Outsourcing of course is not new. It involves moving work from one company to another that can do the same job at a lower cost. Generally, it is domestic movement: from a union shop paying $20 an hour with benefits to a nonunion shop paying $10 an hour with few benefits.

The “jobless recovery” and the loss of higher paying tech and engineering jobs to India and China has added the new term “offshoring”–outsourcing in new clothes–to the front pages of the media.

While many pro-outsourcing executives blame the educational deficiencies in the United States, the actual issue is much less complex: Engineers in India are paid one-tenth or less as in Silicon Valley or Boston. This is cheap labor power, not inferior brainpower.

The corporate executives, who are not politicians, are not used to speaking double talk. They are very clear in why they support outsourcing and offshoring.

“There is no job that is America’s God-given right anymore,” said Carly Fiorina, Chairman and CEO of Hewlett Packard, to the March 7 San Francisco Chronicle in a center-spread business section with interviews of Silicon Valley executives on the issue.

“What’s an American company? We do half our business internationally. Does that make us an international company or a U.S. company?” added Scott McNealy, Chairman and CEO Sun Microsystems.

“When you can get great talent at twenty percent of the costs, it isn’t about waving the American flag. It’s about doing what’s right to have a good company,” said Carol Bartz, President, Chairman and CEO AutoDesk.

”U.S. corporations’ first responsibility is to their shareholders. You cannot say, `I’m going to put national interests ahead of shareholders interests,” declared John Thompson, Chairman and CEO Symantec Corp.

In addition, Robert Crandall, a former CEO at American Airlines, told USA Today, “Labor can either work for rates that allow for very low pricing, or they won’t be working for very long.”

“The unpleasant possibility, acknowledged even by those firmly in the trade-is-good camp, is that jobs will proliferate at both ends of the barbell–and fewer in the middle,” reports David Wessel in the April 2 WSJ. “The result would be an ever-wider gap between well-paying jobs and poorly paid jobs. That too, has happened before, as recently as the 1980s when unionized skilled manufacturing jobs evaporated.”

The attitude of corporate America, of course, is not new. Capitalists are not generally so open and honest about their true views toward country, flag and the welfare of the average working person. They are, however, on the hot seat today with the loss of nearly three million jobs since Bush took office.

The challenge for the employers is to keep working people fooled while protecting the interests of big business. The “hysteria” is not really about protectionism versus free trade. It is the potential backlash by labor against corporate America that concerns the editors and “enlightened” capitalists. Profits are up, but so is anger in working-class communities.
The Argument Against

A pro-labor policy begins with rejecting protectionism. Blaming foreign workers or nonunion American workers let’s the bosses (and government) off the hook and causes deeper divisions.

I’ve seen it first hand as a union representative for the Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association (AMFA) at United Airlines. It is not an easy task. The conditioned response is to argue for protectionist walls and adopt legislation to prevent foreign outsourcing. Some workers advocate labeling nonunion domestic companies as “the enemy” too.

But the bosses are right, capital is international and so is labor. The answer is not building walls, but increasing solidarity for common goals. The big picture is necessary.

My job as a fulltime Area Representative for the AMFA at United’s Maintenance Center puts me in a position to see how one corporation outsources work, and how labor responds.

For ten years the response of the union formerly representing mechanics, the International Association of Machinists (IAM), to concessions and attacks by management was to follow a policy of capitulation based on secrecy and militant rhetoric.

In 1994, the IAM adopted the strategy of “employee ownership” (ESOP) to protect jobs and build wealth for the employees, as they called it. The ESOP strategy disarmed the workers and led to a massive increase in outsourcing. The contract granted twenty percent outsourcing without monitoring. Thousands of jobs were lost.

In December 2002, United filed for bankruptcy. As part of a restructuring agreement that workers approved with a gun to our heads, all heavy maintenance was contracted out, leading to the closure of two maintenance bases in Oakland and Indianapolis. The work is still being done but by lower waged mechanics at nonunion facilities.

AMFA won representation for mechanics and related workers in July 2003. The internal revolt was partially fueled by the failed leadership of the previous union and a desire for change in policy. [See our editorial statement in ATC 105, July-August 2003, for additional background--ed.]
AMFA’s Policy

AMFA’s policy is to fight for insourcing of new work and opposing attempts to outsourcing work we are still doing. Instead of arguing for “ownership” or partnership with management as occurred in the 1990s, AMFA pushes for mechanics’ involvement and control of the work process itself.

We seek the opportunity to learn new job skills. We press management to train and retrain mechanics who are pushed out of one job or area into another. Our view is that if new technology is used to do business in aviation, mechanics currently employed should be trained to do the new work.

We do not focus on jobs that are not possible to save. The focus is on work that the airline is doing and seeks to be doing in the future. This approach recognizes that the clock cannot be turned back to another era.

Aviation will never again function as a vertical industry. This means explaining to mechanics that our advantage is based on understanding how the system works, how profits are made, and why mechanics are key to making the airliner stay in business.

It is with knowledge of our role that workers gain more advantage and potential leverage to win higher wages and better job security during contract negotiations.

AMFA’s policy avoids a false debate about competing with and seeing lower-wage workers at home or abroad as the source of our problems, as Crandall and others say airline workers must do.

Our argument is that workers’ wages did not cause United to decline and fall into bankruptcy, but poor management. The fact that mechanics at Southwest Airlines, a low cost carrier, are paid up to thirty percent an hour more than at United proves our point.

The AMFA policy means no illusions are advanced on issues like “employee ownership” or partnership. Instead, our starting point is the workers themselves and what we deserve. Our dealings with management are open and above board.

Whatever inevitable compromises occur are based on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the contract, and on members’ willingness to push back on grievances.

Outsourcing and offshoring are issues that will always exist as long as the profit motive drives labor/capital relations. The challenge for labor is understanding this relationship without falling prey to protectionist ideology and blaming other workers for the loss of jobs.

