United States V. Enmons - Controversy

Controversy

While labor unions as a whole are exempt from prosecution, individual members can still be held accountable and prosecuted according to local laws. However, evidence suggests that this rarely is the case. According to a 1998 policy analysis by the Cato Institute,

"The result has been an epidemic of union-related violence. The National Institute for Labor Relations Research (NILRR) has recorded 8,799 incidents of violence from news reports since . Those reports show only 258 convictions, suggesting a conviction rate of less than 3 percent. Moreover, local law enforcement authorities often get many more reports of strike violence than journalists can possibly cover."

Some critics argue that the Enmons decision has been a major factor in increasing corruption among union and government officials alike. Economist and former professor Morgan Reynolds wrote:

It is difficult to tell racketeer-controlled unions from other unions, because both types depend on violence and the threat of violence…The plain truth is that our labor laws have arranged incentives so that honest, noncoercive union officials find it difficult to survive in competition with the muscleman types."

However, others argue the FUVA has greatly exaggerated the existence of union violence. In a law review article, Julius G. Getman and F. Ray Marshall, The Continuing Assault on the Right to Strike, 79 Tex. L. Rev. 703, 712-13 (2001), law professor Julius Getman and former Secretary of Labor Ray Marshall, analyzed the evidence of union violence.

The claim that strike violence is "escalating" has no empirical basis. Even the study conducted by the National Institute for Labor Relations Research - cited regularly as authority for this proposition by FUVA's proponents - draws no such conclusion. And the study itself is a scholarly monstrosity that seeks to study union violence by compiling media reports, mainly newspaper articles concerning strike violence. The Institute admits that it did not actually investigate any of the incidents reported and does not know if the reports are accurate. It concludes: "Because it relies on news accounts the Institute cannot guarantee the accuracy of the file itself." In fact, articles about employer-instigated violence are included in the study's effort to determine union violence. n59 It seems obvious that the methodology employed confuses those strikes most written about with those most violent. Further, the Institute includes incidents of "psychological violence; i.e., intimidation, coercion and verbal threats" - terms which it does not bother to define. It seems clear, however, that this definition would include nonviolent civil disobedience of the type used by the civil rights movement and increasingly by the labor movement. But whatever the definition, it is almost certain that strike-related violence has decreased since the Enmons decision because the number of strikes has declined significantly

Since 1973, a number of bills have been proposed to overturn US v. Enmons. The Freedom from Union Violence Act (FUVA) was first introduced as H.R. 1796 on June 8, 1995, and has been reintroduced in every Congress since. None of these bills have made it out of committee.