You can tell that by talking to him. Though he doesn’t say so, it’s evident that even he wonders at times, privately, quietly, why things are as they are—why there’s this war, and why he is as he is: constitutionally incapable of acquiescing, like many corporations do, before chest-pounding union bosses.

Cox is a longtime Nevadan who grew up in Elko County and in 1976 bought the Chris Crane Company in Las Vegas. Almost immediately the new owner was visited by union representatives who informed him his choice was simple: let the union make the organization into a union shop, or face more kinds of "trouble" than the business could survive.

In the face of evidence that the danger was quite real, in 1978 Cox signed a blank union contract. But it wasn’t enough to satisfy the union bosses, he says.

"In about 1980, the Operating Engineers [Local 12, Las Vegas] started threatening me, harassing me and just attempting overall coercion," says Cox. "So, in 1982 I terminated all my agreements."

For a couple of years, he says, there was virtual quiet. And then in about 1984, an obviously coordinated—and ferocious—campaign against him and his company began.

Whenever Chris Crane won a contract, pickets would greet it at the new work site. Harassment and vandalism—the same pattern observed in 1993 at the State Farm construction site in Reno—became everyday facts of life.

One case of especially severe vandalism occurred in the mid-1980s. Under the cover of darkness, some midnight malefactor sneaked into the company equipment yard and intentionally tipped one high-capital-investment crane over onto five other similarly expensive cranes. It was a clear attemp to destroy the livelihood of Cox and his employees and fulfill the union organizers’ threat.

"In 1986 they relentlessly picketed me, day and night, following every one of my cranes in an out of the yard, from four or five in the morning until quitting time," recalls Cox.

The threats became quite explicit from the secretary and general business manager of one union, says Cox. Then, one morning around 4:45 A.M. when Cox came to the company gate, he was accosted by several men, grabbed and thrown into the back seat of their car, taken out into the desert south of Las Vegas and threatened again.

When some federal agencies were made aware of what had happened—kidnapping is a federal crime—the frontal attacks diminished. But the middle-of-the-night vandalism and harassment picked up.

In 1989, when union goons threatened his employees in the parking lot of an American Bank of Commerce in Las Vegas, Cox intervened. According to the police version, the 5’7" Cox threw the first punch. But he was severely beaten up, coming back to consciousness in the hands of paramedics on the way to the hospital.

"I had a broken nose, three broken ribs, cracked sternum and 60-some stitches in my face," he says. Although one of Cox’s employees photographed the whole episode, Vegas police made no arrests.

In 1990, Cox was living in his motor home out at the Chris Crane yard.

"Three guys drug me out," he says, "got me down on the ground and were getting ready to pull the trigger when Metro got there."

How had Metro happened to come by? When the union muscle was initially trying to break into the motor home, says Cox, he dialed 911.

"Told them what was going on. And of course they did dispatch people to the scene."