“In linking the alleged immigration law violations with their RICO [racketeering] claims, Plaintiffs assembled a convoluted house of cards that cannot withstand legal scrutiny,” says the brief filed by the UMWA. The document explains the coal company has no standing under the law to bring a lawsuit against the union or the miners for alleged violations of immigration law.

One week before the union representation vote at the Co-Op mine in December 2004, the company fired some 30 supporters of the UMWA, saying Co-Op had recently discovered the workers were “illegal.” Many of those miners had worked at the mine for three years or more. In their lawsuit against the miners, the company contends it was the victim because the miners secured employment through fraud by supposedly not having valid work documents.

To assert RICO charges, the company must show it was injured by “defendant’s use or investment of racketeering income,” says the answer by attorneys for the miners. The company cannot possibly show how through getting a job the miners injured C.W. Mining in this way.

Attorneys for the UMWA and the individual miners also point out the company continues its “shotgun approach” by listing every statement made by the miners about the labor dispute as “defamatory.” For the miners to say they “were ‘fired’ instead of resigned,” or that “the employer made the workers work in unsafe conditions” cannot “convey a defamatory meaning.” Those are opinions expressed in the course of a heated labor dispute and protected under the law, says the miners’ brief.

Those being sued by C.W. Mining—which include the UMWA and the Co-Op miners, supporters of the union fight at the mine, and newspapers that have reported what the miners had to say about the labor dispute—are now requesting the issues be heard before Judge Dee Benson for dismissal of the case. The Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret Morning News, and the Militant are asking the judge to take up the defamation charges against these newspapers first.
 
 
Related articles:
Labor support continues to grow for Militant Fighting Fund  
 
 
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