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52-523: Bugs Bunny finds himself inadvertently entangled in the affairs of Sing Song Prison. Encountering prison guard Yosemite Sam Schultz, Bugs faces unwarranted suspicion and subsequent incarceration following a confrontation with Sam. Despite protestations of innocence, Bugs is swiftly apprehended, adorned with a prisoner's attire, and consigned to labor at the rock pile. Enduring Sam's taunts of an extended imprisonment, Bugs ingeniously engineers an escape plan. Exploiting Sam's momentary distraction, Bugs manipulates

104-647: A United Auto Workers local in Lansing, Michigan . The remaining five were Pinkertons. As early as 1855, the Pinkerton National Detective Agency provided "spotters" to expose dishonest and lazy railroad conductors. However, the program unraveled when, after a train accident in November 1872, papers found on the body of a Pinkerton operative revealed that the agency had been using deceitful practices. In 1869, garment workers formed

156-460: A money loop also called a kickback . Informers in some countries receive a percentage of all money recovered by their government. The ancient Roman historian Lactantius described a judiciary case which involved the prosecution of a woman suspected to have advised another woman not to marry Maximinus II : "Neither indeed was there any accuser, until a certain Jew , one charged with other offences,

208-581: A slang term, a " snitch ", " rat ", " canary ", " stool pigeon ", " stoolie " or " grass ", among other terms) is a person who provides privileged information, or (usually damaging) information intended to be intimate, concealed, or secret, about a person or organization to an agency, often a government or law enforcement agency. The term is usually used within the law-enforcement world, where informants are officially known as confidential human sources ( CHS ), or criminal informants ( CI ). It can also refer pejoratively to someone who supplies information without

260-565: A cannon, propelling himself over the prison walls to temporary freedom before Sam swiftly recaptures him. Subsequently, Bugs employs cunning tactics to outwit Sam, culminating in Sam inadvertently confining himself within a jail cell. Amidst further exchanges, Bugs orchestrates a sequence of role reversals, compelling Sam to unwittingly swap roles with him, thereby subjecting Sam to the ridicule and consequences of his own ploys. Amidst this cat-and-mouse game, Bugs continues to outmaneuver Sam, perpetuating

312-508: A change of focus for the Pinkerton Agency. The days of strike-breaking agencies marshalling large numbers of strike-breakers to defeat strikes were over. The Pinkerton Agency was determined to "place emphasis on its undercover work which, being secret, created less antagonism." While more overt forms of labor control often led to violence, the undercover operator or missionary was able to destroy unionization efforts without alarming

364-453: A cycle of comical misadventures and thwarting Sam's every attempt at retribution. Employing guile and deception, Bugs undermines Sam's authority and exploits his vulnerabilities, ultimately resulting in Sam's enduring humiliation and defeat. As the narrative unfolds, Bugs perpetuates his dominance over Sam, deceiving him with false promises of aid and exacerbating Sam's predicament with relentless trickery. Ultimately, Sam finds himself ensnared in

416-480: A fairly substantive overview. A letter from the Burns Detective Agency declared to the employer, "[w]ithin the heart of your business is where we operate, down in the dark corners, in out-of-the-way places that cannot be seen from your office ..." To stop a union proponent—a pusher , in the anti-union lexicon—the [union] buster will go anywhere, not just to the lunch room, but into

468-742: A new identity. Informants, and especially criminal informants, can be motivated by many reasons. Many informants are not themselves aware of all of their reasons for providing information, but nonetheless do so. Many informants provide information while under stress, duress, emotion and other life factors that can affect the accuracy or veracity of information provided. Law enforcement officers, prosecutors, defense lawyers, judges and others should be aware of possible motivations so that they can properly approach, assess and verify informants' information. Generally, informants' motivations can be broken down into self-interest, self-preservation and conscience. A list of possible motivations includes: Corporations and