Malik Miah

http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/411

If there’s one product American business can produce in large amounts, it’s doublespeak. Doublespeak is language that only pretends to say something; it’s language that hides, evades or misleads. Doublespeak comes in many forms, from the popular buzzwords that everyone uses but no one really understands - “glocalization,” “competitive dynamics,” “re-equitizing” and “empowerment” – to language that tries to hide meaning: “re-engineering,” “synergy,” “adjustment,” “restructure” and “force management program.”

With doublespeak, no truck driver is the worst driver, just the “least-best” driver, and bribes and kickbacks are called “rebates” or “fees for product testing.” Even robbery can be magically transformed with doublespeak, as a bank in Texas did when it declared a robbery of an ATM to be an “authorized transaction.” Willie Sutton would have loved to have heard that.

Automobile junkyards, junk and used car parts have become “auto dismantlers and recyclers” who sell “predismantled, previously owned parts.” Don’t want people to know you’re in the business of disposing of radioactive and chemical wastes? Then call your company “U.S. Ecology Inc.”

Wages may not be increasing, but the doublespeak of job titles sure has increased. These days, your job title has to have the word “chief” in it. How many kinds of “chiefs” are there? Try these titles on for size: Chief Nuclear Officer, Chief Procurement Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Learning Officer, Chief Transformation Officer, Chief Cultural Officer, Chief People Officer, Chief Ethics Officer, Chief Turnaround Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and Chief Creative Officer. After all the “operations improvement” corporations have undergone, you have to wonder who all those “chiefs” are leading. Never before have so few been led by so many.

These days, a travel agent may be called a “travel counselor,” “vacation specialist,” “destination counselor” or “reservation specialist.” As part of their merger, Chase Manhattan Bank and Chemical Bank decided that the position of “Relationship Manager” would be divided between executives of both banks. What is a “Relationship Manager”? Once upon a time this person was called a salesman. And if you’re late in paying your bill after buying something from one of these “Relationship Managers,” you’ll be called by the “Persistency Specialist,” or bill collector. If you’re “downsized,” the “Outplacement Consultant” or unemployment counselor will help you with “re-employment engineering,” or how to find another job.

With doublespeak, banks don’t have “bad loans” or “bad debts”; they have “nonperforming assets” or “nonperforming credits” which are “rolled over” or “rescheduled.” Corporations never lose money; they just experience “negative cash flow,” “deficit enhancement,” “net profit revenue deficiencies,” or “negative contributions to profits.”

No one gets fired these days, and no one gets laid off. If you’re high enough in the corporate pecking order, you “resign for personal reasons.” (And then you’re never unemployed; you’re just in an “orderly transition between career changes.”)

But even those far below the lofty heights of corporate power are not fired or laid off. Firing workers is such big business in these days of “re-engineering,” “restructuring” and “downsizing” that there are companies whose business is helping other companies fire their workers. (Think about that for a minute.) These companies provide “termination and outplacement consulting” for corporations involved in “reduction activities.” In other words, they teach companies how to fire or lay off workers. During these days of “cost rationalization,” companies fire or lay off workers many different ways. How do I fire thee? Let me count the ways.

Companies make “workforce adjustments,” “headcount reductions,” “census reductions,” or institute a program of “negative employee retention.” Corporations offer workers “vocational relocation,” “career assignment and relocation,” a “career change opportunity,” or “voluntary termination.” Workers are “dehired,” “deselected,” “selected out,” “repositioned,” “surplussed,” “rightsized,” “correct sized,” “excessed,” or “uninstalled.” Some companies “initiate operations improvements,” “assign candidates to a mobility pool,” “implement a skills mix adjustment,” or “eliminate redundancies in the human resources area.”

One company denied it was laying off 500 people at its headquarters. “We don’t characterize it as a layoff,” said the corporate doublespeaker (sometimes called a spin doctor). “We’re managing our staff resources. Sometimes you manage them up, and sometimes you manage them down.” Congratulations. You’ve just been managed down, you staff resource you.

An automobile company announced the closing of an entire assembly plant and the elimination of over 8,000 jobs by announcing “a volume-related production schedule adjustment.” Not to be outdone by its rival, another car company “initiated a career alternative enhancement program”‘ that enhanced over 5,000 workers out of their jobs. By calling the permanent shutdown of a steel plant an “indefinite idling,” a corporation thought that it wouldn’t have to pay severance or pension benefits to the workers who were left without jobs.

Doublespeak can pay for the company, but usually not for the workers who lose their jobs.

As Pogo said, “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” Or maybe Dilbert got it better: “Do we really get paid for writing this stuff?”

William Lutz is professor of English at Rutgers University and author of the new book The New Doublespeak: Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore.

http://www.dt.org/html/Doublespeak.html

Doublespeak definition:

We hear and read doublespeak every day, but what, exactly, is doublespeak? Webster’s dictionary defines doublespeak with these words: evasive, ambiguous, high-flown language intended to deceive or confuse.

In his bestselling book Doublespeak, William Lutz notes that doublespeak is not an accident or a “slip of the tongue.” Instead, it is a deliberate, calculated misuse of language.
Specific Attributes of Doublespeak

Lutz provides several defining attributes of doublespeak:

misleads
distorts reality
pretends to communicate
makes the bad seem good
avoids or shifts responsibility
makes the negative appear positive
creates a false verbal map of the world
limits, conceals, corrupts, and prevents thought
makes the unpleasant appear attractive or tolerable
creates incongruity between reality and what is said or not said

History of the Word “Doublespeak”:

As these attributes indicate, doublespeak can be seen as analogous to doublethink and Newspeak, concepts created by George Orwell in 1984. Using doublethink, a person could hold two opposing ideas in his or her mind at the same time, fully believing in both ideas. “Newspeak” was the official language used to express the ideas of doublethink.

http://www.damronplanet.com/doublespeak/whatisdoublespeak.htm

A jolt of tension hits the room at the Burlington Sheraton Hotel as presenter Maureen Srocznski tells a group of high-level hospital administrators that the two crews that just filmed them were from local TV stations. Since their seminar on “Critical Strategies for Positive Labor Relations” is sponsored by the University of Vermont, a publicly funded institution, the news crews had to be admitted during the first hour. “The labor community feels we are union busting,” she explains.

