Corporations Now Widely Using Wal-Mart Tactics, New Report on Unionbusting Finds

A definitive new look at the scope of employer anti-union campaigns by a noted Cornell University labor scholar finds that corporations have ramped up a wide-range of tactics designed to punish and intimidate workers for seeking to form a union. In nearly 60 percent of union election campaigns, employers threaten to close the plant, half of employers threaten workers in one-on-one "sweat sessions," and in a third of the elections, they retaliate by firing workers.

Kate Bronfenbrenner, director of labor education research at the Cornell University School of Industrial and Labor Relations, has studied labor organizing for decades, and now concludes, "There's been a change in the nature of employer campaigns. They've become not just more intense, not just more aggressive, but they switched to a more punitive system: there's no more of this 'let's try the soft stuff and pretend to be nice.'"

In response, the Chamber of Commerce attacked her as too pro-union to be believed, even though she reviewed a random sample of 1,000 National Labor Relations Board elections and all those elections' unfair labor practices documents and decisions, supplemented by in-depth interviews and surveys of organizers involved in over 500 campaigns.

She's also been criticized by business interests for actually interviewing and surveying union organizers and workers for her research. But as Ross Eisenbrey, the vice-president of the Economic Policy Institute, which is releasing her report, observes, "Employer groups don't believe the victims [of unionbusting], the workers. Who are you going to believe, the employers?" He adds, "Despite a very difficult burden of proof, unions are winning 45% of allegations."

Today, with the backing of such organizations as American Rights at Work and the Economic Policy Institute, she and other experts held a briefing on the new report on Capitol Hill, with findings that are expected to boost the union movement's case for the Employee Free Choice Act. At the briefing a Rite Aid employee also gave a vivid illustration of the vicious obstacles thrown in the way of workers seeing a fair opportunity to organize (via Daily Kos):

Angel Warner, a working mom from California, offered a compelling story of these coercive tactics in action. Warner is a Rite Aid warehouse worker who tried to form a union through the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) at a large warehouse with 600 workers. The warehouse was inadequately heated in the winter and cooled in the summer, and the work was difficult and at times unsafe. That's why Warner and her co-workers hoped to form a union. Wages and benefits were an issue, she said, but not the only issue. Mostly, they were concerned about job security and improving safety on the job, especially after management imposed a quota system that encouraged unsafe behavior.

"You walk a fine line of taking a trip to the hospital or a trip to the unemployment line.

"We like our jobs, we just want dignity, respect and a voice in our workplace. A person can only take so much--we decided it was time to stand up for ourselves."

Warner said that, as she and her-co-workers tried to form a union, management pulled union supporters aside for threatening meetings and singled out potential supporters for harassment. Pro-union employees were fired, and the workers filed 49 labor law violations against Rite-Aid --but the only repercussion for Rite-Aid is having to re-hire two employees and post fliers saying they would no longer engage in unfair practices.

Warner and her co-workers won the election by only a handful of votes, even after getting two-thirds of the employees to sign up, because of the extended election period and the abuses by management during that time.

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Despite corporate spin against union rights, the harsh reality, based on confirmed NLRB decisions on unfair labor practice claims (which often are never filed because of regulatory roadblocks and weak enforcement), is that over 20,000 workers a year are fired or retaliated against for trying to form a union. As the Center for American Progress Action Fund reported recently in its primer on the Employee Free Choice Act: "Every 18 minutes a worker is illegally fired or discriminated against by their employer for their union activity--including discrimination even after a workplace has been organized--yet firms face few consequences when caught.."

Now, in corporate America, almost every employer when faced with a union acts like Wal-Mart, including the home of the laid-back coffee break, Starbucks. As ZP Heller, the editorial director of Robert Greenwald's Brave New Films, points out in releasing its new web video:

The National Labor Relations Board has repeatedly found Starbucks guilty of illegally terminating, harassing, intimidating, and discriminating against employees attempting to unionize. Late last year, a judge ruled Starbucks had committed over a dozen violations of the National Labor Relations Act at a few New York stores. Starbucks has settled five such labor disputes in the last few years in New York, Minnesota, and Michigan, spending millions on legal fees to avoid exposing their anti-worker ways.

