Indiana Union Reps Plead Guilty To Beating Mchenry County-based Ironworkers Over Church Job Site

A pair of Indiana union representatives have pleaded guilty to beating a group of McHenry County-based ironworkers at a church in 2016. Former Ironworkers Union Local 395 President and business agent Jeffrey Veach and his fellow business agent, Thomas Williamson Sr., accepted plea deals Wednesday in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana in the Hammond division. Each man pleaded guilty to federal conspiracy to commit extortion, the charges of which stemmed from a January 2016 attack that broke the jaw of an employee of the union-based company D5 Iron Works, court records show. Sometime before the confrontation, Veach and Williamson learned that D5 was completing a construction job for a Baptist church in Dyer, Indiana, federal plea agreements show.