One of the attendees mutters, “Oh jeez.”

“Do I look like a union buster?” asks Srocznski, a partner in Michigan-based O’Connor Consulting Group, a firm specializing in labor relations in the health care industry. She throws her arms wide and gives the group a broad smile. “We are simply giving a balanced view.”

She announces that about 100 people “sent by unions” have gathered outside. But she assures the attendees “the hotel has taken steps to ensure that we are all safe … from those of the opposite persuasion.”

“Is this a great country or what,” says company President James O’Connor, a short, beefy guy with an easy, avuncular manner.

The university’s continuing education program has invited Srocznski and O’Connor to Vermont, which, like many states, has experienced a boom in union organizing among health care employees. The seminar has drawn about two dozen hospital executives, administrators and nursing directors from around New England (and one from Maryland). Most have already faced or are dreading the union at their door.

Throughout the two-day presentation, Srocznski and O’Connor explore nuts-and-bolts tactics for keeping unions at bay alongside “touchy-feely” techniques to show employees that management cares. Using the language of public relations, pop psychology and new-age wisdom, the consultants teach attendees how to similarly couch their message. “We are not trying to talk union busting, we are trying to diffuse anger,” Srocznski says. “Call it a positive employee relations program.”

Nonetheless, the objective is clear to all by the time Srocznski ends the final day with the charge: “You take this back and you will be able to change the world. There will be no more unions.”

In fact, as the presenters readily acknowledge, unionization among heath care professionals is one of the fastest growing areas in a re-energized union movement. Last year, in the biggest victory in a single election since the ’30s, the Service Employees organized 75,000 home care workers in California (and the union has scheduled more than half a dozen elections for next few months). The American Nurses Association, the American Federation of Teachers and other groups are hitting hard at the health care field, where unions are currently winning 54 percent of their elections.

Among the factors that have figured into this success is that hospitals and nursing homes–unlike factories–cannot run away to low-wage developing countries. Furthermore, changes wrought by HMOs and industry privatization and consolidation have created high levels of worker dissatisfaction. Nurses face grinding stress, not only from handling life-and-death situations on an hourly basis, but from a rash of cost-cutting measures such as mandatory overtime, understaffing, lack of specialized personnel and cut-rate equipment.

In a July 1999 survey released by the Kaiser Family Foundation, 78 percent of nurses responded that as HMOs and other managed care plans have increased, the quality of health care for people who are sick has decreased. Some 69 percent say inadequate staffing levels at their workplace are of “great concern.” “When I look back to nursing in the ’70s, I think we now expect nurses to do more for less,” says Sue Lucas, a nurse at Copley Hospital in Morrisville, Vermont. “Patients are sicker now that the HMO and Medicare criteria are so tight. As you have fewer nurses to care for more and sicker patients, you have to make decisions not to do things. Clearly you do the life-and-death care, but you no longer have the time to teach patients to understand what symptoms to report or to care for themselves when they go home.”

Nurses say that management’s obsession with the bottom line is not just hurting patients, it is endangering staff. Health care workers are exposed to a stew of antibiotic-resistant organisms and are becoming increasingly sensitized to latex used in gloves. More seriously, according to the American Nurses Association, they sustain as many as 1 million needlestick and sharp instrument injuries every year–resulting in thousands of new cases of HIV and hepatitis. “When you have the business model, health care becomes a product,” says Ken Eardley, a nurse at Fletcher Allen Hospital in Burlington. “Management doesn’t care about the reality, only the perception.”

Managing perception is at the core of Srocznski and O’Connor’s message to seminar attendees. When the union comes “you have to be very sensitive,” O’Connor advises. “You don’t overreact with your own children, not that I mean your employees are like children.”

The consultants say administrators should present themselves as employees’ allies against “outsider” unions. “You should acknowledge that hospitals are often understaffed and overburdened,” Srocznski suggests. “Let the employees know that unions will only make things worse. They will take nurses off-task from focusing on caring for patients.”

They say employee grievances should be treated as psychological and public relations problems. Administrators should launch a hearts-and-minds campaign to defuse stress and anger, reassuring employees that they are sympathetic, aware of problems, working on solutions and acting in the best interest of patients and staff. Managers should allow workers a modicum of input, the illusion of influence and the right to grumble. “There is a high level of anger,” Srocznski notes. “We need to validate that anger and know how to work through it and continue to do what we do.”

But what some nurses want is not validation but immediate reform, especially in those areas that affect patient care. “We had a situation where cardiac monitors were kicking out lethal arrhythmia and nobody saw it and a patient died,” says a nurse at a large New England hospital. “Patients are hooked up to cardiac monitors that output to a central desk where qualified medical personnel are supposed to continuously watch for problems. There would have been time to react, but nobody was there to see it.”

Compromised patient care, the consultants warn, often forms the irritating grain around which organizing drives form. “If management learns to align with employees,” O’Connor says, “that weakens the employee-union bond. It’s the touchy-feely stuff that often gets you the edge.”

“How many times do we actually talk to the nurse on the 3 to 11 shift?” Srocznski asks. “We take the nurses for granted [and they] perceive a lack of professionalism, dignity and respect.” This inattention “leads to frustration; frustration leads to rage and dread. … Rage and dread open the door to union organizing.”

