QUEBEC - Reports of union-related intimidation are multiplying amid a tug of war between the Quebec government and the construction unions it is working to weaken.

Two backbenchers with the governing Liberal party reported Tuesday facing such tactics, one day after the provincial labour minister said someone had threatened to break "both her legs."

Construction sites were idle in Quebec for a second straight day as workers staged more protests against government legislation aimed at cracking down on union powers.

Guy Ouellette, chairman of a legislative committee, told fellow parliamentarians Tuesday that someone had vandalized his riding office near Montreal overnight.

Something similar happened to a colleague on the committee, he added.

A witness also told the committee the previous day that a female construction worker had recently been beaten with kicks from steel-toed boots.

Those revelations came amid a flurry of reports about iron-fisted control of construction sites by union officials. One witness told the Quebec City committee that employers feel powerless to stop it.

That dynamic was on full display Tuesday.

In some cases, groups of union members made early-morning visits to various construction sites in downtown Montreal to urge fellow workers to leave the premises.

Everything was orderly under the watchful eye of police, with cruisers spotted near the entry to some sites in Montreal and Quebec City.

With crews walking off the job, work on major projects such as Montreal's two superhospitals and the city's new entertainment district were paralyzed.

Some workers clearly weren't happy with having to leave. One worker cursed as he angrily tossed his tools into his truck.

At a smaller site in downtown Montreal, one veteran construction worker shrugged when asked which union was behind the visit.

"We're not closing, they shut us down," the irritated worker said, asking he not be filmed or recorded. "A father has the right to work, but they shut us down."

The protests are in response to the government's attempt to limit the power of unions to pick which workers get assigned to job sites.

Proposed legislation would allow the provincial construction commission to choose the employees.

Labour Minister Lise Theriault stunned many people on Monday when she said someone had left an anonymous phone message threatening to break both her legs.

But Theriault has promised to push ahead with the changes.

The Quebec legislature was expected to pass a motion on Tuesday to denounce the intimidation tactics.

Meanwhile, Sherbrooke La Tribune said a reporter and a photographer for the newspaper were surrounded and threatened on Monday by union representatives who told them to leave a hydroelectric facility.

The province's historically powerful unions became revered institutions as they defended worker rights during the occasionally brutal and often repressive Duplessis era.

Labour leaders became heroes, and the unions they represented became increasingly powerful.

But by the 1970s, there was an attempt to push back against thuggery commonly employed on construction sites.

The labour minister at the time said this week's events bring back old memories.

Jean Cournoyer said current events are the kind of thing that inspired the Bourassa government of the day to bring in the Cliche commission, a public inquiry that propelled to stardom a young lawyer named Brian Mulroney.

"We're living through -- not quite the same -- but a similar type of violence to what we had when we created the Cliche commission," Cournoyer told RDI, Radio-Canada's all-news channel.

"The Cliche commission said, 'Let's abolish these placement bodies."' Cournoyer said he never got to do it because he lost his seat in the 1976 provincial election.

"Madame Theriault seems to want to go there. I wanted to go there -- but I never made it."