 Good morning everyone. Let me just introduce the speakers of this morning. You already noticed our strong feminist orientation yesterday. And this feminist orientation is continued today. First speaker will be my dear old friend, Diana Vorbush. Who's a lawyer specializing in labor law. She's also the wife of Doug French. And I should mention that Doug and Diana got married here in Bodrum during one of our conventions. The second speaker will be Enrico Colombato, who's professor of economics at the University of Torino in Italy. And the third speaker is Andrew Schuwen, who's a co-founder of the Lyon Rock Institute, the Free Market Institute in Hong Kong. He's a financial analyst and he's the commander of the Silver Legion volunteers, which is a place that buys and stores silver in Hong Kong, I assume. So, Diana, please. Thank you, Hans, and thank you Hans and Guchin for inviting me to speak today. As I think I mentioned yesterday, my husband and I were here at the very first Property and Freedom Conference back in 2006. And it's an absolute honor to be asked to come back here all these years later. I don't know where the time's gone by, but to celebrate the 10th anniversary. As Hans mentioned, if any of you were here during the 6th conference in 2011, you'll know that I got married here and Douglas French got married here. Of course, while I was immersing myself in the spiritual ceremonies, my husband was being entertained by what he calls the local talent. But the next night we had a proper, elegant European wedding and it was a year I'll never forget. And in fact, it's the year that I think Lodi proposed to Donna. Of course, they got married in Las Vegas as did the Doctor's Hapa. But don't let all this discussion about marriage or all these marriages concern you because as Hans told Doug back in the day, marriage existed long before the state did. So I think that's the only way you got Doug to marry me. Nevertheless, I'm here today to talk about violence in American unions and because I'm going to primarily speak about American unions, I think I should distinguish a little bit between American unions and European ones. In the States, labor unions are considered to be third-party entities that interfere between an employer and their employees, that impede their ability to have good conversation and good communication that create work stoppages that impose all kinds of crushing work rules and expensive benefits and prevent employers from terminating out will. But moreover, in the United States, labor unions will, in my opinion, stop at nothing to get a foothold in a company's front door. And I guess I should tell you that anything I tell you today is based on either my own experience or my own well-informed opinion. So, but in my opinion, the labor unions in the United States are impede business and that's the way they're viewed by most employers. In Europe, on the other hand, and particularly in the Germanic and Scandinavian companies, unions are more like works councils. They form more of an alliance with the company and they actually act as a liaise between the employers and the employees. They can't strike, but they usually don't. They do. They try to find the least disruptive way to do it. Some labor unions in Europe have been known to strike on lunch and then to go back dutifully to their jobs. Even when the tube in London goes on strike, it's two or three days of a work stoppage and that's it, nothing like you see in the States. So, any kind of work disruption is very minimal in the European Labor Work Councils and in general, the European Work Councils are very careful not to put the company or the employees' jobs in jeopardy. That's why when Volkswagen started or decided to build a factory in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the first thing they did was invite the UAW to come and form a union and hold an election. They did that because they believe that their culture of worker code determination is actually a competitive advantage. They believe that having a work council in the factory promotes productivity and management flexibility and why? Because in Europe, work councils are at least as worried about the well-being of the company and the stability of jobs as are the companies themselves. But that's not always the case in the United States. In the United States, labor unions are not always so worried about the rank and file employees. They're tremendously politically powerful organizations. And at times, in my view, they're more interested in wielding that power than in worrying about the financial well-being of corporate America. You might have noticed that we're not producing many cars. This is the European labor unions. You can hardly notice they're striking. But you might have noticed that we're not producing too many automobiles in Detroit these days. And the New York textile industry has been off-shored. They're not making any textiles in New York City anymore. We're not many. And the Pittsburgh idle still mills have been turned into now-failing casinos all because most of the world's still production is being done in China or India or Russia. Even Turkey's crude still production has gone up by 23 percent, not so in the United States. And the primary reason for the demise of these formerly robust American industries are labor unions. In my own town I watched labor unions put unreasonable pressure on companies and like the Hacienda, the El Rancho, I don't know if any of you got