Srocznski advises administrators to give the disgruntled the “magic minute.” “When someone is upset and asks for a minute, don’t say, ‘I’m too busy, I have only a minute.’ You make it seem like longer if you say, ‘Yes, I have a minute,’ and then sit and give them your full attention for a minute. By sitting, you equalize the power. And then say, ‘I look forward to having my secretary schedule some time for you.’ “

If efforts to assuage employee concerns fail, management still can do a lot to undermine the threat of unions.Srocznski and O’Connor say administrators must know the limits of the law, get supervisors “on the same page,” and implement pre-emptive and reactive strategies to undercut union access and organizing by all legal means. First, they should implement regulations to restrict where and how unions can access employees. Then, the consultants–making unionism sound like cancer–advise administrators to keep an eagle eye on employees and look for “early symptoms.” The list of these signs of organizing activity, Srocznski notes, “was left out” of the printed packet given to the seminar attendees “because it could have been controversial … and embarrassed the university.”

Watch out, Srocznski says, when employees gather in the parking lot, get together before and after work, hang around a unit or in smoking areas, take long bathroom breaks together, or are found in different units and then say they are “just visiting”; stop talking when management comes in the room; ask for their personnel records or for policy and procedure statements that they may be passing on to the union; engage in such “symbolic acts” as refusing mandatory overtime or increased absenteeism; “use their involvement with patients as a way not to cooperate”; “want the public to believe that patient care level is not safe” because of the management policies; or discuss safe work conditions and needlesticks or question staffing levels, policies and benefits such as HIV insurance. Another warning sign: “You give a Christmas party and no one comes.”

Although surveillance of union activity is illegal, “you have to keep track of what’s going on,” O’Connor says. “You need your supervisors to structure rounds and change the pattern of visits” so pro-union workers can’t predict when they will show up. Planning should also go into personnel decisions. Srocznski cautions seminar participants that they “legally can’t exclude people because they are union.” But she recommends particular scrutiny of nurses from different counties or out of state. “Information about union associations may be embedded in resumés. It’s like a red flag to me,” she says. “You have to be careful and ask casually: ‘Oh, you used to be in the Massachusetts Nurses Association?’ “

With a mischievous grin, O’Connor holds up a well-paged volume of Saul Alinsky’s famous book, Rules for Radicals, and advises the audience to read it to be prepared. “It is important to be pre-emptive and try to prevent organizing before it begins,” he warns.

On a gray winter day–the first of the seminar–about 100 protesters gather outside the hotel. The demonstration, organized by the Vermont Workers Center, includes not only union members, but church representatives, politicians and students. “We are here to support the biggest wave of organizing in Vermont’s recent history and to show that Vermonters oppose any effort to interfere with workers’ basic rights for fair treatment and decent working conditions,” says organizer Jason Serota-Winston. “That our tax-supported state university feels it is appropriate to work with private union busters only reinforces the need for a public outcry.”

The university, which has union problems of its own, counters that it is only supporting free speech and that the course is simply about good management, not union busting. Nonetheless, those sitting in the overheated conference room don’t want to be identified. When continuing education program developer Ellen Ceppetelli announces that she has gotten the TV stations to agree not to show participants’ faces on the news, there is an audible sigh of relief. The smiles are abruptly short-circuited by her next pronouncement: “Some of the protesters may sign up for the seminar, and we can’t prevent that.”

A nervous flurry of questions ensues as participants begin taking off name tags. Then someone points out that a list of registrants is included in the hand-out packet. “No one will know you were here,” Ceppetelli promises and quickly leaves to remove the list of names from the remaining packets.

Terry J. Allen

http://www.inthesetimes.com/issue/24/06/allen2406.html

Companies, often in collusion with governments, continuously develop techniques to sideline or smash independent representative unions. Wrecking methods vary from raw violence and intimidation to administrative measures, especially those backed by the law or lack of law.

One problem for genuine labour representation is that a union may be corrupt from its formation, or from democratic beginnings it may become corrupted over time; officials pay lip-service to labour principles but serve as tools to enforce management discipline. Such unions are called ‘yellow’ or ‘sweetheart’ unions.

A common approach to make a union compliant is for managers to form or help form a union, and then to insist on recognising only that union for collective bargaining. This method is even more effective if the law says only one union can represent an enterprise workforce, showing that union organising does not take place in a vacuum; it is first and foremost limited by law.

Governments differ in the level of legal controls over union organising, but in all countries it is covered by law. Some regimes control labour organising by minutely detailed laws, others are vague leaving them open to interpretation. When employers object to laws, they often simply ignore them, while government turns a blind eye in the interests of ‘efficient production’, or ‘public interest’.

Laws are regulators of social activity to prevent excess, but most labour legislation is heavily biased towards employers’ interests, despite 80 years of international labour laws. The law limits union activity by defining who may form unions, who can join them, and how they must be registered and conduct representation. In violation of the rights of assembly and bargaining but uncontested by the International Labour Organisation (ILO), many governments now rule on the minimum percentage of a workforce that is required for formation to be permitted – a form of union busting that destroys them even before they are formed.

Legal bans on union organising in the public sector are not uncommon, aimed at civil servants, armed forces, police, and ‘emergency’ services.

Another legal tactic is to permit union formation with very few members while limiting organising to enterprise unions with strict rules on who can affiliate to umbrella unions (or union centres). This allows many unions into a single enterprise workforce, leaving managers to cherry-pick the most docile and ignore the rest, even though this also contravenes laws democratically created by the ILO.
Even ILO member governments that have officially supported its laws by ratifying them, routinely flaunt them despite regular ILO rebukes that detail actions that governments must take to conform to labour standards. They get away with repeated violations because the ILO has no teeth (in the form of legal sanctions with a court to punish offending governments) to enforce the standards.
Other ILO member governments simply do not ratify ILO conventions – in violation of ILO membership rules; without enforcement powers, the ILO is something of a paper tiger.