520-401: A newspaper reporter, and determined to hold meetings behind closed doors. Note-taking was forbidden. Their concerns were justified, but the effort failed; two Pinkerton operatives had infiltrated the convention as delegates from Reading, Pennsylvania . They composed elaborate reports on all the issues and discussions and recorded all the minutes of the meetings at the convention. Beginning in

572-539: A prospective client's factory without permission. A report would be prepared and submitted to the startled manager, revealing conspiracies of sabotage and union activities. Workers who were bribed to provide information to operatives often believed that the destination was an insurance agency, or interested stockholders. They never imagined that their reports on co-workers were destined for the corporation. Such workers were said to be "hooked," and in spy agency parlance those who reeled them in were called "hookers." Once in

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624-400: A religious commission investigating labor spies was itself the target of labor spying. A labor spy followed the investigators, and sent a report to United States Steel Corporation alleging that the investigators were "members of the I.W.W. and Reds." One document similarly characterized them as "Pink Tea Socialists and Parlor Reds." One spy report included a cover letter from Ralph M. Easley of

676-406: A web of Bugs' machinations, enduring the consequences of his own folly as Bugs revels in the satisfaction of his victory. It all culminates when Sam, fed up with Bugs and his antics, finally decides to let him out of the prison to be rid of him. However, Bugs rats out Sam to the prison warden that he "let a prisoner go", which Bugs was not, since he committed no crimes to warrant prison time, and Sam

728-579: A while, a worker is impeccable. So some consultants resort to lies. To fell the sturdiest union supporters in the 1970s, I frequently launched rumors that the targeted worker was gay or was cheating on his wife. It was a very effective technique ... Missionary work means deploying undercover operatives to create dissent on the picket lines and in union halls, for example, by utilizing whispering campaigns or unfounded rumors. Missionaries frequently directed their whispering campaigns toward strikers' families and communities. For example, female operatives would visit

780-710: Is in pretrial detention , usually in exchange for sentence reductions or other inducements, have been the focus of particular controversy. Some examples of their use are in connection with Stanley Williams , Cameron Todd Willingham , Thomas Silverstein , Marshall "Eddie" Conway , and a suspect in the disappearance of Etan Patz . The Innocence Project has stated that 15% of all wrongful convictions later exonerated because of DNA results were accompanied by false testimony by jailhouse informants. 50% of murder convictions exonerated by DNA were accompanied by false testimony by jailhouse informants. Slang terms for informants include: The term "stool pigeon" originates from

832-489: Is no conspiracy, you've got to make a conspiracy in order to hold your job." The sudden exposure of labor spies has driven workers "to violence and unreason", including at least one shooting war . Labor spies are usually agents employed by corporations , or hired through the services of union busting agencies, for the purpose of monitoring, disempowering, subverting, or destroying labor unions , or undermining actions taken by those unions. [The labor spy] capitalizes

884-618: Is perfectly legal and, according to the American Management Association , nearly 80% of major US companies actively monitor their employees. Statistics suggest that historically trade unions have been frequent targets of labor spying. Labor spying is most typically used by companies or their agents, and such activity often complements union busting . In at least one case, an employer hired labor spies to spy not only upon strikers, but also upon strikebreakers that he had hired. Sidney Howard observed in 1921 that

936-424: Is punished with being made a inmate himself and sent to work the rock pile. As Sam grumbles over who the stool pigeon was that told on him, It was Bugs who ratted him out who is seen standing on a stool as he imitates a pigeon cooing. Big House Bunny is available, uncensored and uncut, on Looney Tunes Golden Collection: Volume 1 , Disc 1 . Stool pigeon An informant (also called an informer or, as

988-485: The Corporations Auxiliary Company , a concern whose business is the administration of industrial espionage." By the 1930s, industrial espionage had become not just an accepted part of labor relations, it was the most important form of labor discipline services that was provided by the anti-union agencies. More than two hundred agencies offered undercover operatives to their clients. During

