Foundation Issues Special Legal Notice to Rutgers Professors Impacted by Union Officials’ Strike Order
Rutgers employees can legally attend work regardless of union boss demands to strike
Even Big Labor Massachusetts Politicians Don’t Believe Teamster Bosses
Last week multiple media outlets reported for the first time about ugly “protests” allegedly staged by Teamster Local 25 militants in Beantown early this summer when an episode of the popular cooking show Top Chef was filmed in Milton, a town located in Boston’s Greater Metropolitan Area, with a nonunion crew. In the article linked below, Deadline summarizes what police, cast and crew members, and other witnesses have to say about what happened:
[A]bout a dozen members of Local 25 who were picketing the show in June rained racist, sexist and homophobic threats on members of the cast and crew as they filmed an episode for the show’s upcoming season in Milton, MA. The show’s host, Padma Lakshmi, and Jenn Levy, Bravo’s SVP Production, were threatened as they drove onto the set. A crewmember witnessed a Teamster rush Lakshmi’s car and scream, “We’re gonna bash that pretty face in, you (expletive, expletive) !”
John King, Milton’s Deputy Police Chief, said the Teamsters were “threatening, heckling and harassing” the cast and crew and that a group of Teamsters “slashed the tires on 14 different cars owned by the crew.”
The first officer on the scene, he said, had to call for backup after the Teamsters “gave the officer trouble.” Reading from the police report, he said that the Teamsters were “hostile, swearing, and refusing to let people come in and out. Officers repeatedly tried to deescalate the situation.” When more police arrived, the Teamsters went to the show’s hospitality tent and “harassed the crew there.” When the officers went there, King said, “A group of them slashed the tires on 14 different cars owned by the crew.”
The day after reports about Teamster fanatics’ verbal abuse, threats and vandalism against the Top Chef cast and crew emerged, a Local 25 spokesperson suggested, in a vaguely worded statement, that although union toughs may have been rude and nasty, they didn’t actually break the law during the Top Chef “protest.”
But the track record of Beantown Teamster bosses and their militant followers is sufficiently replete with lawlessness that very few observers seem to believe this tepid denial. In fact, even Marsha Coakley, Massachusetts’ attorney general and the Teamster boss-backed favorite to win the Democratic gubernatorial nomination this year, indicated through a spokesmen that she isn’t happy with her erstwhile political sugar daddies:
Coakley, who polls indicate is leading a three-way race for the Democratic primary to be held September 9, issued a statement to Deadline saying: “Martha believes that the actions as alleged are completely inappropriate. Our campaign has contacted the union in question to express our concerns.”
While no one who wasn’t present can say for sure exactly what happened when Top Chef came to Boston this June, the fact that Local 25 Teamster bosses can’t even count on a politician they bankroll to credit their claims not to have broken the law says a lot about the reputation for thuggery they have earned over the course of decades.