To make matters worse, Starbucks has led the charge on a so-called Employee Free Choice Act "compromise," joining Costco and Whole Foods to form the Committee for Level Playing Field. This Orwellian-sounding group has come up with a "third way" on Employee Free Choice, which would require 70 percent of workers to sign union authorization cards instead of the far more manageable 50 percent initially proposed by this legislation.

But even companies that once had decent relations with workers and accepted unions are turning to bare-knuckle tactics. In the report, "No Holds Barred: The Intensification of Employer Opposition to Organizing," it also looks at companies such as the Kentucky bakery plant Earthgrains (now owned by the Sara Lee corporation). The report says:

What distinguishes the current organizing climate from previous decades of employer opposition to unions? The primary difference is that the most intense and aggressive anti-union campaign strategies, the kind previously found only at employers like Wal-Mart, are no longer reserved for a select coterie of extreme anti-union employers. In examining NLRB documents we discovered dozens of employers similar to Earthgrains--companies with a history of maintaining a stable collective bargaining relationship with the majority of their workforce--making a dramatic shift in how they respond to union organizing efforts.

When faced with an organizing campaign in its London, Kentucky plant in the summer of 2000, Earthgrains unleashed a relentless campaign of threats, interrogations, surveillance, harassment, and intimidation against the union.

The charges against Earthgrains included videotaping workers as they spoke to union representatives; maintaining and showing to workers a list that supposedly revealed how other workers were going to vote; interrogating workers about whether they or their co-workers supported a union; threatening to fire workers for union activity; managers forcibly removing union literature from the hands of employees while they were on break; threatening to eliminate entire shifts, take away retirement plans, or gain-sharing benefits if the union won in the plant; telling the workers the union would go on strike as soon as the election was won; and promising improvements in benefits and a committee to resolve grievances if the union lost

Ultimately, even a conservative NLRB threw out the election as tained by illegal intimidation by Earthgrains, and a new election was held, which the bakery and confectionery union won.

Bronfenbrenner notes why such rampant employer lawbreaking was made possible: "They can act with impunity and get away with it. In today's political climate, there's no penalty for it."

Unionbusting thuggery and intimidation is the rule in corporate relations with workers seeking to form unions. And now Big Business interests want to bring the same fear-mongering they've used so successfully in the workplace to intimidate moderates in the United States, some of whom who have been cowed by an aggressive PR and lobbying blitz. Like workers fearful for their jobs, they apparently fear they could lose their seats if business uses its clout to defeat them at the polls. But grass-roots organizing by unions is working to counter such tactics.

As the AFL-CIO Now blog reports:

As the Employee Free Choice Act gets closer to reality, the anti-worker disinformation campaign grows louder with corporate front groups throwing everything they have against workers. Across the country, union members and their allies are pushing back and letting the corporate titans know they won't back down when it comes to the freedom to form unions.

In Wisconsin, union members converged in Milwaukee to protest an appearance by Karl Rove, the former Bush administration political enforcer who is traveling the country telling corporate executives to fight the Employee Free Choice Act. And in Florida, union members gathered in Jacksonville outside a meeting of an anti-union corporate group, the "Center for a Union-Free Workplace Environment," to protest their opposition to workers' freedom to bargain for a better life.

The Bronfenbrenner report concludes by underlining what's really at stake in this fight:

"Unless serious labor law reform with real penalties is enacted, only a fraction of the workers who seek representation under the National Labor Relations Act will be successful. If recent trends continue, then there will no longer be a functioning legal mechanism to effectively protect the right of private-sector workers to organize and collectively bargain."

Comments

[CaveatMagnusFrater]

When I think about the work and risk our forebearers dealt with to form unions in the lat 19th and early 20th centuries, I'm appalled at the lack of discipline by so many late-boomer, xers and millinials posess to stand up for their rights.

