What is Union Busting?

by Caroline Ognibene , Mass JWJ Office Administrator

Union busting is disgusting! The practice of union-busting is a typical corporate response to worker unity and power. What exactly is it, and what can we do to support workers?

As #HotLaborSummer continues, with workers across the country organizing for their fundamental rights - and winning - executives are responding through a classic corporate strategy: union-busting.

What is union busting?

Some union busting techniques are outright illegal. The National Labor Relations Act ensures that you have the right to organize a union. Employers are not permitted to interfere with unionizing efforts, meaning that it is illegal for companies to surveil, spy on, fire, or otherwise discipline organizing employees; employers may not coerce, threaten, or retaliate against workers who support a union. Other techniques are more subtle. Employers frequently discourage unionizing through sly forms of rhetoric or propaganda that imply unionizing would hurt employees. Executives may pretend that the workplace is a family, and that a union is an unwelcome third-party interference that would hurt workers.

 

We know that union-busting strategy has nothing to do with the best interest of workers. Top level executives recognize that unions make it harder to exploit workers and manipulate inequitable earnings. Throughout the pandemic, workers across the country in various industries were forced into lethally precarious working conditions, from dangerous levels of exposure to unpredictable working hours and income. As these conditions came to a boiling point, workers fought back against corporate exploitation. Now, in what’s being celebrated as #HotLaborSummer, America is in the midst of a national working-class movement, driven by the power of united working people. Faced with this reckoning, executives at companies like Starbucks and Amazon are responding using clearly recognizable union-busting techniques.

What union-busting is happening now?

Tech companies such as Google, Amazon, and Apple hired anti-union consultants, heightened worker surveillance, and distributed anti-union propaganda. Amazon has hired anti-union consultants, threatened termination for employees who voted in favor of unionizing, and required employees to sit through anti-union presentations. The National Labor Relations Board has found that Starbucks used “an expansive array of illegal tactics” in their union-busting, including closing unionizing stores and firing union activists.

 

Chipotle recently closed a store in Augusta, Maine, shortly after the workers there had filed for Chipotle’s first ever union election. As workers started to organize around the dangerous pandemic working conditions, the Trader Joe’s chairman and CEO Dan Bane sent a letter to all employees discouraging labor unions. Management at No Evil Foods consistently presented anti-union rhetoric and scare tactics. Delta launched an anti-union website and encouraged employees to buy video games instead of paying union dues.  Big Lots distributed anti-union brochures. In addition to attempting to classify workers as independent contractors rather than employees, Uber and Lyft have used union-busting techniques including ‘deactivating’ drivers who led unionizing efforts and distributing anti-union rhetoric. 

Although the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled against Big Tech’s 2022 Massachusetts ballot question, we know that corporations in the gig economy and beyond will continue to ruthlessly stifle worker autonomy and unionizing movements. 

Mass JWJ is continuing #TheBigFightBack, our multiracial statewide movement against worker exploitation and for our communities. Greedy corporations with reckless disregard for worker safety and wellbeing cannot be allowed to dictate our society. As long as corporations fight their own workers, we will be here, fighting back. We hope you will be right there beside us.

Image source: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images https://www.npr.org/2022/05/03/1095909869/starbucks-union-ceo-howard-schultz-workers-united-labor-benefits