Globalisation
Privatisation, an essential element of globalisation, is another administrative tool to bust strong unions; privatised companies insist on new working conditions from the state-owned predecessor. Contracting work out (or outsourcing) of state owned companies is a form of privatisation that weakens unions by breaking up workforces into units.

Outsourcing work increases informal working, because informals are not usually covered by labour laws, and outsourcing is now at epidemic proportions internationally as employers capitalise on informals – not only their wages, but also other benefits like insurance and pensions. Some firms encourage workers to resign and continue to work as self-employed contract workers. Not only do earnings fall dramatically once workers become self-employed, but also self-employed status has the effect of excluding workers from unions – what is the point of joining a union to get justice from an employer who is oneself? This weakens the existing union and is another administrative tool to attack worker solidarity.

Similar to privatisation, and equally disastrous for workers, is a new technique of selling franchises in large- and medium-size corporations – for example modern hotels and airports resemble upmarket shopping malls, not only in looks, but in corporate structure too – each unit is a self-contained business, breaking down unity between staff in one workplace because they have different employers.

Anti-union human resource management techniques accompany globalisation. For example downsizing intimidates workers through job insecurity, even though it does not always make companies smaller, more cost-effective, or more productive; but it always drives wages down, and sets a stage that forces workers to compete with each other, breaking up any solidarity between them.

Mass unemployment is another hallmark of globalisation. Company and government claims to support full employment are belied by poverty wages, long unemployment queues, and the cynical use of migrant labour. With millions desperate for work, employers know they can fill posts easily if workers resign in frustration, whereas full employment puts them in a much weaker position.
We must demand basic labour standards and human rights under international law, and full employment.

[http://www.amrc.org.hk/4802.htm]

Union busting is a practice that is undertaken by an employer or their agents to prevent employees from joining a labor union, or to disempower, subvert, or destroy unions that already exist. During contract negotiations, established unions may declare a strike in order to pressure an employer to agree to a contract. Established unions are most vulnerable to union busting when they undertake job actions such as a strike.

Employers faced with a strike have a number of options. They may try to negotiate a settlement, outwait the strikers, break the strike, or act in some combination of these options.

When corporations seek to turn the workers against the union, they do so by hiring a “new breed” of union busting agency — the labor relations consultant[1] who well knows that the union depends upon the support, confidence, and good will[1] of its members. These qualities are frequently targeted in strike breaking and in union busting campaigns.“ When a chief executive hires a labor relations consultant to battle a union, he gives the consultant run of the company and closes his eyes. The consultant, backed by attorneys, installs himself in the corporate offices and goes to work creating a climate of terror that inevitably is blamed on the union. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster[2]

John Logan, a labor expert at the London School of Economics, observes:

Most union avoidance consultants and law firms pay lip service to “preventive” or “positive” labour relations (i.e. solving workplace problems so that unions are rendered unnecessary). In reality, however, the vast majority of their work consists of running union avoidance campaigns, as employers hire them only when confronted by organizing drives.[3]

The union avoidance industry has profited from promoting adversarial labour–management relations. Labor consultants “actively and aggressively [create] that demand by encouraging management to fear the allegedly catastrophic consequences of unionization — in terms of higher labour costs, reduced profits, and a loss of control of their organization — and to fight it with all the resources at their disposal.”[3]

There are many different forms of union busting. Some consultants and anti-union attorneys take on unions that already represent a work force, squeezing out concessions at the bargaining table, forcing the workers out on strike, and harassing union officers. Other consultants practice concepts known as “preventive labor relations,” or “union avoidance,” attacking unions when they are first organizing, and therefore most vulnerable to anti-union campaigns. The techniques they use have been in development at least since passage of the National Labor Relations Act in 1935.[4]

In breaking a strike, a company or agency targets the action taken by the union. In union busting, the focus is shifted to injuring or destroying the union itself. In some cases, the union may become a casualty of a strike breaking campaign.

John Logan believes that union busting agencies have helped to “transform economic strikes into a virtually suicidal tactic for U.S. unions.” Logan observes, “as strike rates in the United States have plummeted to historic low levels, the demand for strike management firms has also declined.” Union busting agencies have been so successful in suppressing union organizing drives, he has written, that they must now seek markets outside of the United States.[3]

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Union avoidance consulting firms:

http://www.anh.com/default.asp
http://www.irconsultants.com/services-in-house.html
http://www.tbglabor.com/

When it comes to the financial balance sheet, an employer typically considers labor, i.e., human resources, to be a resource like energy, fuel, or raw material. That is, reducing the cost of the resource contributes to the corporation’s net income. Unionized employees secure better wages and superior benefits compared to their non-union counterparts.[3] Because unions concern themselves with issues such as wages, hours, and working conditions, the company not only must consider the possibility that unions will raise the cost of doing business, but unions may seek work rules which reduce the flexibility of management in running the business.

In nations without universal health care, such as the United States, negotiated health care plans may confer a significant cost on the corporation. Unions frequently seek to negotiate pension plans for represented employees as well, establishing an additional expense for the company.

Lower pay, fewer benefits, and more managerial control over working conditions, scheduling, and hours for the workforce may translate directly into greater profitability. Therefore, many employers seek to prevent unions from conducting successful organizing campaigns, and some may pursue options to undermine or eliminate unions which are already in existence.

