McLean County Times

A former union president has been sentenced to serve 42 months in federal prison for helping organize a “brutal assault” on non-union workers in Dyer, Indiana, the U.S. Justice Deparment said.

Jeffrey Veach, 57, was president of Iron Workers Local 395, according to a news release.

“Veach admitted that in January 2016 he learned that D5 Iron Works – a non-union ironworking company from Illinois – was performing work for the Dyer Baptist Church, in Local 395’s ‘territory’,” the release said.

Veach and a co-defendant, Thomas Williamson, went to the construction site to “persuade the D5 workers to sign up with the union or stop work on the site,” the release said. When the workers refused, Veach returned to the site that day with union members who attacked the D5 workers.

“The victims were beaten with fists and loose pieces of hardwood,” the release said. “As a result of the attack, one of the workers sustained a broken jaw that required several surgeries and hospitalization.”

Veach and Williamson both pleaded guilty to one count of extortion conspiracy, the Justice Department said. After the guilty plea, Veach resigned his position as union president.

In his plea, Veach said that after the non-union workers refused to cooperate, Williamson told him that they needed to "take things back to old school," Illinois Leaks reported. 

“By ‘old school,’ I understood Williamson to mean committing acts of violence against D5 and its workers,” Veach said in his plea. “Williamson and I initiated the confrontation and did not act in self-defense or ‘mutual combat.' The purpose of the attack was to intimidate D5 and the general contractor in order to get the D5 workers off the site and to get Local 395 ironworkers onto the site to complete the job.”