old-timers remember these from Vegas' old days, but the landmark and the frontier. All these properties are closed. They've closed their doors due in part at least to the union's unreasonable demands and absolute refusal to grant concessions. When the Culinary Workers Union started their organizational effort at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas, they said that Las Vegas is the new Detroit. They've already destroyed Detroit. We're not making cars there anymore. So now they say Las Vegas is the new Detroit. And by that they mean Las Vegas is a union town that the union controls the gaming and hospitality industry. And if anybody wants to operate there, they'll do so based on the union's terms or they can leave town. That's their attitude. The unions are particularly powerful in Las Vegas and that's because you can't offshore the hospitality industry. As you know, we actually need people to make beds and prepare food and serve the occasional cocktail. And so now that the Culinary Union controls that industry they know how powerful they are. So when they went to Sheldon Adelson, the owner and developer of the Venetian, they told him he could sign the neutrality agreement or he could take his billions of dollars and thousands of jobs that he intended to create and leave town. There was no compromise. Either take their terms or leave. You know, they could care less about the money that would be spent on the community. So of course, Mr. Adelson declined and he instead put together a pretty powerful team and he gave them one marching order and that was, if the Culinary Workers Union is going to represent my employees, please make sure that they get a secret ballot election before they do. So I was very happy to join that team but before I could I had to pay my own form of dues, not union dues but the kind that leave bruises. But I began my career as a union attorney in Philadelphia. So that's a big transformation but I came from a blue collar family and at the time I felt that there was a place for organized labor. After all, thanks to Jimmy Hoffa over the road, truckers were no longer burning themselves with cigarettes, going down the road, trying to stay awake for the 18 hour haul. Children were no longer being trapped in hot factories because organized labor had helped pass OSHA regulations and child labor laws. The Fair Labor Standard Act has been passed in part by union efforts making sure that hourly employees now have a 40 hour work week or get paid over time. And in any event, my overall philosophy at that time was that the working man needed this kind of representation to get a fair shake. Of course it didn't take me very long. I was very young, didn't take me very long to learn the errors of my way and I never, it all started when I lost my first labor arbitration case. I was a young lawyer in Philadelphia, had won every case I'd ever tried. Every employee I ever advocated for got put back to work. But one day after putting on a very, what I thought was a very vigorous defense, I was told on the way back to the office by the union rep that I was going to lose the case. I said, how am I going to lose? I think, you know, this is a winner. He said, no, it was predetermined. The arbitrator wrote the decision before you ever put the case on. And we just owed one to the company and his attitude was the employee was expendable because they, you know, they had made a deal with the company and the employee could just be, you know, the collateral lost. I think more than furious I was absolutely crushed to part of my, you know, belief in America had been crushed because I learned that union representation all it's cracked up to be. It's, unions are far more interested in representing their own interest in the United States than they are interests of their employees. So it was about this time that I met Tom Alardi whose family owns casinos in Las Vegas and particularly they owned the Frontier Hotel and Gambling Hall. They were looking for an attorney to help them survive what was then a four year strike. So I told Tom, you know, you don't want me because I'm a union lawyer and you need a management lawyer so that you can trust the advice they give you. No, I think I do want you because given your background you'll help me protect my employees. So if I'd only known that by taking his offer that I would be magically transformed from this ardent union attorney to a now a zealous management lawyer I don't know what I would have done. I think, I guess I'm happy that I took that job and I've explained the transformation by really adapting one of Winston Churchill's quotes and I say, well if you're not progressive when you're young you probably don't have a heart but if you're not a libertarian when you get older you probably don't have a brain. So I finally grew a brain thankfully and I think my philosophy completely changed when I learned that the Frontier strike was caused because the Lardies wanted to actually provide their employees more benefits, better benefits than the union contract allowed. Margaret Alardi the matriarch of the family made her fortune the old fashion way by churning real estate in California and Nevada and she was a friend of Benny Benions who started the famous Benion horseshoe downtown Las Vegas and he said you know Margaret you should buy the Pioneer Club Pioneer Clubs are the one where the cowboy is saying howdy as you come to town so she bought that club downtown and the one in Laughlin