During the 1960s and early 1970s, there was a general reluctance on the part of employers to engage in union busting.“ Most employers were cautious about hiring consultants and attending union avoidance seminars. In the late 1970s, one consultant recounted that a decade earlier: ‘Employers used to sneak into [union avoidance] seminars … They were as nervous as whores in church.’ ”

John Logan, The Union Avoidance Industry in the United States, 2006.[3]

Then, consultants began actively promoting the “morality of a union-free environment.” More recently, “consultants have become ever more brazen about encouraging employers to fight unionization to the bitter end.”[3] One prominent industrial relations scholar has observed that there is a “deep anti-union culture that historically and currently pervades US management.”[3]

Employers that have been unionized may be hostile, neutral, or friendly to the union. Occasionally an employer will pretend to be neutral or friendly, while concealing hostile intent. In all cases, however, the goal of the union buster is to reduce the power, significance, and appeal of the union, or to curtail by questionable means the union’s ability to win gains for its members. The number of union busters is increasing, with an estimated tenfold increase in the size of the union avoidance industry in the 1970s alone.[3]

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Many unionized employers, and the unions that represent their workforce, periodically engage in a process called negotiations, or bargaining, in order to establish the rules governing issues such as wages, hours, and working conditions. This may be a contentious process, in part due to the possibility of escalation. Escalation may include various types of job actions that move the focus away from the negotiating table, and place it in the economic sphere. Confronted with perceived intransigence, the union may seek to punish the corporation with a boycott or a successful strike, thereby gaining leverage at the negotiating table.

Employers make preparations for possible union strategies, just as unions plan job actions to pressure employers. Some of these activities and preparations may be considered routine. For example, manufacturing companies may develop a strike contingency plan which includes stockpiling product before the contract expires, in order to maintain sales during a work stoppage. A strike contingency plan may also have a secondary purpose: to intimidate union members into not striking.[8]

Other activities may be aimed at gaining advantage beyond simply concluding negotiations successfully, or winning during a job action. A corporation may seek to weaken or destroy the union, using the job action as an excuse.

Labor legislation has limited the methods that corporations may use to discipline a workforce, and has decreased the number and variety of economic tools readily available to unions. In some cases, the methods employed by union busters have become more subtle[1] and more devious.

Dirty tricks“ Union busting is a field populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on truth. As such, it is a war without honor. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always, always attack. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster[2]

Martin Jay Levitt opens his book, Confessions of a Union Buster, with a description of a consultant’s campaign against the United Auto Workers (UAW). A black assembly line worker was a particularly ardent union supporter. Company executives considered her the driving force behind an organizing drive. One night before the union election, a bomb threat was called in to the factory. Two plant managers identified the recorded voice as that of the pro-union worker, who was immediately fired. With co-workers wondering “what kind of union could corrupt such a stalwart character” as their former co-worker, the vote went against the union. Levitt, himself a union busting consultant at the time of the incident, knew the assembly line worker. He observed that the voice on the tape didn’t even sound like her voice. He “immediately recognized the bomb threat ploy as a typical union buster’s trick,” and testified in court that some of the other “consultants had hatched the bomb scare scheme when their anti-union campaign was on the verge of collapse.”[9]

Levitt also describes blatantly illegal practices such as tapping the phone of a union organizer, and also tapping into managers’ racial, class, and gender prejudices and fears.[10] During the 1970s and 1980s, the union avoidance industry was “an overwhelmingly white, male business, and relatively few firms employed multilingual or minority consultants.”[3]“ We deftly used [videos and other tools] to awaken within the mostly white supervisor corps a hatred of blacks, fear of violence, contempt for women, mistrust of the poor, and, of course, a loathing for the union that brought together all those despicable elements… with a few well-chosen remarks, we tapped the fears that resided in the hearts [of the supervisors]. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster[11]

However, many “dirty tricks” are considerably more subtle. For example, federal labor law requires the employer to provide the union with the names and home addresses of all union election eligible employees. A labor consultant may advise the company to provide nothing more than the very minimum necessary legal address requirements, which do not include zip codes, apartment numbers, or street designations such as Street, Avenue, Drive, or Place. The union is forced to spend significant resources to translate the minimal required legal addresses into usable addresses, and may therefore fail to contact many potential members.[12]
Propaganda

Every such government-required action of the company is an excuse to send apologetic letters to the employees, portraying such actions as an inconvenience or an invasion of privacy rights, the blame for which is laid at the doorstep of the union. In each letter, every word is carefully planned. Descriptions of the union always include threatening or derogatory connotations, while management is always portrayed as humble, caring, and righteous:

Subsequent letters detailed the union’s policies on dues, fees, fines, and assessments, divulged union rules and disciplinary techniques, warned that a strike would ruin the company and jeopardize jobs, and otherwise argued that the union would poison [the company].[13]

The union is not allowed access to the work force during their eight hours of work each day, but the union buster can occupy as much of that time as is considered necessary. The aim of the union buster is a “war of saturation bombing” in which half-truths and accusations put the union on the defensive. Forcing the union to spend hours defending itself during meetings means there’s no time left for the union’s planning efforts, or for campaign strategy. The workers won’t find the time to discuss their own issues if they’re sufficiently bombarded with the “twisted disinformation” sown by the union buster.[14]

But the well-orchestrated anti-union campaign is also nuanced and calibrated to human emotion. After all the employees and supervisors are exhausted from the fight over the upcoming election, the union buster may offer a “give us a chance” letter which is a “tearful, apologetic plea” for an apparent truce. It creates an illusion suggesting that management recognizes its mistakes and has learned its lessons from the organizing campaign, and that in alerting management to the problems, the union — portrayed as a self-serving group of outsiders with their own agenda — can serve no further useful purpose. Management really has changed, and management deserves a chance. This offer is typically timed so that its impact is felt just before the election.[15]

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

Either side is likely to perform better during confrontations if it is well-informed, or if it can place operatives in key positions. Corporations have frequently resorted to seeking intelligence on union activities, often by employing informants, labor spies, and saboteurs.“ The management plant is a standard presence at union-organizing meetings. Their job is manifold; disrupt the meeting so the union can’t talk strategy; take the focus off workplace problems by turning the questions on the union; intimidate union sympathizers; report back to management. Of course, if the anti-union workers are acting as spies, [federal labor law] makes that patently illegal, but big deal. It’s almost impossible to prove. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster[16]