1040-510: The National Civic Federation to the offices of United States Steel Corporation requesting that a list of clergymen "be kicked out of their positions" because of the investigation. The actual commission responded that none of the clergymen on the list were in any way connected with the investigation. In the 1930s nearly one-third of the twelve-hundred labor spies working for the Pinkerton Agency held high-level positions in

1092-638: The Noble Order of the Knights of Labor as a secret labor organization, largely in response to spying by an employer. The resulting blacklist had been used to destroy their union. At an 1888 convention of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers that was held in Richmond, Virginia, delegates organized a special committee to search out hiding places that might be used by labor spies. They discovered

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1144-683: The secret-police force Okhrana and later the Soviet militsiya or KGB . Officially, those informants were referred to as "secret coworker" ( Russian : секретный сотрудник , sekretny sotrudnik ) and often were referred by the Russian-derived portmanteau seksot . In some KGB documents has also been used the designation "source of operational information" ( Russian : источник оперативной информации , istochnik operativnoi informatsii ). [REDACTED] Media related to Informants at Wikimedia Commons Labor spies Labor spying in

1196-548: The 1930s, thirty-two mining companies, twenty-eight automotive firms, and a similar number of food companies relied upon labor spies. A member of the National Labor Relations Board estimated that American industrialists spent eighty million dollars spying on their workers. General Motors alone spent nearly a million dollars for undercover operatives fighting the CIO during a two-year period. In addition to

1248-479: The Pinkertons, General Motors hired thirteen other spy agencies to monitor workers in its factories, and then used the Pinkertons to spy on operatives from these other agencies. Between 1933 and 1935, the Pinkerton Agency employed twelve hundred undercover operatives and operated out of twenty-seven offices. The agency assigned agents to three hundred companies during the 1930s. In 1936 Robert Pinkerton announced

1300-590: The United States had involved people recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence , committing sabotage , sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, in the context of an employer/labor organization relationship. Spying by companies on union activities has been illegal in the United States since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. However, non-union monitoring of employee activities while at work

1352-520: The annual convention of the American Federation of Labor . For fifteen dollars, prospective clients could have a "full and complete report of the entire proceedings." By 1919, spying on workers had become so common that steel company executives had accumulated six hundred spy reports. Some of them were accurate transcriptions of the secret meetings of union locals. In order to elicit business, some agencies would send secret operatives into

1404-623: The antiquated practice of tying a passenger pigeon to a stool. The bird would flap its wings in a futile attempt to escape. The sound of the wings flapping would attract other pigeons to the stool where a large number of birds could be easily killed or captured. A system of informants existed in the Russian Empire and was later adopted by the Soviet Union . In Russia , such people were known as osvedomitel or donoschik , and secretly cooperated with law enforcement agencies, such as

1456-435: The basic goals of an organization. A National Labor Relations Board chairman testified about the results of these techniques: The mystery and deadly certainty with which this scheme [labor spying] operated was so baffling to the men that they each suspected the others, were afraid to meet or to talk and the union was completely broken. A labor spy observed, Those labor unions were so hot, crying about spies, that everything

1508-524: The bedroom if necessary. The buster not only is a terrorist; he is also a spy . My team and I routinely pried into workers' police records, personnel files, credit histories, medical records, and family lives in search of a weakness that we could use to discredit union activists. Labor spies may employ techniques of surreptitious monitoring, "missionary" work (see below), sabotage, provoking chaos or violence , frameups , intimidation, or insinuating themselves into positions of authority from which they may alter

1560-632: The community.'" At the prompting of Congressman Thomas E. Watson , the U.S. House of Representatives investigated detective agencies after the Homestead Strike . The Senate also investigated, and both houses issued reports in 1893. In addition to the Pinkertons, the Thiel Detective Agency, the U.S. Detective Agency, Mooney and Boland's Detective Agency, and the Illinois Detective Agency were involved in

1612-498: The consent of the involved parties. The term is commonly used in politics, industry, entertainment, and academia. In the United States , a confidential informant or "CI" is "any individual who provides useful and credible information to a law enforcement agency regarding felonious criminal activities and from whom the agency expects or intends to obtain additional useful and credible information regarding such activities in

