Rules to Win By

Download or read book Rules to Win By written by Jane McAlevey and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2023 with total page 313 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Most days, union negotiations don't end with assault and battery charges. But I will not forget one that did: May 2, 2006. Instead of winding up the day as usual, writing follow-up notes for whenever we next sat down across the negotiations table from the hospital management and their hired guns, I was writing a statement for the police about being assaulted by an infamous professional union buster; his sidekick, a convicted international gunrunner; and seven private security guards. I had been corralled by these men toward an elevator in Desert Spring Hospital in Las Vegas. It wasn't until I entered it and they piled in behind me that I realized I needed to get out of the elevator as quickly as possible. But they wouldn't allow it. I was positioned at the corner in front of the elevator's controls because I had hit the ground-floor button even before they entered. Once I realized they were all getting into the elevator too, flight-or-fight panic gripped me, and as the doors began to shut, I reached my arm out to stop the doors from closing. But Brent Yessin, the chief union buster, smacked my arm down and turned to pin me against the wall. I was lifting weights in those days, so I was strong enough that he had to grab hard and yank to lower my arm, bruising me and stopping me from moving; that is technically what constitutes assault and battery in police report lingo. As I later testified in legal proceedings, the worst wasn't the hit to the arm. What left me shaking for months was an even more malicious, insidious act: pressing his body, with an erect penis, into my body and holding me there until the doors opened. That elevator ride under him may have been a minute. It felt like hours"--