Tactics used by US employers to keep unions out of the workplace are being increasingly used in the UK as employers here begin to hire firms of union-busting consultants to persuade their workers against the benefits of union membership, warns new a report by Dr John Logan, Employment Relations and Organisational Behaviour Group, LSE.

The report, US Union Avoidance Consultants: A threat to the rights of British workers, by John Logan for the Trades Union Congress (TUC), explains that union busting is a multi-billion dollar business in the US. Consultants from firms such as the Burke Group and Jackson Lewis have been so successful that despite some 60 million Americans saying that they would like to join a union, membership currently stands at just 7.5 per cent of the US private sector workforce.

The report says that the tactics used by union busters are designed to frighten and intimidate workers away from any union attempt to recruit them at work. Consultants hired by employers in the US warn the workforce that the union will start harassing them in their homes, risk their job security, and cause them a loss of earnings and benefits. Employees are also given company leaflets warning them that if they join the union they are likely to be permanently on strike and under threat of violence should they join any picket line.

Although union busting is still relatively uncommon in the UK, the report warns British unions not to take their eye off the ball and says that although the law in the UK is much stricter on employers that violate workers’ rights, the activities of union busters are likely to be much more widespread here than most unions realise.

The report contains examples of UK companies that have used union busters, including:

In 2006 Europe’s largest regional low-cost carrier, FlyBe, hired the Burke Group (TBG) when 400 cabin crew tried to join Unite. According to the union, TBG had twenty people working full-time on the anti-union campaign. The company distributed anti-union videos to employees’ homes and held one-on-one meetings during which workers were told that that they would end up with less pay under the union. The company cautioned that the airline might cut jobs if the union campaign were successful and stated that the union was only interested in employees’ dues money. However, Unite persuaded FlyBe to drop TBG and subsequently 94 per cent of the workers voted in favour of unionization in an 89 per cent turnout in December 2006. Prior to the FlyBe campaign, TGB had claimed a 100 per cent success rate in the UK.
In October 2007, workers at Kettle Chips - many of who are immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and Portugal - voted 206 to 93 not to join Unite. Unite officials believe that, by the time they had exposed the role of TBG, most workers had already been ‘persuaded’ to vote against the union. The union reported that the most striking aspect of the Kettle campaign was the aggressive use of supervisors to spearhead the anti-union drive. The union was confident of a victory among Kettle’s production workers but after hiring TBG, the company persuaded the Central Arbitration Committee to include office workers as part of a larger bargaining unit. TBG’s anti-union campaign stressed the threat of strikes in the event of a union victory, and, as intended, it seems that this message scared off many of the office workers. As a result of press coverage of the firm’s actions, two campaign groups were established on Facebook, attracting nearly 800 people from around the world. Kettle Chips, which is owned by the private equity firm, Lion Capital, subsequently hired one of Britain’s leading PR firms to repair the considerable damage to its reputation.

Dr John Logan said: ‘For over three decades, so-called 'union avoidance consultants' have helped American employers undermine their workers' fundamental right to organise and bargain collectively. The United States has an entire industry dedicated exclusively to stopping workers from forming a union. Several of these US consultants are now operating internationally and are seeking to expand their business in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. It is essential that union busting is not allowed to flourish on this side of the Atlantic.’

To coincide with the report’s publication, the TUC and its American equivalent, the AFL-CIO, are joining forces to try to thwart employer efforts on both sides of the Atlantic to demonise trade unions and scare employees from joining up. The two union organisations plan to shed light on the underhand tactics used by the union busters to keep workplaces union-free.

Click here to download a copy of the report.

Ends

For more information, visit http://www.tuc.org.uk/

Contact:

Dr John Logan on 020 7955 7029, email: j.logan@lse.ac.uk
LSE Press Office on 020 7955 7060, email: pressoffice@lse.ac.uk
Liz Chinchen, TUC Press Office, on 020 7467 1248, email: media@tuc.org.uk

Press Cuttings

Personnel Today
Manufacturers' body EEF denies use of 'union-busting' consultants in UK
An employers' group has rubbished a report claiming UK firms are increasingly hiring 'union-busting' consultants to persuade staff not to join unions. The TUC-commissioned study said employers were using scare tactics to keep workplaces union-free, and warned that the activities of US-style consultants were likely to be more widespread than previously thought. Report author John Logan, of the London School of Economics, said UK activity ‘paled in comparison with the US’. He said that while stiffer UK penalties deterred illegal conduct, consultants were skilled at operating in grey areas of the law.
http://www.personneltoday.com/articles/2008/02/19/44471/manufacturers
-body-eef-denies-use-of-union-busting-consultants-in-uk.html

The Guardian
Union-busting tactics on the increase, warns TUC
The warning coincides with a report written for the TUC by Dr John Logan of LSE, which says ‘union-busting’ consultants have been so successful in the US that only 7.5 per cent of the private sector workforce are members of a union.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2008/feb/12/tradeunions

Financial Times
TUC acts to thwart US ‘union busters’
British employers are hiring aggressive US-style ‘union busting’ consultants to persuade workers against joining trade unions, Brendan Barber, the TUC general secretary, warned on Tuesday. The latest accord coincides with the publication of a TUC-commissioned study by John Logan, a lecturer in employment relations at the London School of Economics, highlighting recent activities in the UK of union avoidance consultants such as the Burke Group (TBG).
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5547ad92-d8d5-11dc-8b22-0000779fd2ac.html

12 February 2008

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