Union-busting by any other name would stink as bad

Bill Knight column for 7-30, 31 or 8-1, 2020

                       

In 1939, musician Woody Guthrie sang, “As through this world I've wandered, / I've seen lots of funny men. / Some will rob you with a six-gun/ and some with a fountain pen.”

In the months when the country has been dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic – sparking cries of “We’re all in this together!” – related issues vital to people, like safety on the job, have provoked many protests, work stoppages and attempts to unionize.

In response, employers have sought to defeat workers organizing, but instead of bosses using police or thugs with baseball bats, 21^st century companies increasingly use attorneys, consultants and tech.

It’s part of a pattern that pits power and corporate cash against everyday Americans.

“The legal and political environment has been tilted substantially in favor of shareholders and against workers since the 1980s, a trend exemplified by the expansion of state Right-To-Work laws undermining unions’ ability to fund themselves and the increasing corporate use of union avoidance tactics, both legal and illegal,” wrote former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers and Anna Stansbury in the Washington Post.

It’s a national crisis.

“The United States is the only nation on Earth to have an entire industry of consultants and law firms dedicated to preventing workers from forming unions,” said John Logan, director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University, “one that doesn’t even stop during a deadly pandemic.”

Concession workers at Orlando International Airport in Florida this spring protested their employer, HMSHost, failing to provide adequate COVID-19 protections and for a union, and they were forced to endure anti-union “captive meetings” – without safety precautions.

“They made sure to give us papers about the union,” commented Rosanny Tejeda, a barista at the airport, talking to The Guardian. “But [they] didn’t give us training or protective equipment for us in the stores.”

Recent labor disputes at Whole Foods Market (owned by Amazon) and Trader Joe’s have modernized anti-union methods. Whole Foods, based in Austin, Texas, reported store sales of $17.1 billion in Fiscal Year 2019, but the company has used “explainer videos” to distract from finances by criticizing unions. The corporation has also developed a mapping tool that uses factors such as worker complaints about stores’ labor violations, union activities near its stores, and the diversity of stores’ work forces to track risks of unionization at its 500-plus U.S. locations, which have had sick-outs due to a lack of workers protections against the virus.

Trader Joe’s, headquartered in Monrovia, Calif., has used a series of actions to use against workers to defeat unionizing over issues such as insufficient protections for workers and hazard pay during the COVID-19 outbreak. They’ve range from handing out anti-union talking points to managers to CEO Dan Bane mailing a letter to all workers opposing unions and calling organizing efforts “a distraction.”

Celine McNicholas, government affairs director for the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), said, “It’s an absolute disgrace they would take advantage of a pandemic to frustrate workers’ ability to organize and get better representation for themselves so they’re not risking their lives to perform essential services.

“This is an extreme moment we’re in,” she told The Guardian, “but unfortunately this is the traditional employer playbook in opposing workers’ efforts to organize and collectively bargain for better pay and better health and safety provisions.”

Between 71% and 87% of U.S. employers hire union-avoidance interests to counter organizing or campaign to eliminate existing collecting bargaining representatives, she’s testified to the National Labor Relations Board.

Besides such current incidents, familiar companies have conceded in required reports from the years 2014-2018 that they’ve spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to fight workers, EPI reported, based on government records. For example, Bed, Bath & Beyond spent $506,000; FedEx spent $837,000; Nestle/USQ spent $566,000; Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas spent $569,000; and UPS spent $311,000

In Illinois, Archer Daniels Midland during those years spent $324,000 and Caterpillar spent $279,000.

Increasingly common, union avoidance makes it increasingly necessary for organized labor to engage elected representatives, too.

Summers, now a professor at Harvard University, where he used to be president, summed up what’s needed.

“Increasing worker power must be a central and urgent priority for policymakers concerned with inequality, low pay and poor work conditions,” he and Stansbury said. “If we do not shift the distribution of power toward workers, any other policy changes are likely to be short-term and insufficient.”

Union avoidance or union-busting, the practice is just another attack, even if it’s by thugs in suits.