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Inside The Secretive World Of Union Busting

While union membership has risen slightly since 2018 thanks to some major organizing wins, and public approval of unions is at its highest level since 1965, labor has a lot of ground to make up. Union membership plummeted from 20.1% of American wage and salary workers in 1983 to just 10.8% in 2020. One of the biggest reasons for that decline is the use of well-funded, aggressive campaigns by employers to fight off unions, conducted largely through expensive union avoidance consultants and lawyers. In 2019, it was estimated that companies spend at least $340 million per year on such consultants and often engage in illegal tactics, for which the penalties are minimal.

New Union-Busting Tracker Debuts Online

Helena, MT. - On Nov. 6, a group of volunteers launched a Web page called the Union-Busting Tracker to post examples of union-busting. Eleven days later, they’d listed 180 separate cases, naming the employers and the union-busting outfits they’d hired. The project is intended to “embolden” workers, says Bob Funk, who founded the LaborLab.us Website, which opened on May 1. “A shocking amount of young workers think unions are illegal and don’t know their rights,” says Funk, who by day is communications director for a Montana union. “The union-busting industry takes advantage of people’s lack of knowledge.” The group’s volunteers, union members from around the country, combed through LM-20 forms, which union-busting companies are required to file with the Department of Labor when employers hire them.

Workers At Beverage Giant Refresco Defeated A ‘Notorious’ Union Buster

As the spread of Covid-19 forced millions of workplaces to close in March 2020, Cesar Moreira continued to report to a bottling plant in Wharton, N.J., where he works as a batching technician. During 12-hour shifts, Moreira mixes vats of powdered concentrate and sugar to churn out brand-name beverages like Gatorade and Arizona Iced Tea. Management for Resfresco Beverages Inc., the owner of the plant and one of the largest bottling companies, told workers these operations fell under the umbrella of “essential services.” Moreira was incredulous. “One batch of 8,000 gallons of lemon-lime Gatorade contains 5,500 pounds of liquid sugar,” he says, speaking to In These Times in Spanish. That the company would risk the health of its employees to maintain the supply of sugary drinks angered him.

Hiding The Union Busters

When Amazon busted a union drive at its Bessemer, Ala., warehouse earlier this year, it ran a sophisticated campaign which involved sending text messages and mailers to employees warning them of the downfalls of a union, offering bonuses to employees who quit before the union election, and even allegedly accessing the dropbox that employees used to mail their ballots. But the size and scope of Amazon’s efforts — and who was coordinating them — wasn’t fully visible to the public or to employees partaking in the election, because the Trump administration scrapped a rule that would have required disclosure of certain union-busting expenditures by corporations. The so-called “persuader” rule was designed to spotlight an industry that rakes in nearly $340 million a year advising corporations on how to prevent their employees from unionizing.

Amazon Is Inundating Workers With Anti-Union Messages

New York City - On the heels of Amazon’s scorched earth, and likely illegal, union-busting campaign in Bessemer, Alabama that defeated workers’ attempt to unionize, Status Coup has obtained photos from inside Amazon’s Staten Island warehouse, known as JFK8, that show the company’s aggressive union-busting in the face of efforts by current and former workers trying to form a union. The union drive organizers, who have formed Amazon Labor Union [ALU], recently filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board after Amazon erected a chain-link fence around the warehouse parking lot in order to force the ALU organizers to a location with less foot traffic–seemingly to prevent them from getting workers to sign a union card. At one point, the fence had a “Beware of Dog” sign up (not clear what dogs folks needed to be aware of).

Colectivo Could Become The Largest Unionized Coffee Chain

On March 8, Lauretta Archibald marked her three-year anniversary as a baker for Colectivo Coffee Roasters, an upscale Midwestern coffee chain based in Milwaukee and Chicago. In her years at Colectivo, Archibald had been responsible for making artisan bread in bulk, sometimes baking 1,000 loaves a night. It was arduous work, and Archibald says that she did not always have the support — or even materials — that she needed: the bakery was understaffed for stretches of time, there weren’t enough cooling racks and one of the ovens leaked the smell of gas through the kitchen.

Google Contractor Moving Work From Pittsburgh To Poland To Bust Union

Pittsburgh, PA -Today the NLRB charged Google Contractor HCL with moving work from Pittsburgh to Poland, citing that the move was a way to bust the newly formed Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals. The NLRB Region 6, based in Pittsburgh, charged HCL with breaking labor law and refusing to negotiate a bargain in good faith with the Pittsburgh Association of Tech Professionals. Most egregiously, the NLRB charged HCL with moving work to lower-paid tech workers in Krakow, Poland. 

Union-busters Set Themselves Up For Janus Backfire

Unfortunately, for the special interest groups that are pushing this agenda, the ramifications of a win will have the opposite of the desired effect. If not bargaining is protected free speech, then bargaining will conversely be protected free speech, giving union workers new protections that we’ve never enjoyed before. In the coming months, the United States Supreme Court is set to hear oral arguments and rule upon a case that could mean nationwide “right-to-work” for all public sector workers. Union busters are beating their chests over the prospects of Janus v. AFSCME Council 31 changing federal labor law, but based on their own arguments, we believe that they have left themselves open to some unintended consequences.

What The Attack On Organized Labor Means For African Americans

By D. Amari Jackson for Atlanta Black Star. In an April 2016 document sent from Tracie Sharp to her powerful States Policy Network (SPN) — a right-wing alliance of 66 think tanks across the country and a sister organization to the notorious American Legislative and Exchange Council (ALEC) — the SPN president plotted a “mortal blow” to progressive causes and institutions in America through a well-funded effort to “defund and defang one of our freedom movement’s most powerful opponents, the government unions.” The ten-page letter, first exposed to the public last month, In an April 2016 document sent from Tracie Sharp to her powerful States Policy Network (SPN) — a right-wing alliance of 66 think tanks across the country and a sister organization to the notorious American Legislative and Exchange Council (ALEC) — the SPN president plotted a “mortal blow” to progressive causes and institutions in America through a well-funded effort to “defund and defang one of our freedom movement’s most powerful opponents, the government unions.” The ten-page letter, first exposed to the public last month, acknowledged the historical significance of government unions as a pivotal centerpiece of the American left and its associated politics. In it, Sharp highlighted how the automatic deduction of union dues from the paychecks of government employees buttresses “the left’s ability to control government at the state and national levels.” The goal, she explained, is to target legislation at “permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle.”The goal, she explained, is to target legislation at “permanently depriving the left from access to millions of dollars in dues extracted from unwilling union members every election cycle.”

Labor Department Finally Closes Union-Busting Loophole

By Michael Hiltzik for the Los Angeles Times. Washington, DC - Explanations abound for the consistent decline of organized labor in the United States, especially in the private sector. But one important factor is the ability of employers to engage in union-busting almost without restriction. Limitations on employers' activities exist, theoretically, but they've been enforced only spottily and are rife with loopholes. The Dept. of Labor finally has moved to close one loophole, created way back in 1959. This is the ability to hire anti-union consultants, familiarly known as "persuaders," without reporting the arrangements. The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, otherwise known as the Landrum-Griffin Act, required these deals to be reported only if the consultants were speaking directly with employees, but not if their influence reached the workplace floor indirectly, via intermediaries.
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