What is "unionbusting"? It is becoming clear that some people consider any disagreement with organized labor to be just that.
In my friend Seth Borden’s recent post on the Kreitzman Mortensen & Borden blog, entitled “Employee Free Choice Act Supporter’s Contempt for Independent Thought” he makes some good observations about Jonathan Tasini’s article on the Huffington Post:
In Mr. Tasini's all-for-the-union-or-nothing view, "listening to folks who have an opinion" equals "obfuscating," and "allowing [both sides of a question] to weigh in" is "non-responsive," when asked for a simple knee-jerk statement of union support. If you don't get on board right away, early, without careful contemplation and without taking the time to consider opposing viewpoints, you are "holding out," simply "anti-union," a traitor to the cause.
Applying that type of pressure on Senators to stop thinking for themselves, one wonders what Mr. Tasini would be like as a professional union organizer, waving an authorization card in the face of an employee and demanding immediate signature.
Here are some other examples of organized labor’s unfortunate distain for any disagreement whatsoever:
We’ve written before about Jen Jason:
Jen Jason, one of those demonized “union busters,” has been a frequent subject of attack since her February 8, 2007 testimony before the House Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor, and Pensions. (Read the testimony HERE). Unlike [Martin] Levitt, who has been a darling of the labor movement for over a decade as a result of his transition from management lawyer to union activist, Ms. Jason has been a target of labor's scorn since she left her job as a union organizer and started a management consulting business.
She’s been accused of being a “"Turncoat Organizer [who] Drowns in Corporate Cash.” She was snidely accused of having a conflict of interest by a Labor PAC-dependent Congresswoman. (Video HERE). And her sexual orientation has been belittled, of all places, on leading liberal blog DailyKos.
Recently, former bull-roping journalist turned AFL-CIO blogger Tula Connell continued the attack in an article entitled “The Ugly Face of Union Busting”:
Jen Jason started out in the union movement with an internship at the AFL-CIO Organizing Institute and later put the skills she learned to work for UNITE HERE, a union that represents primarily textile and hotel workers. But in the middle of a union organizing campaign, Jason left to become an anti-union management consultant, working for Cintas, whose workers she ostensibly was organizing. Seems she could makea lot more money—her firm made $225,000 the first year she set it up.
Of course, Ms. Connell didn’t bother to share what Ms. Jason said at the February 2007 House EFCA hearing about the reason she made the change. Perhaps presenting a balanced view isn’t important when writing about bull roping, but in this context it seems worthwhile to hear Ms. Jason out:
I began my career with UNITE with a strong belief in worker’s rights and democracy in the workplace. During the course of my employment with the union, I began to understand the reality behind the rhetoric. I took in the ways that organizers were manipulating workers just to get a majority on “the cards” and the various strategies that they employed. I began to appreciate that promises made by organizers at a worker’s house had little to do with how the union actually functions as a “service” organization.
For example, we rarely showed workers what an actual union contract looked like because we knew that it wouldn’t necessarily reflect what a worker would want to see. We were trained to avoid topics such as dues increases, strike histories, etc. and to constantly move the worker back to what the organizer identified as his or her “issues” during the first part of the housecall. This technique was commonly referred to as “re-agitation” during organizer training sessions. The logic follows that if you can keep workers agitated and direct that anger at their boss, you can get them to sign the card. If someone told me that she was perfectly contented at work, enjoyed her job and liked her boss, I would look around her house and ask questions based on what I noticed: “wow, I bet on your salary, you’ll never be able to get your house remodeled,” or, “so does the company pay for day care?” These were questions to which I knew the answer and could use to make her feel that she was cheated by her boss. Five minutes earlier she had just told me that she was feeling good about her work situation.
* * *
Another such strategy is that organizers are told to train workers to “provoke” unfair labor practices on the part of the company in an attempt to create campaign legitimacy and coerce a “card check” agreement.
One egregious example was when Ernest Bennett, the Director of Organizing for UNITE at the time, told a room full of organizers during a training meeting for the Cintas campaign that if three workers weren’t fired by the end of the first week of organizing, UNITE would not win the campaign. Another strategy is that organizers are told not to file any unfair labor practice charges because it would slow the “card check” process and make time for the workers to question their decisions.
After four years of watching what I feel were disgraceful practices on the part of organizing unions, and having experienced personal discrimination in my own workplace, I chose to leave UNITE, though I remain committed to work toward fairness and prosperity for both employers and employees in the American workplace.
