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Article

10 Dec 2007

Author:
Kris Maher, Wall Street Journal

Firms Use RICO to Fight Union Tactics [USA]

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...invoked the federal Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, to claim unions have tried to damage their reputations and businesses... In both suits, the companies claim the unions are spreading false and damaging information through flyers and the Internet and at demonstrations. The suits, which the unions say are baseless, mark escalating tensions over organizing methods... RICO was passed...to make it easier to prosecute organized-crime leaders...when a pattern of racketeering existed. Civil RICO claims became common in the 1980s and have been filed in a variety of contexts, often against corporations, alleging fraud or illegal competition... Wackenhut [part of Group 4 Securicor]...filed suit last month accusing the Service Employees International Union...of using "strong-arm" tactics that have caused it to lose contracts with customers... Extortion is difficult to prove in these situations, Mr. Grell [Jeff Grell, an attorney who teaches a course on RICO at the University of Minnesota Law School] says. It usually involves taking property..., while these suits center on less-defined issues of reputation and the loss of business, which can be the result of broader economic factors... Andy Stern, the union's president and a defendant in the case, called the lawsuit "an attempt to muzzle workers and their unions from speaking out on issues of corporate social responsibility." [refers to lawsuits against unions by Food Lion (part of Delhaize), Smithfield Foods]