’s nullification or acquittal.

    There once was a time unions were necessary, we no longer have 5 year olds working in coal mines.(I’ll only briefly entertain the thought that little hands can sort coal so much better than lazy adults…OK, I’ll stop.)

    It is today a completely different labor environment. Boeing’s South Carolina plant was built there specifically because SC is a ‘Right to work’ state. If ‘Union’ poison infects it and it will kill Boeing.

    I have zero desire to ride in the future on an airliner made in China.

    (You have no idea how much it pains me Walt Mooney’s aircraft company is now owned by the Chinese.)

    • “I have zero desire to ride in the future on an airliner made in China.”

      That’s OK because we will still have Scairbus.

      • Well, it’s nice to know their cockpit door is nice and secure against terrorists or the captain that wants to keep his airliner from slamming into the mountains.

18. This is the south. We like guns. We like liberty. We like to work. We don’t like unions because we’re smart enough to know that they don’t represent the interests of their members. They represent the interests of high Union officials and the Democrat party that reaps the benefit of all of those dues, and uses them to advance an agenda that works directly against us.

    So get out. Go back to the rust belt and stay.

    • Amen, Col. Angus…

      For those that the ‘Col. Angus’ reference breezed right over their heads, this:

      http://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live/video/colonel-angus-comes-home/n11685

      “I don’t know nothing about no Col. Angus!”

    • Hey, we want the Bolshevik Unions out of the Rust Belt as well, then it would not be rusty.

19. If that union is anything like the one where my dad works, I can’t blame the workers for threatening perforation with lead. Each time the contract is up for renegotiation, my dad and the rest of the workers refuse the new contract (which is just the old one reworded each time to sound better) and threaten to strike, but the union reps accept the contract anyway. Been like that for 30 years or so.

    • And the union reps probably then move into larger houses with nicer garages to park their Bentleys. Coincidentally.

      • Nah, they don’t get paid that much where my dad works. The only person raking in the dough there is the owner. Since my dad’s been there, the entire plant had to take pay cuts twice. The first time it was to fund an expansion on the plant, the second was so the owner could build a new (and bigger) house.

20. I remember about 4 yrs ago when Boing wanted to build the dream liner in that state. Holder’s justice department tried every trick to stop it and Nikki Hailey rammed it through for thousands of jobs UNLESS they were unionized. THAT stank on ice. WHAT business is it of Justice?

    • I’m not sure what Holder’s been doing for 6 years, but it had very little to do with DoJ.

21. I had some experience with a few union folks when I lived in Oregon, and I have one word that describes them – thugs. I can believe that someone feared for their lives while being confronted by a union thug, and I can believe it nearly came to a legit use of deadly force. I can assume that the union folks are reluctant to report this incident to the police, for it may just get them arrested. The theory is the only thing that makes sense, because if their story was true, a reasonable person would have called the police.

22. Sad to see so many people bashing unions like anti gunners bash gun owners. Is every union perfect? No. labor unions have done and still do alot for working families. I can speak for me and my union. We don’t have “seniority” and you can be laid off or fired at any time. I work in the skilled trades. If you take your sweet ass time we will get rid of you. I have no problem helping a guy out if they havent done something or aren’t used to the way we do things. But I will not carry a lazy mofo on my back.

    My union, my fellow union members and my union reps that we elect are pro gun. Many of them carry. I have even ran into them at the range. We believe in working hard, living within our means and having a good life. Alot of politicians could learn a few things from us. Such as the “living within your means” part. That goes for both sides

    • “My union, my fellow union members and my union reps that we elect are pro gun.”

      Perhaps, but I’ll bet the national organization your union is affiliated with spends money to get anti-gun Democrat politicians elected.

    • I do not know about your experiences, but I had a few with the Teamsters while trying to handle the estate of my father when he died. Everyone told me they took care of their people, but I learned that it was all propaganda. We had to use a lawyer to get them to honor their basic commitments. I still.fume over their condescending attitude toward.my mother during the ordeal. Do not get.me started.on the SEIU thugs. The unions may have been good at one time, but since their overt mob days, they haven’t been good for much of anything but lining their own pockets.

    • Yeah, the Soviet Union did so much for my Wife at Pretzels. Bwahahaaha! They collected dues and ignored real worker safety problems.
      Thugs.

23. Ironic headline of the day! 🙂

24. I always thought trying to organize in a right to work for less state where you have to represent the freeloads that don’t pay dues wouldn’t be worth the trouble.

    • I work with a ex union member and I’m tired off his freeloading ass.

25. Good employees don’t need unions. They are sought out and recruited by employers. The only employees I ever saw that needed a union were the bad ones. I never saw an employee worth a shit that needed a union. It was always the ones who were being terminated. Always.

    At any rate, as a native SC, I can say we have a long history of not liking anyone telling us what we should do. Maybe to our own detriment sometimes but there it is. Having some Yankee’s come by and telling us what’s good for us isn’t going to fly. We’re going to shut you out just on general principle. I am not surprised they were run off that way.

26. I belonged to the IBEW in Spokane back in the 80’s,while working at a lighting manufacturer. I absolutely hated the US against them mentality that the Unions pushed.. I hated the union atmosphere, members were disrespectful towards one another, as well as the supervisors..they breed hate and discontent. The bathroom walls were filled with comments about fellow union members and their wives, and kids, as well as comments about management .. it was a hell hole…I lasted 4 yrs…

27. They weren’t petitioning Voters… they were clarifying if they were going to lose a vote or not, by forcefully having the company provide them with our addresses via the NLRB. Once they learned they were going to lose the vote, they pulled their vote, crying wolf and blamed the company for creating a hostile enviroment.

    They were just making a poltical move to pull the vote instead of letting us vote them out. Just like with Delta 2 weeks ago after they were found creating 2000 fraudulant voter cards.

    BTW they have been showing up at people’s houses 3-4 times when the worker was not home asking babysitters, wives, older kids their parents view of the IAM and how they will vote.

    If they cared about “the voice of the workers being heard…” they would have let us vote.

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