By Greg Wright
Gannett News Service

WASHINGTON - United Parcel Service driver and former University of Miami football linebacker Roderick Carter decided to cross a UPS picket line in Hialeah, Fla., in 1997, and was beaten and subjected to racial slurs by union workers. He also was stabbed by one union worker.

Replacement worker Eddie York was shot to death in 1993 while crossing the picket line at a West Virginia strip mine.

The National Taxpayers Union launched a $1 million radio, television and newspaper advertising blitz last month that features these acts of union violence.

ON THE RADIO

The National Taxpayer Union's script for its radio advertisement:   Man No. 1 (Cheerful): Hi, we can't come to the phone, so please leave us a message.   Man No. 2 (Dark, menacing): You're next. We know where you live. We're going to get you.   Anchor: Why are so many hard-working people threatened this way? Like the Vietnamese immigrant who simply wanted to earn enough money to send her children to college. Or the African-American who was pulled from his vehicle and stabbed repeatedly while being called a derogatory name. These people and many like them were victims of union violence. Too many job actions include harassment, assaults, even worse. In Ohio this spring, one union member was charged with plotting to launch explosives into a workplace. Tell Congress that union violence against hard-working Americans must stop. Tell them to pass the Freedom from Union Violence Act. Because that's the only way the thugs who commit these crimes will get the message.

The group claims that most Americans do not realize that unions routinely resort to violence to coerce management or punish workers who want to work and not strike.

But AFL-CIO officials and labor experts said the group's campaign is blatant hypocrisy. The National Taxpayers Union gets a large share of money from conservative, pro-business groups that oppose organized labor, union activists said.

"It (union violence) is not a legitimate issue," said the AFL-CIO's spokeswoman, Kathy Roeder. "It's an attempt to distract from serious economic issues that workers are facing."

The National Taxpayers Union, created in 1969 to lobby Congress to cut government waste and taxes, received more than $1.5 million since 1991 from the pro-business and anti-labor John M. Olin and Sarah Scaife foundations.

Richard Mellon Scaife, an heir to the Mellon oil and banking fortune, is former chairman of the Sarah Scaife Foundation, which bears his mother's name. Mr. Scaife, a leading conservative, gave millions to conservative think tanks, according to records obtained by Media Transparency, a Minneapolis nonprofit group that studies how money influences the media.

"One of the main goals is to break unions," said Robert Levine, a spokesman for Media Transparency. "The National Taxpayers Union is a front group."

The National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, founded in 1968 to protect workers from what it calls union injustice, received more than $1.5 million in grants from the John M. Olin Foundation since 1991, according to Media Transparency data.

But the National Taxpayers Union and National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation officials say they are not a cover for a movement to bust unions. The National Right to Work foundation has about 80,000 donors; officials say the bulk are individuals who give $50 apiece.

"They want to turn it into a business versus labor conflict," said spokesman Stefan Gleason of the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation. "We have support from a wide variety of groups - conservatives, liberals, small business, former union members, teachers and retirees."

Though the National Taxpayers Union was founded as an anti-tax group, it began to focus more on labor unions when it realized organized labor was opposing tax cuts in California, Oklahoma, Washington and other states, spokesman Peter Sepp said. Its ads have run in Columbus, Ohio; Memphis, Tenn.; Rapid City, S.D.; St. Louis; and Washington, D.C.

The National Taxpayers Union and National Right to Work Foundation officials cite 10,000 reported incidences of union workers harassing, beating and killing other workers during labor disputes since 1975, Mr. Sepp said.

Some of the most recent acts of alleged union violence have occurred at an AK Steel plant in Mansfield, Ohio. The company locked out about 600 union workers in a labor dispute that has dragged on for four years. AK officials accuse the workers of inciting a riot Sept. 9, 1999, to stop replacement workers from entering.