Martin Levitt – who resigned his 20-year career as an anti-union consultant to write a landmark memoir, Confessions of a union destroyer, in the early 1990s – said the famous phrase that the breaking of unions is a “dirty business” that is “populated by bullies and built on the basis of deception. A campaign against a union is an attack on individuals and a war against the truth. The only way to break a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten and always attack. ”Amazon’s ongoing anti-union campaign in Bessemer, Alabama, where 5,800 workers are voting by mail to join or not join the retail, wholesale and department store union (RWDSU), provides a clear illustration of Levitt’s statement.
After hiring one of the largest and most expensive law firms to avoid unions in the country, Morgan Lewis, Amazon is now paying almost $ 10,000 per day plus expenses with three anti-union consultants: Russell Brown, Rebecca Smith and Bill Monroe. Among other campaigns, Brown and Smith have run controversial, high-profile anti-union campaigns at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2020, in which nurses preparing for the COVID-19 pandemic were subjected to a “Relentless” anti-union campaign; and in 2017, in Kumho tires in Macon, Georgia, where the National Labor Relations Board concluded that the company has committed to “numerous and flagrant”Illegal anti-union actions. When Amazon’s anti-union campaign ends, the e-commerce giant will almost certainly have paid millions of dollars for your consultants to avoid unions and law firm to prevent its Alabama-based employees from choosing a union.
The PRO Law would curb anti-union consultants
The ruthless, consultant-driven, anti-union campaign on Amazon provides a compelling case that demonstrates the need for Law on the Protection of the Right to Organize (PRO), the main legislative priority of the union movement for the Biden government, that was passed by the House of Representatives in February 2020. The PRO Act would almost certainly be passed again in the House and President Biden supports it, but in common with most previous efforts to strengthen the country’s labor laws, remains a distant shot in the Senate. Various provisions the PRO Act would restrict the ability of corporations to conduct unrestricted anti-union campaigns: Prohibit mandatory “captive audience” anti-union meetings; limit the ability of employers to delay the union certification process (and thus extend the anti-union campaign); and would require employers and consultants to report their financial arrangements to the Department of Labor, even if consultants avoided personal contact with employees.
In 2019, while writing right Competitive Enterprise Institute as opposed to the PRO Act, Amazon’s leading consultant Russell Brown offered a detailed view about what he does during the course of his anti-union campaigns. Brown’s campaign description closely reflects his anti-union actions at Amazon’s Bessemer facility. In addition, it shows how the main role of anti-union consultants is deceive and confuse employees, not, as he claims, to educate and enlighten they.
Captivating workers
Adopting a standard anti-union discussion point, Brown begins by complaining that by limiting the role of anti-union consultants like him, the PRO Act “would make it more difficult for workers to make an informed decision about unionization.” He blames unions that seek to “demonize consultants” by calling them “union destroyers” and making it appear “that companies are denying employees freedom by holding meetings to educate employees about union representation, referring to them as ‘captive audience meetings’ ”. complains that, according to the PRO Act’s ban on captive meetings, “consultants educating employees will be illegal”. In response to the question about what anti-union consultants say to employees, Brown says: “The answer is a lot.”
Brown wrote against state bills in Connecticut and Oregon that sought to ban captive audience anti-union meetings, calling them “a final race to crush employers to educate your employees about what it means to be in a union and how collective bargaining really works. ”In reality, captive audience meetings and similar“ forced listening sessions ” are forbidden at the more developed democracies and have been repeatedly criticized by leading human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch.
Brown says that a “typical resume” during an anti-union campaign includes captive meetings on the topics below, remarkably similar to the manual he is using on Amazon, and which is documented on Amazon’s anti-union website, DoItWithoutDues.com. Of several press reports quote Brown and Smith emphasizing similar themes in captive audience meetings – the so-called “education sessions” of workers – during the anti-union campaign in Bessemer.
Brown’s first meetings are with frontline managers and supervisors because, he says, United States labor law “greatly restricts” what employers can say or do. For decades, consultants have used supervisors and frontline managers to lead your anti-union campaigns. Brown complains that managers cannot say that the company “may have to close” if the union enters. In reality, the National Labor Relations Law provides employers with much greater freedom for oppose unions than labor law in almost any other advanced democracy.