and you know she's a very stupid business woman and didn't take her long to learn that you know the gambling business was a pretty slick way to make a lot of money and she did that she made a lot of money and she sold the Pioneer Clubs and moved to the Las Vegas Strip so when I say Las Vegas Strip today and I might say Las Vegas Boulevard those are synonyms the same main road down the fancy part of where all the big new modern casinos are Las Vegas Strip or Boulevard so she bought the Frontier right on the Las Vegas Strip with 35 acres of frontage strip frontage property from the Howard Hughes Corporation for 22 million dollars so rough math there is about 600 thousand dollars an acre this is in 1988 now the Frontier had a union contract when she bought it and she was correctly advised that when the contract expires she would be able to renegotiate the terms so she had the collective bargaining agreement analyzed and found that she was extraordinarily overpaying for subpar benefits and so she went to an advisor and learned that she could provide a better benefit package plus put aside a Christmas fund for each and every employee that they could cash out at the end of the year for less money than she was paying the union for these inferior benefits so when the time came she went to the union and she said this is what I want to do if you allow me to do it then I'm going to renew the collective bargaining agreement so after they pulled themselves up off the floor from laughter they then told her well that's a very nice try but that's not going to happen and she quickly learned that in culinary union land the right to renegotiate exists only in legal textbooks they told her if she wanted the privilege of operating on the Las Vegas Strip and apparently they were the only ones that could grant the privilege that she would have to sign the Strip contract which is their uniform contract or sell to someone that would so she also declined and she did with the law permits which is bargained to impasse and then implemented her last best and final offer the employees got better benefits and a Christmas fund but the union was furious they were furious by the Ilarity's audacity they convinced the employees that they should walk out they said if you walk out in solidarity it has to be done so that we can maintain the status quo their benefit funds and we'll have you back to work in two or three days but they were wrong the frontier strike and the picketers stayed out there for six and a half years while Bill Bennett who is the owner of the circus circus was giving them three square meals a day and the union was trying to convince the Ilarity's or I say coerce them into signing the Strip contract for example they followed the 70 year old Mrs. Ilarity around in her car and terrorized her until she completely stopped driving they picketed the bank that she helped found until she resigned her position on the board they scaled the walls of her children's homes and terrorized their families and children and but moreover they vilified this respectable family in the media and made them really our communities pariah and that's really the saddest part for example when I moved to town there was no law school in Las Vegas which is what or in Nevada which made it such a great place for her lawyer to practice no competition right or little competition but UNLV where Professor Hoppe has emeritus status. UNLV wanted a law school so they went out looking for the money and of course Mrs. Ilarity said she would contribute the million dollars which back when a million dollars meant something or more than it does today she would donate the money but she wanted the school name for her family the culinary union told UNLV and they have this much political clout they told UNLV you can take the money but you cannot grant the naming rights and of course the deal fell through and now that law school is named after Bill Boyd this is Ilarity's competitor so the message to the Ilarity was clear this is a posting from the union's website and the message was clear shut down or sell but you're not operating without a union contract so there was a lot of physical violence on the frontier picket line for example they formed the picketers formed human chains and blocked traffic for hours there were all kinds of fights and vistikovs and general hoodlumism while the police stood by and virtually ignored all this that is at least until Sean and Gail White made the mistake of trying to come to the frontier and said to a picketer as they passed by why don't you get a job so of course that picketer had a huge glass beer shind in his hand just smashed him over the side of the head with it and then chased his wife across the street tackled her and beat her so that day there was exactly one person arrested and of course the whites filed a lawsuit against the culinary workers union for assault and battery but the culinary union went to the whites and said listen why don't you just put this litigation on hold and sue the frontier for negligence and the theory was that if the frontier had only signed a union contract the picketers would not be out on the street and the whites would not have been harmed and this argument actually survived summary judgment so we learned later that the union had gone to the whites and unethically and I think illegally offered to pay them a fixed amount of money if their litigation against the frontier failed which it did in 1997 we prevailed in that