[olmossy]

Thanks for the Article, Someone post some names of companies that are violating Workers rights.
so the rest of us can boycott them, or carry some signs outside the store on Public property.

This push back against the Unions is not just about the immediate cost of the business dealing with Unions. It goes much deeper,
As the neoliberal Globalist expand their strangle hold on the world, the thing they fear MOST is any resistance, Organized Union labor, is their biggest FEAR. We are the folks who can organize demonstrations, Boycotts, Political Power. Organized Labor is their worst nightmare.
I don't know who said this , but ' If we don't stand together, we will surly fall seperatly' It never meant more than it does today.

[Bernique]

Passage of EFCA and single-payer health care (aka "public insurance plan") are inevitable because our current course is unsustainable. What is astounding is that those measures are the way capitalism will survive, and for corporations to be so myopic as to not see this, is ... ignorant.

The democratic­-socialist model of capitalism is what European countries have practiced for decades with great success.

[Rmath]

I have personally experienced unbelievable harrassment at a private college in the Midwest for belonging to a group of adjunct faculty attempting to organize a union. We were called into private meetings and threatened by the Dean of the College, who demanded that we cease our organizing efforts. An NLRB investigation led to Court, but a Reagan-appointed appeals judge was behind overturning a lower Court decision on our behalf.

The Wal-Mart mentality goes on in so-called institutions of higher education too. You meet some of the most uncultured people working for a cultural organization.

[olmossy]

Everything in wall m@rt has come from the slave labor of one of our working brothers in some foreign Sweat Shop.
That Alone is enough to justify an American boycott,
The fact than they are mistreating our American Brothers and Sisters if jut Iceing on the cake.
There are a lot of people who read HuffPost. A lot of them are looking for a way to fight.

[RealistDem]

How about we actually enforce laws against union intimidation. When the last time, any time, you heard of some company being fined or prosecuted for it?????

[sueinmn]

Right to work states and work at will, will all change if the EFCA passes. You will have protected rights rather than simply being a worker at will. They will need a reason for terminations.

[c2morow]

The problem with this is that in some ways (not all union workers) unions protect complacency amongst employees. The majority of workers have pride in workmanship, and work hard and I respect them. However, the concept of seniority (apprentice, journeyman, etc.) in a union is flawed, because even if a worker passes the test to go from one level to another, that does not necessarily translate to a good worker. It just means that they can pass the test. I am not saying that some companies don't abuse the "right to work" laws, but at the same time, many union workers abuse the union protection. In the company I recently worked for, it took a multi step process and about 6 months to a year to terminate someone. It was very fair. 1st a warning, then sit down with putting together an improvement plan, then termination. The employee was given every chance to improve their performance and be part of the process.
I have worked for non-union companies my whole life (30 plus in the workforce) and have gone from menial jobs an Engineering consultant, all on the merit system. For the past 15 years, I have made in excess of 100k and am very proud of my acccomplishments. No one helped me, I did it all on my own. Nothing to do with seniority, scale, just plain hard work. I dont have the answer to this problem, but I do know that unions are not the answer.

[mrh3]

Have you ever worked a blue coller job?

[LeftRight]

So I take it that you are opposed to the US Military then. In the US Military you must take a test to advance from pay grade E-3 to E-4, to E-5, to E-6, to E-7, etc.... Just because you can take a good test doesn't mean that you will be a good worker at the next higher job, so they should stop that!! And they should stop having lower ranking people saluting higher ranking people based simply on rank!!

[olmossy]

Having worked both Union and non Union jobs in my life. The biggest differance is on the Union jobs they at least have to act like they care if you live or die.
Non Union jobs you are just a pair of hands, you can be replaced.
Don't want to work in that dust and smoke , buy yourself a mask better yet hit the road.

c2morow , I commend your accomplishments, good job! and you did it all by yourself.
Those young soldiers who died fighting for this free country mean nothing, you owe their mothers and dads nothing ? You owe nothing to some worker in china who is being held in slavery, so you can buy cheap shoes? So it's every man for himself ? I know street gangs who agree with you. Once again I congratulate you on your success.

