Rules To Win By

"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"--