Some actions of operatives are prankish, yet cruelly effective. In 1980, union buster Martin Jay Levitt conducted a counter-organizing drive at a nursing home in Sebring, Ohio. He assigned confederates to scratch up cars, then blamed it on the union. The deed occurred as part of a campaign to portray the union as a threat to nursing home residents. Creating — then systematically exploiting — a prolonged climate of fear was key to destroying the union’s credibility.[17]

Intelligence gathering may be ingenious and deceptive. The week before a union election, the labor consultant may announce an innocent-sounding election-week pool among managers and supervisors. Each person contributes a dollar, with the possibility of winning a one hundred dollar prize, by recording the number of “no” votes they’re predicting for the union election. The consultant now has a barometer of confidence from all participants. Those who predict a lower number of “no” votes may reflect areas of the workforce into which the union avoidance campaign can pour resources in the days just prior to the election. While participants are likely to view such a poll as nothing more sinister than a sports pool, in reality it circumvents labor laws that prohibit management from conducting straw votes among employees during an organizing drive.[18]
Legal obstruction

Labor consultants are experts at using rules and regulations to thwart an organizing drive. Delays and jurisdictional changes may be sought to obstruct union plans for a quick and straightforward campaign. If the union focuses on one division of the company, lawyers may disrupt such plans and dilute the vote by petitioning the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to include other divisions. If the union seeks to include foreman or “junior supervisor” positions in the bargaining unit, union busting lawyers may file on that issue. Even the jurisdiction of the NLRB to oversee an organizing drive may be challenged in order to provide management with more time to undermine the union effort. Protracted delays could turn the organizing campaign into a war of attrition, and such battles are almost always won by management.[19]

If the organizing struggle can be made to last long enough, it demonstrates to workers that the union is not in control and they will lose faith in the process. In one delaying effort a lawyer hired a photographer to take thousands of photographs of a factory, purportedly to show that the voting unit was improperly defined. Each photo was introduced into evidence individually, a tedious process that took days.[20]
Favoritism and division“ …as the consultants go about the business of destroying unions, they invade people’s lives, demolish their friendships, crush their will, and shatter their families. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster[2]

Consultants may direct management to establish “Vote No” committees of pro-company employees charged with the responsibility of rewarding loyal workers. Such workers may find themselves showered with special favors, extra time off, free T-shirts and caps with the “Vote No” slogan, and other bonuses. Pro-union workers are forced to undergo ever-tighter scrutiny, and are confronted with scurrilous rumors spread by the anti-union campaign. Whenever the union attempts to hold constructive meetings of potential union members, a group of anti-union employees may be sent by union busting consultants with instructions to disrupt the meeting and put the union on the defensive. The anti-union employees might shout and sneer, or ask hostile, misleading questions. Some of them may be tasked with jotting down profuse notes whenever someone speaks to make pro-union workers uncomfortable. The company gains from any divisions or animosity created by such tactics, for the union can be blamed for driving “a wedge of hate into a once unified work force.”[21]

[From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia]

The second imperative of a union avoidance campaign is to humanize the executives in the eyes of workers. The goal is to portray the company as benevolent, compassionate, and caring.“ [At union busting seminars]… managers learned the tricks of evading the so-called union problem: by appearing to listen to their employees and to encourage openness, by making policies simple and clear, and by relaxing some rules. And yes, they were tricks. Sleight of hand. Perception was more than a tool for me: it was the whole game… the objective was not to empower the employee, as I pretended, but to shut him up… ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster.

Management must temporarily submit to the guidance of consultants concerning all communications with employees. Examples of management’s newfound kindness are publicized to all employees. Through surveys and interviews, the union buster develops a definite insight into who in management is trusted and liked, and who is not. The former are brought forward and become the new face of the company during the union organizing campaign, while the others are coached on masking or overcoming their dislikeable characteristics. Absent such transformation, their visible role is diminished.“ Give the workers just enough rope so that they believe they are off the leash, just enough to fool them into scorning the union. The golden rule of management control, as I taught it, was: incorporate dissent, institutionalize it. They would find, I promised my disciples, that dissension won’t be half as attractive to the masses once the rebels are sitting down with the bosses…

…the cunning manager should embrace his workplace rebels. Be grateful for them, I offered, for they are your most effective shield against the union. If you can convince the activists that they’ll accomplish more, perhaps have more power, without a union, why, you’ve won the war. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster.

Managers or owners may be asked to visit worksites and exchange jokes, gossip, and laughter with workers. The theme of company-as-family prevails, with the union portrayed as an upstart outsider. Only after a union organizing drive is defeated, might company executives be allowed to return to their “tyrannical” ways.

Supervisors at the point of attack“ The foreman, the front-line supervisor, has the worst job in any business—watched and hounded by upper management, mistrusted by his workers. He is alone in the middle, with no one to turn to. The supervisor’s isolation and vulnerability make him the ideal tool for union-busting campaigns. ”

Martin Jay Levitt, 1993, Confessions of a Union Buster.

U.S. Labor Law confers certain reporting requirements on labor consultants who communicate with employees. For this and other reasons, consultants typically remain behind the scenes and operate through first line supervison. If supervisors fail to cooperate, or if they sympathize with the union, they may be fired.[25]

Supervisors are usually required to attend daily interviews conducted by well-rehearsed consultants who arrive with a carefully prepared chart for each worker, with all available data on the employee’s finances, sexual activities, and loyalty to the company included. Pairs of consultants may present supervisors with a good cop/bad cop routine in order to gain cooperation and information. A promise of confidentiality may be conveyed to the supervisor, but it is “a bold and cruel lie” because all useful information is routinely passed to executives, circulated as a damaging rumor against pro-union employees, or filed away for future use. If supervisors only pretend to cooperate, or if there is some question about performance or loyalty, they may be subjected to interrogations by multiple consultants who will use intimidation and blunt threats of dismissal—all perfectly legal if directed at management employees. Supervisors are told that their future with the company depends upon them personally halting the union organizing campaign. Ultimately, many supervisors can be badgered into begging for their jobs—not from consultants or from upper management, but from employees scheduled to vote in the union election.

