. According to forms filed with the Labor Department in connection with several anti-union campaigns over the past decade, Brown and Smith have worked under Philip Wilson, CEO of LRI. In 2018, Littler employed over 1000 attorneys in the United States and over 1500 worldwide. Often, its your efforts that can protect them from unwittingly putting everything on the line. Hutchison Group is a nationally recognized HR and labor relations consulting firm. Even with taking these steps, employees might still erroneously think a union is a viable solution to their issues. 1. Monitoring the NLRB and Other Pro-Labor Legislation and Regulations. However, it is estimated that hundreds of law firms and companies engage in union-busting activities. Even with the new election rules, the NLRB election process will remain stacked in favor of corporations and their highly-paid "union avoidance" consultants. Once again, communication is critical here, and your first line of defense is managers handling of employee concerns. The firm, which raked in more than half a billion dollars in revenue in 2021, has advised large corporations including Ikea and more recently museums, nonprofits, and universities on their anti-union efforts. Opera. During the winter, The Hershey's Company hired six union-avoidance firms to block organizing efforts at its chocolate factory in Stuarts Draft, Virginia. In fact, research shows that even a few supervisors with poor interpersonal skills can be the cause for instigating union organizing campaigns, grievances, litigations, and other costly disruptions. For this to happen, much depends on the employees day-to-day relationship with their immediate supervisor. One consultant writes in his LinkedIn profile: To start, I want to make it clear that I own a consulting firm that works exclusively for management to stay union free and promote positive employee relations, but my story did start on the union side with nearly 24 years of experience for unions.. With ANHS, we make sure you stay union-free. Best Lawyers 2022 "Best Law Firms" List. . 21.Daily Labor Report, Nissan Rejects State Department Offer to Mediate Over UAW Anti-Union Complaint, February 3, 2015. A closer examination of the background of Brown and Smith I have written about the activities of Labor information Services elsewhere shows their involvement in several high-profile anti-union campaigns, their lobbying efforts on behalf of anti-union legislation, and their sustained efforts to weaken unions and collective bargaining, especially in the transportation and aviation sectors. . Rebecca Smith: A second consultant working with Russ Brown at Amazon, Rebecca Smith, claims to have worked for unions 20 years, 16 years with the Teamsters, including as Executive Director of Training for Southern Nevada. A major component of our union avoidance strategy is to train supervisors and alert them to the skills necessary to avoid unions, skills they can use each day in their interaction with employees. The first nationally prominent consultant was Chicago-based Nathan Shefferman, who, as Sanford Jacoby described in Modern Manors (1997), worked for Sears Roebuck before establishing his own consulting firm, Labor Relations Associates (LRA). Unfortunately, as critical as the supervisors role is, our union relations consultants have found that many companies spend very little time training and educating their supervisors. Our goal is to engage clients in union avoidance activities prior to an actual campaign - to avoid campaigns altogether. This includes our Leadership Effectiveness Analysis, which helps your managers identify and leverage their strengths. Look out for these emails and check out our website for more information on how to remain union-free! The notoriously secretive, $340 million-a-year industry of union-avoidance firms is currently advertising based on the idea that the pandemic has put organizing on "steroids." This report was originally published in the New Labor Forum and was written byJohn Logan,Professor and Director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University. In the 1960s and 1970s, the industry was spurred on by multiple former LRA personnel, including attorneys Louis Jackson and Robert Lewis of New York-based Jackson Lewis, one of the biggest anti-union law firms of the past four decades, along with Chicago-based consultant John Sheridan and Herbert Melnick, founder and chairman of the notorious Modern Management Methods (3M) firm. 12. Equally important to identifying employee concerns, our improving labor relations assessment process helps to reaffirm that management values employees ideas and contributions, which are essential for maintaining a positive working relationship. To underscore this finding, a recent survey by the Pew Research Center reported that the popularity of labor unions has grown in recent years, citing that their favorability hit 60% in January 2017, with only 35% percent of Americans viewing them unfavorably. Thus, just as Nathan Sheffermans LRA spawned anti-union consultants and firms that dominated the business in the 1960s and 1970s, so too has LRI acted as a breeding ground for new union avoidance experts over the past two decades. 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For example, the president of one anti-union firms with which Smith has worked, Joe Brock of East Coast Labor Relations Consultants (ECLRC) and Reliant Labor Consultants, claims to have worked for the Teamsters Local 830, the largest IBT local in Philadelphia, for over twenty years, before losing a union election in 2007 and becoming an anti-union consultant. to be confidential until the attorney verifies that the firm does not represent other Other anti-union consultants claim years of experience working for organized labor, including for the Teamsters, steelworkers, laborers and AFL-CIO. Fewer problems arise when employees have faith and trust in their organizational superiors. following terms. 