The group was founded as the Employers' Association of Chicago (the EA) in 1902 during a strike against telephone equipment manufacturers.
In January 1902, Brass Molder's Union Local 83 struck Stromberg-Carlson and Western Electric, seeking to win the closed shop in collective bargaining negotiations.
By the end of the year, the EA's existence had become public knowledge and the organization had hired its first staff person, former labor arbitrator Frederick W.
The Teamsters and team owners had formed a body known as the Chicago Board of Arbitration (CBA) in early 1903.
The EA also supplied funds and legal expertise which enabled Kellogg Switchboard to win a court injunction forcing the Teamsters to end their sympathy strike.
The EA also raised $1 million (about $25 million in 2007 dollars) to establish the Employers' Teaming Association-a new company which, within a matter of weeks, bought out a large number of team owners and imported hundreds of African American strikebreakers from St. Louis to drive the wagons.
Local and state courts issued numerous injunctions against the unions, ordering them to stop picketing and return to work.
In June 1905, the grand jury led by foreman McCormick heard testimony by Driscoll, who at the time was secretary of the team owners' association.
It helped expose efforts to extort money from property owners in 1921, which led to the indictment and eventual imprisonment of BSEIU president William Quesse.
[9] In 1921, the EA attacked nascent unions in grocery stores and food industries, accusing them of vandalism, bombings and extortion as well.
[11] The focus on illegal activities by unions proved so effective that the EA's main priority became attacking labor racketeering.
The term "racketeering" was, in fact, coined by the Employers' Association of Chicago in June 1927 in a statement about the influence of organized crime in the Teamsters union.
The EA reported on the use of thugs and gunmen by both unions and employers, and excoriated the public and government officials for not prosecuting rackets more often or more successfully.
The Association's October 1928 report, which documented an astonishing 727 bombings in Chicago in the previous year, led to the formation of the city's first arson unit.
Chicago police investigators alleged that Breen had helped form a battery makers' cartel, and that this trade group was shaking down non-members.
That year, it called for repeal of the state of Illinois' "horse thief law," which permitted posses to form legally so long as they were in hot pursuit of criminals.
The EA claimed that the law led citizens and employers to mistakenly believe gangs of union members were legal deputies when they were not.
[16] Three months later, the Association campaigned for a new city ordinance which would ban the resale of seized weapons to the public.
In 1929, the EA issued a report estimating the costs of racketeering in the city of Chicago at $136 million a year (about $1.6 billion in 2007 dollars).
By 1932, the Employers' Association was claiming that the bombings and rackets cost the city more than the taxes it paid to fight World War I.
Although the EA had long opposed collective bargaining, federal legislation protecting labor unions took the organization by surprise.
The court upheld the constitutionality of the statute in 1937 in National Labor Relations Board v. Jones & Laughlin Steel Corporation 301 U.S. 1 (1937).
The EA undertook a campaign to influence Congressional opinion, and pushed strongly for repeal of the Wagner Act.
Chicago law enforcement was also cracking down heavily on labor violence and racketeering, which won high praise from the Employers' Association.
[22] By November 1951, the EA dropped its pretense of "fair play" and announced it openly opposed unionization of every workplace.
Once more, it hired an ex-FBI agent to investigate racketeering in the city of Chicago, and accused unions of using simple picketing as a means of extortion.
In November 1964, Chicago City Council Alderman Thomas E. Keane accused the EA of anti-union bias—a charge the Association roundly denied.
That year, it undertook a very successful campaign to encourage local businesses to hire middle-age managers with experience rather than discharge them.
The organization also attacked the publishers of elementary and junior high school textbooks for allowing "communist" influences.