date: 11 February 2008

embargo: 00.01hrs Tuesday 12 February 2008

Union busters not welcome in the UK says TUC

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 a TUC report published today (Tuesday).

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.

The report, US Union Avoidance Consultants: A Threat to the Rights of British Workers has been written for the TUC by Dr John Logan from the London School of Economics. It says that union busting is a multi-billion dollar business in the US and 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.

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber said: 'The underhand tactics employed in the shadowy world of the union-busting consultant are proving increasingly attractive to a handful of employers in the UK. Good employers realise the safety, communication and training benefits of having a union at work, and many actively encourage their staff to join a union. But there are a small minority of bosses who fear the voice a union would give their employees and will do almost anything to keep the union out.

'This is a US export that UK workplaces could well do without. Thankfully the activities of the union busters are still small scale here compared with the influence they exercise in the States, but it's important that we do all we can to stop them dead in their tracks. That's why our agreement to work together with the American unions to counter the propaganda put about by the union busters is so important.'

Dr John Logan, author of the report said: 'For over three decades, so-called 'union avoidance consultants' have helped American employers undermine their workers' fundamental right to organize 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.'

In the UK this week to mark the signing of the union busting protocol with the TUC, the AFL-CIO's Director of Organising Stewart Acuff said: 'The US's $4 billion union busting industry is by far our worst export. As the industry grows in the UK, it makes sense that we band together to fight these highly paid, morally bankrupt agents of corporate greed. Our fundamental source of power is workers united and in motion.'

US Union Avoidance Consultants: A Threat to the Rights of British Workers 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.

NOTES TO EDITORS:

- US Union Avoidance Consultants: A Threat to the Rights of British Workers is available at http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/loganreport.pdf

- A copy of the AFL-CIO union busting protocol is available at

http://www.tuc.org.uk/extras/protocolagreement.pdf

- While he is in the UK, Stewart Acuff will be meeting with groups of British trade unionists. He is also speaking at a seminar sponsored by Cardiff University's Centre for Global Labour Research and the Wales TUC about union recruitment campaigns around the 2012 Olympics.

Contacts:

Media enquiries:
Liz Chinchen T: 020 7467 1248 M: 07778 158175 E: media@tuc.org.uk
Rob Holdsworth T: 020 7467 1372 M: 07717 531150 E: rholdsworth@tuc.org.uk
Elly Brenchley T: 020 7467 1337 M: 07900 910624 E: ebrenchley@tuc.org.uk

Press release (1,200 words) issued 11 Feb 2008