A Pennsylvania court just sanctioned organized labor’s thuggery. It’s past time the rest of us stopped putting up with such tactics.
A Pennsylvania court just sanctioned organized labor’s thuggery. It’s past time the rest of us stopped putting up with such tactics.
A s fellow dues-paying members of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers union Local 98, Greg Gibson, a project manager during the 2020 construction of a South Philly casino, and Greg Fiocca, the nephew of Local 98’s then–business manager John Dougherty (a.k.a. Johnny Doc), were theoretically “brothers.”
But when he learned an angry Fiocca was headed to his construction trailer that August 19, Gibson anticipated a less-than-fraternal encounter. He prudently flipped on his phone’s audio recording before Fiocca, an electrician and a Local 98 shop steward, arrived.
The nearly 40-minute recording made and retained by Gibson features, in the words of Philadelphia Inquirer journalists Jeremy Roebuck and Oona Goodin-Smith, Fiocca’s “profanity-laced accusations,” and “muffled noises of him choking, slapping and spitting on” Gibson.
Fiocca was furious that he hadn’t been paid for “work” hours during which no supervisor could find any evidence that he had done anything to help the casino get built. Fiocca nevertheless demanded that he get paid for the hours he claimed to have been working. Otherwise, he indicated, there would be a costly strike: “I’m calling my uncle already. We’re pulling everyone off the job.”
After he had been verbally abused, choked, slapped, and spit at, Gibson still hoped Johnny Doc would finally own up to the obvious truth that his nephew was a menace to the project and his fellow employees and consequently shouldn’t be working there. The Local 98 business manager had long been hearing reports from his own rank and file about Fiocca’s poor job performance and frightening fits of rage.
But Johnny Doc brushed aside everything he heard about Fiocca’s assault on Gibson and his other malfeasances. He warned construction management that Fiocca would stay on the project — or else! According to electrical contractor Ray Palmieri, Dougherty threatened to pull all Local 98 electricians off the project and get Palmieri blackballed from future work unless he continued to employ Fiocca.
At the time, Johnny Doc was already facing federal indictments for bribery and embezzlement. Evidence amassed by federal law enforcement in the course of bringing Johnny Doc to trial on these two sets of charges, of which he was separately convicted in November 2021 and December 2023, made it possible for the feds to build an extortion case against him and his nephew. This case went to trial in Reading, Pa., on April 17.
Late in April, it came to a subdued end. With the jury hopelessly deadlocked, U.S. District Judge Jeffrey Schmehl declared a mistrial.
Why did this happen? As Roebuck and Goodin-Smith bluntly explained in their wrap-up of the trial, published the day after it ended, “It’s normally illegal to use threats and force for financial gain. . . .” However, in the U.S. Supreme Court’s controversial 1973 United States v. Enmons decision, a 5–4 court majority concluded that under federal law it would be “inappropriate to classify such tactics — when they’re aimed at advancing union interests — as extortion.”
On May 2, after getting the opportunity to speak with several of the jurors on the Dougherty–Fiocca extortion case, Roebuck and Goodin-Smith were able to report that as deliberations got under way, seven jurors on the panel were leaning in favor of voting for convictions. But all but one of the seven were persuaded to switch over to “not guilty,” and Enmons was the chief persuader.
In other words, thanks to Enmons, even a taped record of his use of violence and threats to keep getting a paycheck for doing little or no work was insufficient to convict Greg Fiocca of extortion. And even basically uncontested evidence that Johnny Doc threatened to shut down the Live! Casino project if his thuggish nephew was fired was insufficient to get the ex-Local 98 boss convicted of extortion.
Enmons is a threat to the civil order. Fortunately, Congress doesn’t have to take it lying down. That’s why the National Right to Work Committee is fighting for passage of the Freedom from Union Violence Act (H.R. 5314). This legislation, sponsored by Pennsylvania congressman Scott Perry, would put a stop to outrageous miscarriages of justice like the one just witnessed in Reading by declaring that, under federal law, extortion that “advances union interests” is still extortion.