lawsuit and the union presumably paid their damages but I'm not privy to that information but that was a very bittersweet day because that's the day that we learned that Mrs. Ellardi had sold the frontier so see a labor strike is supposed to be the ultimate industrial hammer it's supposed to bring a company to its knees it's supposed to close the doors and basically coerce the company to come back to the bargaining table if after six months a company has not capitulated to a union's demands the strike has essentially failed and that's just generally understood this strike went on for six and a half years this is how strong the culinary workers union is they knew they had failed but they weren't going away and they didn't know what to do and the only thing they could do is find somebody that would pay this family so much money that they would have to take it and that's exactly what they did they found Phil Ruffin who was the owner of Greyhound dog tracks in Kansas and casinos in Bahamas not the likely guy to get licensed in Las Vegas but he was willing to pay 167 million dollars for the frontier in their 35 acres which I think pencils out to be about 4.7 million dollars an acre substantially more than Mrs. Alardi paid so of course I said she's a savvy business woman and she recognized that 145 million dollar profit in nine fun-filled years was an offer that no reasonable person could pass up and she wasn't going to in the union new but she wouldn't so the hotel closed Phil Ruffin bought it and he was flinked by Jesse Jackson and every single politician in town when he opened the property as the new frontier so the unions got what they wanted they paid dearly but the Alardes were out and the union was in just as an aside in 2007 Phil Ruffin sold the frontier to Elad which is an Israeli company for 1.2 billion which is just shy of 25 million dollars an acre but that was of course before the Las Vegas real estate bubble burst and just in fact I think that was at the brink of it my husband would know but Elad's bankers now that the bubble has burst and has not really recovered I don't think Elad's bankers recently sold the property to James Packard the Australian billionaire 53% of the property anyway for 260 million dollars the bank oak tree financial kept the other 47% of the deal so it was essentially a 315 million dollar deal or 9 million dollars an acre so you see the fluctuation over this period of course Phil Ruffin was the big winner but the Alardes aren't going to miss any mail so they're just fine when the frontier closed the front page news and Sheldon Adelson called me and said what does that mean for you I said I'm going back to Philadelphia he said no come across the street and help me build the only non-union mega resort in the new Detroit so everyone from the governor to the county commissioner to all the politicians and other operators and of course the union said this could not be done but I really I had been surreptitiously meeting with Mr. Adelson over the years and really liked his style thought he was going to be successful he was an extremely he is an extremely principled man and just wants right to be done and he didn't want a union representing his employees without a secret ballot election so I have lots of stories to tell you about him I think I'm just going to be able to tell you one I learned a little bit about his character when he told me how he developed his position on organized labor he said that when he first bought the sans hotel in Las Vegas he's a lover of frozen yogurt so he went downstairs to stand in a long line of people queued up to get frozen yogurt and he couldn't understand why the line was moving so slowly so by the time he got to the front of the line he could see why because there was one employee serving the yogurt meanwhile there were three employees just lean back against the counter doing nothing so he had to go to the hotel they didn't know who he was so he said to the first employee why aren't you serving these customers and the employee said well sir I only stock the shelves that's all I'm allowed to do I'm not allowed to do any other type of work he looked at the next one she said I'm the cashier I can only ring up the cell once somebody else serves the yogurt next one was the supervisor and she could only stand by and watch the work not being done because the union contract that came with the sans hotel had these very strict jurisdictional rules that required that no person in a certain job classification can work in any other job classification and no supervisor can do any bargaining unit work so here he had this long line of people all these employees that are on the clock and nobody can do the work no one can service the customers because of the union jurisdictional work rules so he knew then and there that he could not run a five star hotel the way he wanted to with restrictive work rules and told the union that he would not sign a neutrality agreement if if they were going to represent his employees they'd have to do it through a secret ballot election and they'd have to offer them more than he was going to and that was unlikely to happen so maybe during Q&A I'll tell you more about some of the crazy stories that went on at the Venetian after he refused to sign the neutrality agreement but the that's when the battle royale broke out and the mother of the battles took place on the sidewalks in front of the Venetian that run parallel to the Las Vegas strip every