"Break them": The anti-union consulting industry begins its rampup to fight tech labor
Alphabet workers news
OneZero, the official technology and science news publication of Medium.com, published an article today reporting that anti-labor law firms have now begun to develop specific anti-tech-labor training content, particularly in the wake of recent successes by CWA's CODE initiative. Corporate employment law firm Jackson Lewis, which has been running anti-labor trainings for corporations at least since 2007, just hosted a webinar blatantly titled "Breaking the CODE". The material included personality profiles of CODE's leadership, the usual advice to train management in anti-union talking points and FUD, and recommendations that management should target suspected labor organizers for role reassignment (!) so that they no longer qualify as "employees" under U.S. labor law.
Given that the anti-labor law industry is now openly recommending that employers use job role reassignment as a way of harming worker movements, I encourage every tech worker to ramp up your level of scrutiny around both forced internal project reassignments, and around the outcome of departmental reorgs. With union-busting firms now openly advising management to try to force organizers into the NLRA legal category of "supervising managers", every reorg now becomes an opportunity for your management to try to take away your protections under U.S. labor law.
Some extracts below, but please read the entire OneZero piece.
- Bruce
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onezero.medium.com/heres-how-professional-union-busters-talk-about-woke-tech-organizers-3686274e6b39
Here’s How Professional Union Busters Talk About ‘Woke’ Tech Organizers
A law firm webinar advised employers on how to avoid becoming a target of CODE, an organizing initiative in tech and video game industries
On July 30, the employment and labor law firm Jackson Lewis put on a one-hour webinar designed to educate employers on a new threat: a wave of union organizing in the video game and technology industries. More specifically, it promised to teach them to defend against it.
The webinar, called “Breaking the CODE: Union Organizing in the Video Game and Technology Industries,” focused on a group called Campaign to Organize Digital Employees (CODE) that was formed in January 2020 by the Communications Workers of America (CWA). CODE won its first campaign in March when it successfully organized employees at the communication software startup Glitch, and it is part of an unprecedented surge of tech worker activism...
OneZero registered for and attended the webinar, which provided a rare window into how employers in the tech and video game industry are being advised to ward off tech workers’ burgeoning interest in unions...
[Egan] suggested training supervisors, talking up the positive aspects of the workplace, or “blow[ing] your horn,” identifying and addressing workplace issues before unionization efforts started, and talking with employees about the downsides of unions...
Another tactic Egan discussed was for employers to proactively identify employees they would want outside or inside of a bargaining unit and adjust their responsibilities to strengthen the case that they either are or are not supervising managers and thus eligible or ineligible for representation by a union...
Talking points Egan recommended for employers included reminding workers about union dues and uncertainty over what will ultimately end up in a union contract if workers do form a union...
Jackson Lewis did not respond to a request for comment...
Employers, meanwhile, spend more than $340 million per year on union avoidance services like those offered by Jackson Lewis, according to an analysis from the Economic Policy Institute...