Ironworker who turned to violence to gain clout pleads guilty

To hear federal prosecutors tell it, James Walsh was an outsider - an ambitious striver with a seemingly insatiable need to prove himself as one of the guys.

His drive to impress union colleagues in Ironworkers Local 401 led him first to lead arson attacks on nonunion construction sites, and on Tuesday to a federal courtroom. There, in a hearing before U.S. District Judge Michael Baylson, Walsh admitted his role in one of the union members' most noted crimes, a December 2012 attack on a Quaker meetinghouse construction site in Chestnut Hill.

With his plea to charges of racketeering conspiracy and arson, Walsh, 49, became the latest union member lining up to admit guilt in an ongoing racketeering conspiracy case against 12 of the group's members.

"I'm pleading guilty to the charges the government put against me because I am guilty of them," Walsh told the judge.

Also Tuesday, union member Greg Sullivan, 49, pleaded guilty to participating in two attacks, including one on a nonunion warehouse project in Southwest Philadelphia with Walsh.

In all, eight ironworkers have either pleaded guilty or acknowledged they intend to do so. It remains unclear whether any have agreed to testify against their fellow members, including the union's longtime head, Joseph Dougherty, who is expected to take his case to trial next year.

In many ways, Walsh stood apart from his union colleagues. He joined the union at an older age than most. Unlike many members with long family histories as ironworkers, Walsh's father or uncles had not been part of the profession. And while others built camaraderie over after-work beers, Walsh, who had struggled with alcohol and drug addiction in his youth, abstained.

Yet, say prosecutors, there was at least one path to the union's inner circle that remained open to him.

In court filings, prosecutors allege that violence was woven into the fabric of the union. Members threatened contractors who refused to hire union labor, and those who held out could expect threats, violent picket lines, and mysterious damage to their projects and equipment.

Union members dubbed such attacks "nightwork," court documents say. And those willing to take on such jobs for the group shot through the ranks.

Frequent "nightworkers" landed plum assignments with long-term commitments and ample opportunities for overtime from union bosses. Elected posts within the group were won based on what acts of sabotage the candidates had committed for the group.

It was through violence that Walsh saw his ticket to the top.

He "aspired to be a legend in the union - to commit acts which other ironworkers only talk about doing," Assistant U.S. Attorney Robert J. Livermore wrote in Walsh's plea documents. He approached "nightwork" with such zeal, others began to refer to him as the union's "big-time hit man."

The list of crimes he pleaded guilty to Tuesday included leading the 2012 attack on the construction site of the meetinghouse - a project led by a nonunion contractor. Walsh not only volunteered to send the builder a message, he also recruited and led the team that sneaked into the site Dec. 20, cut its steel beams with torches, and set a crane on fire.

As police fanned out to investigate the crime that night, Walsh received a congratulatory text message from a union higher-up. "Nice swing," it read, according to court filings.

His participation in a violent picket line outside the nonunion Goldtex Apartments construction project in 2012 and another arson the next year at the warehouse project in 2013 also earned him attention.

Yet his efforts on behalf of the union apparently were not enough to secure him a post on its board of trustees. When a vacancy opened in 2013, Walsh put his name forward but lost.

In a wiretapped conversation quoted in his plea documents, Walsh complained about being passed over by a suburban union operative who he felt did not have to work as hard to intimidate contractors there.

Still, Walsh persisted. Within a month, he was plotting another arson, at a construction site in Malvern.

On Oct. 12, 2013, he and two others approached their target with acetylene torches in hand. This time, the FBI was waiting.

Walsh faces a minimum prison sentence of 15 years at a hearing set for January.