time the Venetian needed a permit the union would object this was their coercive corporate part of their corporate campaign so what they would do is pack the county commission meetings with hundreds of union members wearing union t-shirts that had the big red check union yes so they would all be sitting in the audience as a not so subtle reminder to the county commissioners who got them elected their 60,000 members could also get them unelected and so in true fashion the union opposed the Venetian's petition or application to get a construction permit they said the anticipated traffic that would come with the new project could not be born by the Las Vegas strip it would be too much for it to handle so the commissioners forced the Venetian to conduct a traffic impact study and of course the impact study found that the anticipated traffic would be much better accommodated if there was a new lane added to the Las Vegas strip so the union thought this was a big victory they felt like they had one that they had the project was dead because how do you add a lane to the Las Vegas strip but then the engineers that the Venetian hired said well we can put another lane here if we use the land that is currently housing the existing sidewalk so the Venetian said okay well if you'll widen the boulevard we'll build a sidewalk on our private property and that's what they did so they said we'll grant a public easement so that the people the public can traverse the frontage of the property but it'll be our private sidewalk on our private property so the easement contained very specific language that we worked on forever I know quite a bit about this language and in the easement the Venetian retained full rights inherent to the ownership of private property to the full extent permitted by the fifth and fourteenth amendment of the United States amendments to the United States Constitution the Venetian also posted no trespassing signs and private property signs all the way up and down the sidewalk if you go there today you'll see them they're still there beautiful brass plaques nevertheless as soon as the sidewalks were built Clark County issued a rallying permit to the union so that they could hold the demonstration on the Venetian's private sidewalks so of course we object the Venetian objected and said if this rally takes place we expect you police department Metro police department to arrest these people for trespass so the DA issued a statement and he said well the police will attend the rally but there will be no arrest because in his view the picketers had a cognizable first amendment defense to any trespassing charge I don't know how you do that on private property but that was his view so on the day of the protest these are the guys that they couldn't do their job because of the work rules on the day of the protest this is what it looked like the Venetian took several measures to protect it's private property we put up these barricades to mark the property line we issued trespassing warnings I remember these guys they were doing nothing this is me in the fashionable fanny pack issuing trespassing warnings this guy wasn't having any of it and when the police refused to arrest the trespassers we effected citizens arrests this is my friend detailer in this shot and arrested them for trespassing so of course after the rally the venetian sued the district attorney the police department clark county and the unions and alleged that the government took their property without due process or just compensation they also alleged that the government impermissibly deprived them of their property rights the defendants argued that the property had because of use the property had become a public forum and the venetian had lost its right to exclude so shockingly u.s. district judge philip proe agreed with the defendants and while acknowledging the general rule that the constitution does not apply to private conduct generally he said that this case fell into a very narrow exception that's applied when a private actor performs a function generally performed by the state based on this finding he held that the property looked and functioned like public property that the area traditionally had been public property to traditionally had functioned as a public sidewalk and based on that the land had become quasi public and first amendment now attached to the land and the venetian had lost the right to exclude so of course we appealed to the ninth circuit court of appeals who affirmed the decision and so we convinced Mr. Adelson this is such an important case the supreme court of the united states the highest court of the land will understand that without property rights there are no rights please you know finance this appeal and we filed a writ of sorcery to the united states supreme court and they denied sorcery so judge pro's decision is now the law of the land and it's all very sad it's a sad day but on the whole I think this case demonstrates the violence perpetuated by American unions against private property and it's done with impunity in the united states and I think the case further demonstrates the problem with granting the state the right to protect private property because that creates a dual edged sword if they can protect the private property they can also take it away and they can also take it away without due process or just compensation so I don't know what else to tell you except caveat emptor and to my American friends happy labor day.