Overview of Findings
Under current Federal law, anti-union “persuaders” engaged in direct contact with workers are required to disclose their activities on Form LM-20 which must be filed with the U.S. Department of Labor within thirty (30) days of entering into an agreement or arrangement with an employer. However, the majority of employer-side consultants fail to file one within this time limit, exposing a serious crisis of transparency and accountability from the union-busting industry.
According to a first-of-its-kind analysis conducted by LaborLab of LM-20 filings since January 1, 2021, over 82% of anti-union persuaders violate the timeliness requirement, giving them an unfair and illegal advantage over workers attempting to form unions. The longer it takes the consultant to file, the more workers remain in the dark about who is making often erroneous and misleading statements about the union.
Pursuant to the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, every anti-union consultant must file a detailed report (LM-20) with the Department of Labor’s Office of Management Labor Standards (OLMS) within 30 days of being engaged by an employer.
By creating a 30-day filing deadline, Congress recognized that for the information reported on the LM-20 to be useful and serve its purpose, employees needed the information in a timely manner. OLMS puts it succinctly:
The purpose of consultant reporting is to balance the information: to alert workers and unions that there is an outsider “working the room” for the employer, whether directly or indirectly. That information does workers no good months or years after the organizing campaign – as was publicly reported to have been the case in the recent Amazon organizing campaigns. To be meaningful, then, these consultant Form LM-20 reports must be filed close in time to the organizing activity the consultant is hired to resist – as Congress requires.
LaborLab’s LM-20 Scorecard is the first of its kind. Users can learn exactly how often each consultant files (or doesn’t file) on time.
Overview of LaborLab’s LM-20 Scorecard and Methodology
The LM-20 “Scorecard” is compiled from one single source: the actual Forms LM-20 filed by anti-union “persuader” consultants. The scorecard includes all LM-20s filed from January 1, 2021, to September 30, 2022. Every LM-20 filed must be signed by the persuader’s principal officers who agree to the following statement:
Form LM-20 must be filed within thirty (30) days after the employer and consultant reach a reportable persuader agreement. The persuader must report the date of the arrangement or agreement with the employer in item 7 of the Form LM-20. Since 2021, these forms must be filed electronically, so the digital signatures of the principals include a filing date in items 13 and 14. Corporations and partnerships require two signatures; sole proprietors only one, so if there are two signatures with two different filing dates, we use the later of the two dates, because the form cannot be electronically filed the signatures are entered.
A simple “date arithmetic” formula calculates the number of days elapsed between the filing and agreement dates. If the result is 30 days or less, the form is timely filed. If not, we categorize the untimeliness into one of several categories.
LaborLab’s LM-20 Scorecard is easy to use: just click the alphabetized drop-down menu of persuader consultants; results for the selected consultant’s timely filings then appear on the left-hand side of the screen; results for all LM-20 filings for the period appear on the right-hand side.
LaborLab’s LM-20 Scorecard is hosted in Google Sheets. Please email [email protected] if you have any issues with access.
The overall findings are as follows:
- Between January 1, 2021 and September 30, 2022, 639 unique LM-20s were filed with the Office of Labor Management Standards (OLMS). Only 18.3% of LM-20s were filed on time by anti-union persuaders (i.e. “union-busters”).
FAQs
What is the LM-20?
The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959, as amended (LMRDA), requires public disclosure of agreements or arrangements made between any person, including labor relations consultants and other individuals and organizations, and an employer to undertake certain activities concerning employees or labor organizations. Pursuant to Section 203(b) of the LMRDA, every person who undertakes any such activities under an agreement or arrangement with an employer must file a detailed report with the Secretary of Labor. The Secretary, under the authority of the LMRDA, has prescribed the filing of the Agreement and Activities Report, Form LM-20, to satisfy this reporting requirement.
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
What currently qualifies as a reportable persuader activity?
Under the current interpretation of the rules, a union-busting “agreement is reportable when the consultant has direct contact with employees with an object to persuade them, or when the consultant directs the persuader actions of line supervisors or similar management officials after having been authorized by the employer to do so.”
Source: U.S. Department of Labor
Why are LM-20s so important?
Congress treated the timing of LM-20 reports noticeably differently from the other reports required by the LMRDA. By prescribing the 30-day filing deadline, Congress recognized that for the information reported on the LM-20 to be useful, employees needed the information right away. When workers are considering supporting a union, it’s typically clear when the union is “working the room” to persuade them to support organizing efforts. And while it may be clear to workers that their employer is also participating in efforts to persuade them not to support those efforts, many are probably unaware that there is a third party involved – a consultant retained by their employer to help resist the union’s organizing efforts.
The purpose of consultant reporting is to balance the information: to alert workers and unions that there is an outsider “working the room” for the employer, whether directly or indirectly. That information does workers no good months or years after the organizing campaign – as was publicly reported to have been the case in the recent Amazon organizing campaigns. To be meaningful, then, these consultant Form LM-20 reports must be filed close in time to the organizing activity the consultant is hired to resist – as Congress requires.