And what does Ms. Jason’s “ugly” and “unionbusting” organization offer clients? Here’s what that organization, Six Questions Consulting, LLC, has to say about their “anti-union” tactics:
As part of Six Question’s comprehensive strategies, our consultants work with our client's management and employees to develop a workplace that empowers workers during the course of their career with the company. Our approach includes:
- Award and benefit programs.
- EEOC and OSHA.
- Worker Associations.
- Diversity training and ambits systems.
- Channels for employee feedback.
- Worker education on “best place to work” points
One key approach to our success is facilitating worker satisfaction with her job, managers and company; a worker who feels a personal stake in the welfare of his company is the best insurance against third-party interference. We work to ensure that the vision for your corporate culture is achieved at every level of the organization, and that communication flows vertically.
- Attack on Senator Clinton’s Advisor
Mark Penn, President & CEO of the public relations firm Burson-Marsteller, is serving as Senator Clinton's pollster and key political adviser. Some of labor’s friends don’t like that. Recently, a blog entry on – I’m not making this up – inclusionist.org, explained why:
Mark Schmitt has a good piece in [ The American Prospect] online on Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton's pollster and advisor. Schmitt unearths this interesting piece of dirt on Penn's public relation's company:
One that might be of interest to liberals thinking about whether to support Clinton is "Labor Relations." In this section, Senator Clinton's top advisor's company says, "Companies cannot be caught unprepared by Organized Labor's coordinated campaigns whether they are in conjunction with organizing or contract negotiating ... That is why we have developed a comprehensive communications approach for clients when they face any type of labor situation."
So, according to this “inclusionist” blogger, helping companies deal with attack campaigns run by unions is so “dirty” that liberals should not support any presidential candidacy that relies on advice from someone who engages in that activity.
In reality, labor's newly engergized friends in the progressive movement likely have no idea what a corporate campaign really is. If these progressives really want to know what they are supporting, they should read The Death of a Thousand Cuts: Corporate Campaigns and the Attack on the Corporation. Some labor strategists refer to these efforts as “Comprehensive Campaigns,” which they describe as follows:
The comprehensive campaign combines the elements of the community campaign and corporate campaign, but is much more far-reaching. Bob Harbrant, then-president of the Food and Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL-CIO and an early theorist of comprehensive campaigns, argued in 1987:
This is where comprehensive campaign organizing programs come into existence and why I say not a corporate campaign. A corporate campaign, per se, is too narrow in focus. When I say comprehensive campaign, I am talking about having the widest possible net and scooping up everything...
At the heart of the comprehensive campaign is research concerning the company and a broad-based community campaign which disseminates this research. The comprehensive campaign seeks to utilize all the levers of influence and power against an employer. State or local legislation antithetical to the employer's interests is introduced. Pressure is exerted through business license, zoning and regulatory processes. Political pressure is applied by electing local, state and federal officials, and seeking the appointment of union-friendly bureaucrats. Lawsuits may be filed. Reports and "white papers" may be issued, and relationships with members of the press built. Picketing may occur at charity events, at the homes of board members or senior corporate officers, at the workplace, or at the place of business of subsidiaries, customers or suppliers. The support of religious, community, civic, consumer, environmental and other groups is won and continuously displayed to the employer and the public. As information is uncovered, it is assessed and fit into a strategic plan extending (in some cases) several years into the future. Escalation is planned, back-door channels sought (through which negotiations may be conducted), and new allies found. The comprehensive campaign is a pressure campaign, one which seeks to continuously apply pressure until the employer makes an egregious error (for example, harms the community in some way or overreacts to union pressure) or the union uncovers embarrassing or damaging information
In the Fall/Winter 1992 edition of the now-defunct journal Labor Research Review, UFCW official Joe Crump was even less politically correct when talking about the goals of one of these campaigns:
My local, UFCW 951 in Michigan subscribes to this policy defining successful organizing in one of two ways: either a ratified signed collective bargaining agreement with a previously non-union employer or a significant curtailment of a non-union operator’s business, including shutting the business down.
Lovely. So, if a public relations firm advertises that they can help an employer deal with these attacks, labor and their “inclusionist” friends dig up this “dirt” and question whether an otherwise pro-labor candidate who uses the firm's other services is worthy of their support.
We will no doubt write more on this topic, and we are certain that Seth Borden will do the same. In the meantime, please see our earlier entries:
EFCA Updates