Unions sometimes seek to include foreman positions, “junior supervisor” positions, or “layout operator” positions in the bargaining unit during a union organizing drive. The tactic may depend upon the job responsibilities actually performed by employees in these positions, but also upon the particular loyalties of these groups. A union buster recognizes that the process of destroying pro-union sentiments in a work force depends upon having a proportionally significant number of supervisory staffers charged with that task. It doesn’t matter to the union buster whether the sentiments of these staff members are pro-union or not — if they are not to be extended the protection of the bargaining unit, then their demonstrated loyalty to the company and its goal of defeating the union campaign can be made a condition of employment. Thus, positions of work group leadership or lower management often become contested positions in organizing struggles. If the bargaining unit established by the union’s petition for a union election does not allow the union buster sufficient management staff to launch a counter-organizing campaign, then the union buster may seek to redefine the bargaining unit through appeals to the NLRB. The National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) allows some lattitude for this, in that it declares a supervisor not just to be someone who can hire, fire, or transfer employees, but also someone who can effectively recommend any of these actions.

Declare innocence; comply with the law; blame the union.

In a counter-organizing campaign, image is crucial. When federal law could be useful — even if such rulings injured the work force — union buster Martin Jay Levitt bent it to his will, pretending to have no other option. Meanwhile, inconvenient federal requirements were falsely portrayed as treachery by the union.

For example, Levitt was fighting an organizing drive in a nursing home. The first level of nurses (LPNs) made up a significant proportion of the workforce, and there weren’t enough of the next higher level of nurses (RPNs) to effectively launch a counter-organizing campaign. The LPNs had been a driving force behind the union effort because they felt they were “neither paid nor respected as skilled professionals.” Levitt recommended to the company lawyer that they contest the inclusion of the LPNs in the bargaining unit before the NLRB, and this was successful. Thus, the pro-union LPNs were declared management for the sake of defeating the union. Levitt then composed a letter explaining this hostile maneuver to the nurses, blaming the action on the federal government, implying that the company had no role in their change of status, and portraying the good intentions of the company in complying with the law. The letter then asserted the required loyalty that is demanded of all management employees.

Levitt then informed the pro-union LPNs that they would have to give up their contacts within the union, ostensibly so that — as management — they wouldn’t violate federal labor laws prohibiting spying. Levitt admits in his book Confessions of a Union Buster that he used spies, informants, and saboteurs whenever it suited him, but as a union buster he withheld such details from the nurses.

In contrast to this assertion of management’s innocence in such matters, the union buster portrays the union as devious and sneaky. While addressing a group of supervisors whom he wanted to help destroy a union, Levitt characterized a strike vote by only those who had signed authorization cards as a fraudulent act by the union. He wanted them to believe that the union was “stacking” the vote, and therefore could not be trusted. In truth, limiting the vote to employees who have signed cards is required by federal law.

[From Wikipedia]

Although Nathan Shefferman introduced some basic psychological techniques into the union avoidance industry, they were fairly crude. Building upon his work, a new generation of professionally trained industrial/personnel psychologists, more overtly focused on combating unionization than their predecessors, introduced sophisticated behavioural and social science techniques into the union avoidance industry and provided the industry with greater legitimacy.

Industrial psychologists developed techniques that have allowed employers to screen out potential union supporters, identify hotspots vulnerable to unionization, and structure the workplace to facilitate the maintenance of a non-union environment. They provided employers with detailed “psychological profiles” of likely union supporters and opponents, and conducted regular “audits” to determine a firm’s vulnerability to unionization.

Industrial psychologists play a major role in union busting activities. Between 1974 and 1984, one firm established by one industrial psychologist:

…had trained over 27,000 managers and supervisors to “make unions unnecessary” and had surveyed the attitudes of over a quarter of [a] million employees in over 400 organizations… [the psychologist claims that] 4,000 organizations and almost one million employees have participated in [the firm's] surveys, seminars, and consulting, and that he has had only one client fall victim to unionization…

While many union busters focus on attacking unionization efforts, many industrial psychologists provide a complementary service called union prevention. One union prevention specialist believes his clients are so adamant that unionization efforts never get a foothold in their factories, that:

…if one of their plants were the subject of a failed organizing campaign, the company would fire the plant manager, line manager and HR manager…

Only in the United States has the struggle between management and labor resulted in such a “contingent of mercenaries” who specialize in breaking strikes. However, union busters have recently begun to diversify their personnel, and to seek markets in other countries.

In the U.S., organizing campaigns increasingly involve immigrant workers. One union busting agency claims that over half its consultants are minorities or women. The agency has hired African-American consultants for campaigns aimed predominantly at black employees. It boasts consultants fluent in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Tagalog, Creole and several dialects of Chinese, allowing it “access and acceptance in virtually any employee group.”

Private sector unions in the United States have declined, partly as a result of union busting campaigns. Some union busting agencies are therefore seeking international markets. Since 2000, at least one agency has established an international division which operates in Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, US Virgin Islands, United Kingdom, Belgium, France and Germany. The agency tells clients that its international division enjoys an international reputation for “eliminating union incursions.” As in the United States, the agency prefers to do its work in secret where possible, training the employer’s supervisors to implement its tactics. Unions in countries outside the United States have faced campaigns by the agency without realizing who they were up against.

[From Wikipedia]