Trumka -- The Eddie York Slaying

http://www.nrtw.org/files/nrtw/Trumka%20Fact%20Sheet.pdf

Union officials from 56 affiliated labor unions have decided to make Richard Trumka Big Labors new Top Boss.

Let me tell you a story about the AFL-CIOs new top man:

In spring 1993, Trumka ordered more than 17,000 miners in seven states out on strike. His objective was to force miners to pay union dues as a condition of employment. From the beginning, Trumkas strike was rife with violence. Thugs vandalized homes, fired shots into mine offices, and trapped 93 miners underground by cutting power to the mine.

But that wasnt the worst. No doubt, the wife and three children of Eddie York will never forget what Trumkas troops did on July 22, 1993. On that day, Eddie wasn't as fortunate as the trapped miners. This husband and father of three was shot in the back of the head as he drove past militant Mineworker goons.

Eddie never got the chance to hold his children again.

Eddie died that day just because he wanted to provide for his family.

To make matters worse, Trumkas goons pounded would-be rescuers with stones keeping them from trying to help Eddie.

Trumka's public reaction is as chilling as it is revealing.

When, shortly after Eddies murder, Trumka was asked about the union orchestrated violence, he said, if you strike a match and put your finger in, common sense tells you you're going to burn your finger. Youre going to get burned?

This was brutal violence including a murder that Trumka was talking about so casually.

In June 1994, a federal jury found Mineworkers strike captain Jerry Dale Lowe guilty on conspiracy and weapons charges in the death of York. York's widow filed a lawsuit against Lowe, Trumka, and several other Mineworker Union officials charging that Trumkas strike tactics and directives had contributed to Eddie York's death.

For four years, forced union dues paid lawyers to zealously fight Widow York's wrongful death suit. But it was a judges order that federal prosecutors release evidence from Lowe's criminal trial that turned the table.

After that bombshell, it took Trumkas lawyers just two days to reach a secret settlement. Until the very day of the settlement was reached, Trumka and his cohorts defense strategy was to insist that strike captain Lowe was innocent even though a previous Mineworkers-financed appeal had been dismissed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Union lawyers apparently couldn't afford to concede that Lowe had committed the crime and claim that he had acted alone. Why not? Perhaps because there was overwhelming evidence, now buried as a result of the settlement that proved Lowe worked with other union bosses not alone.

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