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1664-529: The dawn of the muckraking era , employers increasingly turned to espionage services. E. H. Murphy once told a midwestern industrialist, We have the reputation of being several jumps ahead of the old way of settling capital and labor difficulties ... Our service aims to keep our clients informed through the medium of intelligence reports. "In December [of 1920] ten important officials of the Labor unions of Akron, Ohio, were exposed as confessed and convicted spies of

1716-625: The detective agencies that sometimes represent them have historically hired labor spies to monitor or control labor organizations and their activities. Such individuals may be professionals or recruits from the workforce. They may be willing accomplices, or may be tricked into informing on their co-workers' unionization efforts. Paid informants have often been used by authorities within politically and socially oriented movements to weaken, destabilize and ultimately break them. Informers alert authorities regarding government officials that are corrupt. Officials may be taking bribes or be participants in

1768-680: The employer's ignorance and prejudice and enters the [workplace] specifically to identify the leaders of the Labor organization, to propagandize against them and blacklist them and to disrupt and corrupt their union. He is under cover, disguised as a worker, hired to betray the workers' cause. Labor spies may be referred to as spies , operatives, agents, agents provocateurs , saboteurs , infiltrators, informants , spotters, plants , special police, or detectives . However, Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard, observed that labor spies are different from our normal view of detectives. While detectives investigate people suspected of crimes,

1820-484: The future". Informants are extremely common in every-day police work, including homicide and narcotics investigations. Any citizen who provides crime-related information to law enforcement by definition is an informant. Law enforcement and intelligence agencies may face criticism regarding their conduct towards informants. Informants may be shown leniency for their own crimes in exchange for information, or simply turn out to be dishonest in their information, resulting in

1872-409: The history of labor spying, observed that Pinkerton agents were secured "by advertising, by visiting United States recruiting offices for rejectees, and by frequenting waterfronts where men were to be found going to sea as a last resort of employment," and that "[to] labor they were a 'gang of toughs and ragtails and desperate men, mostly recruited by Pinkerton and his officers from the worst elements of

1924-666: The labor spy business may have been the testimony of Albert Balanow (some sources list the name as Ballin or Blanow) during an investigation of the detective agencies' roles during the Red Scare . Albert Balanow had worked with both the Burns Detective Agency and the Thiel Detective Agency . Balanow testified that the Red Scare was all about shaking down businessmen for protection money. "If there

1976-557: The labor spy shadows and spies upon people who are not suspected of having committed any crime, nor are they suspected of planning any crime. During the mid-to-late-19th century, a period during which there was intense distaste for the detective profession, the Pinkerton and Thiel detective agencies referred to their field agents as operatives or testers . The Pinkerton logo inspired the expression private eye . Operatives employed for labor spying may be professional, recruited from

2028-400: The labor spy, "often unknown to the very employer who retains him through his agency, is in a position of immense strength. There is no power to hold him to truth-telling." Because the labor spy operates in secret, "all [co-workers] are suspected, and intense bitterness is aroused against employers, the innocent and the guilty alike." Historically, one of the most incriminating indictments of

2080-412: The latter decades of the 19th century, agencies that supplied security and intelligence services to business clients were essentially private police forces, and were accountable only to their clients. The private police agencies declined with the development of professional public police departments, but they continued to be employed by mine owners in "frontier environments" well into the 20th century. By

2132-609: The only person who discussed violence at Altman WFM meetings during the strike turned out to be a detective. Provocations also took the form of fomenting racial strife. The Sherman Service Company , Inc., of Chicago sent instructions to an operative to "stir up as much bad feeling as you possibly can between the Serbians and the Italians ... The Italians are going back to work. Call up every question you can in reference to racial hatred between these two nationalities." In 1919-1920,

