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After passage of the 1934 Anti-Racketeering Act, Local

807 of the Teamsters union decided to expand its territory

outside of New York City.  Teamsters members accosted

truckers coming into the city with guns and charged a toll

equal to one day's union wage.  In some cases, the members

of Local 807 would drive the trucks into the city.  In

other cases, the members took the money and departed.  In

no case of record were the members of Local 807 employed

by the out-of-town trucking companies.

Since those tactics at least doubled the cost of

transporting goods into New York City, most if not all of

the local trucking companies signed contracts with Local

807.  However, federal charges were filed against Local

807 and some of its members under the anti-racketeering

law.  The central issue was whether the Teamsters members

were "bona fide" employees of the "bona fide" employers,

from whom Local 807 had extorted union contracts.  The

U.S. Court of Appeals said that a bona fide relationship

between employer and employee must be an uncoerced rela-

tionship.18   Since Local 807 had no contract with many of

the trucking companies before it began stopping the

trucks, that interpretation would seem to rule out the

Teamsters as bona fide employees.

But some of the Teamsters had driven trucks into the

city and, on that ground, the Court of Appeals ruled,

first, that they were bona fide employees and, second,

that violent coercion was exempt from prosecution where

"the employee really did the work for which he was paid."19

The court even held that this exception applied when the

employer made the coerced payment but refused the services

of the union member.20   Congress had targeted "blackmail,"

not union violence aimed at "secur[ing] work on better

terms," asserted the court.  "[A]lthough the means

employed may be the same, the end is always different."21

Appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court, government prose-

cutors insisted that making payments with the intention of

receiving services was different than simply buying "pro-

tection" from further violence.  But, argued the Court, it

is "always an open question whether the employers' capitu-

lation to the demands of the union [was] prompted by a

desire to obtain services or to avoid further injury or

both."22   Figuring that no jury could competently engage in

what the Court considered a mind-reading exercise, the

majority held that the victim's state of mind was irrele-

vant in this case.

In reaction to the ruling, Congress made several

attempts to amend the Anti-Racketeering Act, finally enact-