Chuck Vance's goon squads ( Vance Security)
CEEJAY
harass them.
Note the brief look ath their "arsenal" further down.
I have 17 years in 2 branches of the Armed Forces (US), and only wish we
were kitted out this well.
Vance
This may be one of the few employers that likes strikes.
Most people don't like strikes. In the strange, inverted world of Chuck
Vance, strikes are good news and compromise is not. Vance, heads Vance
International Companies, one of the largest strikebreaking firms in the
country.
"It was a tough summer for all of us," he wrote his employees after three
major companies avoided strikes.
"We were ready to put 150+ men to work....Unfortunately, for us, each
company either settled with the union or are now working without a
contract."
"We had two APT training classes in anticipation of these strikes, which
never materialized."
Vance's notorious Asset Protection Teams have fought mineworkers in the coal
fields of Virginia, Caterpillar workers in central Illinois, and the
newspaper workers in Detroit. APT boasts it has been involved in 380
strikes.
Vance, a former Secret Service agent, was once married to former President
Gerald Ford's daughter Susan.
He started his firm in the early 1980s with five other former Secret Service
members.
At first the firm specialized only in protecting dignitaries such as the
Saudi royal family. But later they branched out into the sordid
strikebreaking business.
Vance's arsenal contains high-powered equipment according to an article in
Regardies magazine in 1989. Drawing from Vance's own publications, Regardies
listed: "assault rifles or shotguns, gas masks, tear-gas munitions,
counter-sniper equipment, intrusion detection devices, special illumination
devices, armored vehicles and K-9 teams."
Vance cameramen lined the rooftops at Caterpillar and during the newspaper
strike in Detroit.
But the cameras should have been pointed at these goons.
Eyewitnesses have documented Vance guards who stalk union members to their
homes in many strikes--including Caterpillar and the Boise Cascade fight in
International Falls, Minnesota.
Often their presence inflames an already tense situation. Boise Cascade, a
paper mill in northern Minnesota, was hoping to save a few bucks by using a
nonunion construction firm to build a new plant. As part of its antiunion
strategy, it hired Vance. But their paramilitary presence helped provoke one
of the most militant confrontations in recent American labor history when
protestors burst through a fence and forced the Vance guards to retreat.
Whether Boise Cascade actually saved any money on their project is not
known. But it's clear that Vance doesn't work cheaply.
In 1990 Vance was hired by Metropolitan International, another security
firm, to work in the Greyhound strike. Later that year Vance sued
Metropolitan for the $618,812 it claimed it was owed. Metropolitan had
agreed to pay Vance $3,725 a day for a 16-person team in Los Angeles, and up
to $1000 and more a day in other cities according to the Baltimore Business
Journal.
Security over the course of the strike had cost Greyhound $20 million, and
when it entered Chapter 11 bankruptcy, strikebusting security firms ran into
problems getting paid.
Vance recently opened up operations in Ontario, Canada, a move that Vance
admits was tied to the victory of the anti-labor Progressive Conservative
party in that province.
When the Conservative government struck down an Ontario law prohibiting
strikebreakers, Vance anticipated that picket line problems would increase.
In that, he saw a business opportunity.
Vance actively solicits business from employers as their union contracts
near expiration dates.
Frank Stuglin, vice president of UAW Local 155, was surprised to see himself
mentioned by name in a letter that APT sent a human resources director of a
small company less than three weeks before the UAW contract expired.
"If you anticipate no negotiating difficulties with Mr. Stuglin, read no
further," the letter said.
Employers who hire Vance are not looking for compromise. They are intent on
all-out war.
© 1996, The Washington Post. Reprinted with permission.
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