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2184-490: The operative is thereafter a marked man ... his usefulness to the Agency is ended." Therefore, actual labor spy reports, and even records of their existence, are a rare commodity. Corporations are not subject to freedom of information requirements or sunshine laws , and therefore corporate practices such as spying are rarely subject to public scrutiny. However, historic examples of labor spying that have come to light provide

2236-542: The public, or recruited from members of a particular workforce for a specific operation such as strike breaking . They may be directly employed by the company, or they may report to the company through an agency. Some agencies that provide such operatives to corporations offer full protective and union busting services, such as security guards , training, providing weaponry (including, historically, machine guns), intelligence gathering, research, and strike-breaker recruitment services. Other agencies are more specialized. Both

2288-586: The public. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935 outlawed spying on and intimidating union activists, provoking violence, and company unions. However, spying on workers and harassing them continued, according to testimony before congress in 1957. Other abuses by labor consulting firms included manipulating union elections through bribery and coercion; threatening to revoke workers' benefits if they organized; installing union officers sympathetic to management; and, offering rewards to employees who worked against unions. In 1944, historian J. Bernard Hogg , surveying

2340-558: The spy agencies and the companies that employ labor spies prefer to keep their activities secret. Some labor leaders have likewise sought to downplay the extent of industrial spying. This, in spite of the fact that "industrial spies have played both sides against each other, and have been at the bottom of a great deal of the violence and corruption of industrial conflict." The companies seek to avoid embarrassment and bad public relations. The spy agencies also concern themselves with "possible danger attendant upon discovery, and second, because

2392-481: The targeted unions, including one national vice-presidency, fourteen local presidencies, eight local vice-presidencies, and numerous secretary positions. Sam Brady, a veteran Pinkerton operative, held a high enough position in the International Association of Machinists that he was able to damage the union by precipitating a premature strike. Pinkerton operatives drove out all but five officers in

2444-488: The time and money spent acquiring them being wasted. Informants are often regarded as traitors by their former criminal associates. Whatever the nature of a group, it is likely to feel strong hostility toward any known informers, regard them as threats and inflict punishments ranging from social ostracism through physical abuse and/or death. Informers are therefore generally protected, either by being segregated while in prison or, if they are not incarcerated, relocated under

2496-691: The wives of strikers in their homes, incorporating their cover story into their spiel. They would tell the wife sad stories about how their own spouse lost a job years ago because of a strike, and hasn't found work since, and "that's why I must sell these products door to door." Another target was merchants who catered to strikers, who could be turned against the union by asserted claims of financial risks. Missionary campaigns have been known to destroy not only strikes, but unions themselves. Undercover management agents have acted to create provocations within labor ranks. Examples include: ... historians Philip Taft and Philip Ross have pointed out that "IWW activity

2548-571: Was at fever pitch and they look at each other with blood in their eyes. As one example of the impact of spying, a union local at the Underwood Elliot Fisher Company plant was so damaged by undercover operatives that membership dropped from more than twenty-five hundred, to fewer than seventy-five. In 1906, officers of the Corporations Auxiliary Company announced that they had labor spies at

2600-400: Was fixed to a gibbet, and then he disclosed the whole secret contrivance; and with his last breath he protested to all the beholders that the women died innocent." Criminal informant schemes have been used as cover for politically motivated intelligence offensives. Jailhouse informants, who report hearsay (admissions against penal interest) which they claim to have heard while the accused

2652-405: Was induced, through hope of pardon, to give false evidence against the innocent. The equitable and vigilant magistrate conducted him out of the city under a guard, lest the populace should have stoned him... The Jew was ordered to the torture till he should speak as he had been instructed... The innocent were condemned to die.... Nor was the promise of pardon made good to the feigned adulterer, for he

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2704-703: Was virtually free of violence ... It is of some interest to note that a speaker who advocated violence at a meeting at the IWW hall in Everett [Washington, where the Everett massacre occurred] was later exposed as a private detective. And in the aftermath of the Colorado Labor Wars , William B. Easterly, president of WFM District Union No. 1 [in the Cripple Creek District ], testified that

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