[Rangergirl]

You know if every company was fare, and good to their employees there would be no need for unions...But they aren't ....

[Rangergirl]

Maybe they can stop this intimidation, and other threats if EFCA passes....People have to understand that unions helped to create the middle class.. Unions help protect people from this kind of harassment, etc.

[macchugsid]

Why is HuffPo running this ad link at the bottom of a page about unions?

LRIonline.­com/7_Lies

[macchugsid]

Corporations for years now have gotten it in their heads that they deserve these 15% plus profits year upon year. This is not a sustainable goal. Consequently, the people running the companies start to see the people actually doing the work at a decent wage a burden on their profit stream.

The people running the companies know that if they are seen as not attaining these ridiculous profit streams they will not be able to justify their ridiculous salaries and perks. So where to they go to offset higher raw materials and production costs? The people who actually do the work.

This model of capitalism is absolutely unsustainable. The more money you take from the workers the lower their standard of living. Which in turn will mean less mid to upper range products being sold which will then reduce profits even more and on and on until the system collapses which is what we are seeing the manifestation of right now in our economy.

There has been a pull back in spending recently which is a catch-22 in its self and we are seeing the results all around us. Unions do help keep a certain balance in the flow of the economy. They tend to even the playing field and that is why they are so hated by corporate america.

[blindhog]

Unions were created because management s...... the workers over.

Who or what will get our people decent living wages? Who or what will reverse the trend that the moeny is increasingly going to the fewer and the fewer at the top, the uber rich ones who have lobbied to get the lowest tax rates for themselves ever?

[BLBass]

yada yada, disgusting anti-unionism, etc etc, the usual stuff

but it's true

but mainly:
Bronfenbrenner = great name!

[dan-o]

I worked as a manager for a large midwestern home improvement company who does not hire anyone who worked at a unionized business. Local managers are required to know who it is "safe" to hire from and "General Office" maintains a list of businesses to compare previous employers on new hires applications. If a former employer is on the "non-safe to hire list" then the store manager gets a phone call telling them to get rid of the person. Since they are an at-will employer, the person is let go because "it's just not going to work out". This is a way to keep unions out also even if it is against the law. There is no teeth to the law to protect workers.

[sueinmn]

Largefirms and large construction outfits share black lists. Then they have the gaul to spe the lies all over the tube hoping people are gullable enough to believe the crap. And unfortunately many are!! We need better education, more unions, and the ability to grow a pair to stand up for one another in a collective manner. Which is by unionizing.

[nicholasjh1]

We should come out with some reasonable workers rights laws or laws to control unions. Otherwise Unions are just as bad as the companies. They don't work for the best interest of the workers, the work for the best interest of the existing workers and their own interest. If you don't understand the difference between those 2 then you can't have an intelligent argument for unions.

[Archontruth]

So when a corporation intimidates workers into not unionizing it's criminal, but when unions intimidate workers who don't want to unionize (showing up at their homes, etc) that's okay? Card check will just make it easier for unions to intimidate those who may not want to see their company crippled and their job eventually disappear.

[sueinmn]

Ive been in unions now for more than 35 yrs. I have never heard of going to ones home to intimidate! This is right hate and lies. Generally if anyone is intimidated for being against the union, it is from a co worker that will push your buttons regardless, not from the union organizers.

[Strywever]

I keep seeing anecdotes like that, but none are substantiated by other sources. So I have to assume it's more made-up crap.

[LeftRight]

You assume that just because it's true!

[LeftRight]

Considering that there have been 42 cases in SIX DECADES of union intimidation, compared to 27,000 cases in the year 2006 ALONE..... I wouldn't worry too much.

Even if we were to assume that both of those numbers were off by an order of magnitude, that would STILL be only 7 complaints against unions every YEAR, compared to more than 7 complaints against employers EVERY DAY!!!