LaborLab’s Union-Busting Tracker tracks anti-union “persuader” consultants across the United States. We believe that workers have a basic and fundamental right to form a union and that any employer who conducts coercive anti-union activities should be held accountable to the public, as stipulated under the law. Maintaining this tracker is dependent on your financial support.
Disclaimer: This map provides a limited view of union-busting campaigns based on data reported under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA). Due to legal loopholes and noncompliance, many instances of union-busting activity likely remain unreported. This map should not be considered exhaustive or representative of the full scope of union-busting practices.
Additional Resources:
- LaborLab’s union-busting watchdog blog can be read here.
- LaborLab’s article Understanding Section 7 of the National Labor Relations Act can be read here.
- LaborLab’s article Understanding Section 8 of the National Labor Relations Act can be read here.
- LaborLab’s article Is Your Employer Violating Your Right to Organize? What You Need to Know can be read here.
- LaborLab’s article How to File an Unfair Labor Practice Charge can be read here.
What is Union-Busting?
There is a very profitable industry that has been built around silencing workers. High-paid consultants and lawyers call it “union avoidance,” but the rest of the world, including us, calls it “union-busting.”
Union-busting is an attempt by management to prevent employees from exercising their legal right to unionize. While union-busting is illegal, it’s also very common. A recent report found that employers spend over $300 million a year on union-busting efforts.
Is Union-Busting Illegal?
Under the National Labor Relations Act, you have the right to organize a union to negotiate with your employer over your terms and conditions of employment. This includes your right to distribute union literature, wear union buttons t-shirts, or other insignia (except in unusual “special circumstances”), solicit coworkers to sign union authorization cards, and discuss the union with coworkers. Supervisors and managers cannot spy on you (or make it appear that they are doing so), coercively question you, threaten you or bribe you regarding your union activity or the union activities of your co-workers. You can’t be fired, disciplined, demoted, or penalized in any way for engaging in these activities.