7.Littler Mendelson, Labor Law Update, October 15, 2014, available at https://slideplayer.com/slide/6206656/. Advised by its U.S. union avoidance lawyers, Nissan insisted that the U.S. NCP should not broker an agreement that would place the company in a position of . In the 1970s and 1980s, 3M conducted thousands of anti-union campaigns with over 70 anti-union consultants, including Marty Levitt, who renounced his former profession in the late 1980s and published a tell-all memoir, Confessions of a Union Buster, in which he detailed a dirty business which was populated by bullies and built on deceit.. Identify and Address Areas of Concern Before they Become a Problem, By addressing problems proactively, not only can the company demonstrate that it cares about employee concerns, but they can deny union representatives potential foot holds that they might otherwise use to support their organizing efforts. One of the best ways to determine a companys vulnerability to union organizing is to conduct onsite employee relations assessments. We estimate our team has helped manage hundreds of union organizing attempts and/or campaigns, and our clients have obtained favorable results in more than 96% of the campaigns in which we have been involved. Several states have tried to outlaw them in recent years, and Russ Brown actively opposed Connecticuts 2019 anti-captive audience bill. Study with Quizlet and memorize flashcards containing terms like 1) The term labour-management relations refers to: A) the process of labour- management contract negotiations and . advice. Since Littler was founded in San Francisco in 1942, union avoidance has been a major area of its expertise. getty. Preparing a first round of union avoidance materials. 3 (2002): 197-214. Undeterred by this setback, Brown and Smith were involved in a bitter decertification campaign involving pilots at Flexjet LLC in 2018. Three of the biggest law firms that do this work are Littler Mendelson, Ogletree and Jackson Lewis, which have grown from regional operations into global union avoidance behemoths. For over 35 years we have helped our clients with employee relations, union negotiations, union avoidance, labor relations training, HR due diligence for M&A, and much more. Kumho Tires: Numerous and Egregious Anti-Union Practices: Brown and Smith also conducted an anti-union campaign at Kumho Tires in Macon, Georgia, between 2017-2019. This month, we found out that Amazon is using a second anti-union consultant firm which is an unusual step, even for an anti-union firm like Amazon: California-based Labor Information Services. The leaked records include a spreadsheet of anecdotal personal information the company had gathered . When addressed early, organizing is avoidable. Unions stifle that autonomy. Your employees are, too. Our team has also helped companies avoid hundreds of campaigns across the country, including UAW, Steelworkers, Teamsters, CWA, IBEW, UFCW, UNITE-HERE, IAM, AFTRA, SEIU, The Laborers, GMPP, Sheet Metal Workers, 1199, just to name a few. Having worked with both union and nonunion companies over the past 30 years, our labor and employment consulting firm . Having worked with both union and nonunion companies over the past 30 years, our labor and employment consulting firm have learned to identify key warning signs and recommend proactive steps to remain union free. The Great Railroad Strike of 1877 in . Your employees have a right to unionize, but you also have a right to educate them about potential dangers and negative effects of labor union representation. waiving employer rights . The LM-20 form filled by Russ Brown states that three consultants will be paid a daily fee of $3,200 plus expenses for the duration of the campaign, which started in January. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics Union membership is on the rise for people under age 35 there were almost 400,000 more union members younger than age 35 in 2018 than there were in 2017. After all, you cant lose a union election that doesnt happen. The EPI estimates that the "union avoidance" industry, through which companies hire outside firms to defeat organizing efforts, is now worth $340 million per year. Flexjet is just their first target.. . The refusal was no surpriseemployers have turned down the NCP in every U.S. OECD complaintbut Nissan invoking the ILO was surprising. . Littler attorneys have proposed filing an OECD complaint against global union federations and establishing and funding a group to process and publicize the case. This interesting idea would put labor on the defensive and provide corporations targeted by unions with a tool to respond to criticism.15. Money and decision-making power are the two primary reasons why companies want to avoid unionization. These firms have perfected union avoidance techniques that make it extraordinarily difficult for unions to organize in the private sector.1 In recent years, several firms that specialize in union avoidance activities have extended their activities globally: Littler Mendelson and Ogletree Deakins employ attorneys in multiple countries, provide union avoidance advice to a growing number of MNCs and have annual revenues in the hundreds of millions of dollars. October 15 - 16, 2019. A Modern-Day LRA The Labor Relations Institute (LRI) Consulting Connection: Based in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, Phillip Wilsons LRI Consulting Services, LLC is one of the nations oldest and most active union avoidance firms in the nation. In 2018, Littler employed over 1000 attorneys in the United . Kara Fox-LaRose, president and general manager of ilani, a casino . necessary.17. Last month, we discovered that, starting in January, Amazon had hired two prominent anti-union consultants, Russell Brown and Melissa Smith of Florida-based Road Warrior Productions (RWP), to assist with its campaign against the RWDSU. 11.Jackson Lewis, Surveying the New Labor Law Landscape, 2011, available at https://www.acc.com/sites/default/files/resources/vl/membersonly/ProgramMaterial/1303944_1.pdf. February 26, 2023. Araby is all too aware: "Union avoidance firms are a growing presence in the cannabis industry; the big union-busting law firms like Morgan Lewis and Littler Mendelson, as well as others, see . Russ Brown also runs the North American Transportation Employee Relations Association (NATERA), an organization dedicated to weakening union influence in the transportation sector, on which Rebecca Smith serves as a board member. 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