President Trump once proclaimed, "I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn't lose voters." The Teamsters Union recently put their own version of the theory to the test, seeing how thuggishly they could behave without being convicted of a crime. And they won.
On Tuesday, a federal jury in Boston acquitted four Teamsters union members of conspiracy and extortion charges, despite their widely publicized harassment of "Top Chef" host Padma Lakshmi.
Back in 2014, four members of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters Local 25—one of Boston's most aggressive unions—surrounded Lakshmi's vehicle yelling profanities and threatening to assault her. The Teamsters hurled Islamophobic and sexist insults at the celebrity host, who admitted to being "petrified" earlier this month. In Lakshmi's words, her unfortunate encounter with the union "felt like serious schoolyard bullying" and "drastically affected the whole production, not just that day."
Why the union outrage? Because the popular cooking show happened to use nonunion truck drivers.
The "Top Chef" debacle exposes a serious flaw in our nation's labor laws. Union enforcers in Boston and nationwide can get away with obvious extortion as long as they have "legitimate labor ends" in mind. Since the four Teamsters sought to secure work for union truck drivers, they could threaten Lakshmi without legal recourse.
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05.16.2024