Second, Brown meets with officials at the bargaining unit and discusses “strikes and the difficult procedures required to cancel union certification.” Anti-union consultancy campaigns always highlight strikes – which are increasingly rare in the United States in recent decades, with only seven major work stoppages in 2020 – and the alleged difficulty of getting rid of an unwanted union, although the research evidence indicates that the overwhelming majority of unionized workers approve your unions. Both themes are also highlighted in Amazon anti-union website. Furthermore, most workers nationally – the highest level of non-union workers in more than four decades – would choose unions if they had a free and fair choice, while 65 percent of the public approve the unions, the highest levels in almost two decades. Thus, the main problem facing American workers is not, as Brown suggests, getting rid of unwanted unions, but the inability to get unions that employees want, but fail in the face of intense employer opposition and weak legal protections.
Third, Brown holds captive meetings on collective bargaining, telling workers that employees “are not signatories to the contract,” which is an agreement between management and the union. Consultants tell employees that unions are external “the 3rd”Pursuing their own interests, rather than organizations representing workers. Amazon’s anti-union website also portrays the union as an external “business” that workers “I do not know, ”Despite the fact that RWDSU has a long and deep history of representing black workers in the South – Predominantly black poultry workers in Alabama, among others – and support civil rights and causes of racial justice.
Fourth, Brown holds captive meetings that criticize unions as “top-down organizations” that have “exorbitant wages and extravagant expenses”, although the unions’ financial reports are publicly and easily available through the Department of Labor website – as demonstrated in Amazon’s own anti-union website; and he tells employees that unions support political causes that “may not agree with, ”Although conservative organizations have long emphasized that employees can choose not to receive political contributions. In addition, in states with the right to work (RTW) like Alabama – which has been an RTW state since 1953 – no employee can ever be forced to pay union dues. The anti-union campaign in Bessemer – including Amazon’s anti-union website – repeatedly emphasized that employees would pay union fees, even if they could never be mandatory.
Fifth, Brown holds captive meetings on unions and job security, which emphasize how layoffs in unionized workplaces are generally done according to seniority – “great if you’ve been there longer, bad if not” – when ” the point is that there is no consideration of merit. ”In reality, unionized workers generally like much greater job security than their non-union counterparts, as reflected in job losses during the COVID-19 pandemic; they also enjoy higher wages and significantly superior health and pension benefits, including access to paid sick leave.
Brown concludes that employers “know that a union representation election involves an important business decision that will forever impact” their companies. “Therefore,” he argues, “We affirm that it is not just the right of employers to educate employees, it is their duty”. In recent years, strident anti-union defenders have increasingly discussed this point – that employers don’t just have a right oppose unionization, but a duty to speak out against unions and collective bargaining. Amazon apparently agrees with this extreme position.
President Biden condemns Amazon’s anti-unionism
Recently, President Biden launched a video declaring this,
Workers in Alabama – and across America – are voting on whether to organize a union at their workplace. It is a vitally important choice – one that must be made without intimidation or threats from employers. Every worker must have a free and fair choice to join a union.
This statement is extremely significant. Before that, Biden assiduously avoided any direct comment about the dispute in the Amazon. He had previously spoken out strongly in favor of unions and collective bargaining in general, and recently a White House spokesman said that “President Biden urged employers not to run anti-union campaigns or interfere in organizing and negotiating” . It is understandable that Biden is reluctant to “take sides” in an ongoing union campaign that his National Labor Relations Council may be asked to judge. But it is a big deal that Biden has spoken unambiguously against Amazon’s relentless and insincere anti-union campaign. In fact, it may be the most pro-union statement ever made by an incumbent president. To find something comparable, it is really necessary to go back to the 1930s, when John L. Lewis, president of the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations, adopted the slogan, “The President Wants You to Join a Union” to help organize the sector automotive and steel mills. The difference is that FDR never said that; it was apocryphal, though believable, whereas Biden actually said it. What a difference an election makes!
Expensive and aggressive corporate anti-union campaigns, like Amazon’s in Bessemer, are, in Marty Levitt’s words, built on deception and run by bullies. The battle between RWDSU and Amazon in Bessemer is a real struggle “David vs. Goliath”. But, as in the original biblical story, David sometimes wins.