Lawyers delve into history in Convention Center labor case

In its legal fight to keep union carpenters out of the building, the Convention Center's lawyers took a walk through the dark side of local labor history this week.

Legal briefs filed in the center's civil racketeering federal lawsuit against the Carpenters' union compared its actions to recent headline-grabbing convictions of members of Local 401 of the Ironworkers' union and of Local 30 of the Roofers' union - another racketeering case, dating back 30 years.

Tuesday's filing was the latest salvo in the continuing battle between the Convention Center and the Metropolitan Regional Council of Carpenters.

The Carpenters will respond in a legal brief next week, Martin O'Rourke, a spokesman, wrote.

The center and the union have been at odds since May 2014, when the union lost its right to work in the center after its leader, Edward Coryell, failed to sign a new customer satisfaction agreement by management's deadline.

The union signed a few days later, but by then, its work had been divided among the four other unions that continue to work in the building.

A year later, on May 7, the center filed a federal racketeering, or RICO, lawsuit against the union, accusing it of "prolonged and coordinated violent, illegal, and extortionate conduct," and demanding $1 million in damages.

Teamsters Local 107 also missed the Convention Center's deadline but is not part of this suit.

Filed in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia, the suit described protests in general, but focused on alleged union disruptions during the Philadelphia Auto Show last winter.

On June 30, the carpenters filed a motion to dismiss the suit, calling it a "publicity stunt" and saying the federal RICO statute targets patterns of criminal activity, not uncouth labor protests.

The Convention's Center's response, filed late Tuesday, said the jury that convicted Ironworkers leader Joseph Dougherty on Jan. 21 "announced that the Bad Old Days of union thuggery and intimidation . . . are over, and that 'business as usual' no longer means that rogue union leaders may conduct their own business by terrorizing and disrupting the business of others. By [their] arguments, Defendants have shown they did not get that message."

Later in the brief, the center's lawyers referred to the roofers' union case in the late 1980s, in which then union leader Stephen Traitz and others were convicted of racketeering.

An appellate court in that case said a test for an extortion conviction would be whether the victim could reasonably believe that the extortionist had the ability and willingness to cause economic harm.

The center's board reasonably believed the carpenters had the power to harm, the center's filing said, because of the union's "large war chest and its large and physically violent and aggressive membership."

Source: Philly.com