Labor organizer Kim Kelly on anti-union behavior from ostensibly progressive nonprofits
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The Baffler published a story a few days back about how anti-union tactics can come from all types of employers, including from organizations whose mission statements ought to position them as pro-worker. One non-profit not on Kim Kelly's roundup of recent examples is the Southern Poverty Law Center, whose employees successfully unionized in December 2019 with a very lopsided 142-45 vote. The runup to the vote was marred by the SPLC, whose mission statement specifically calls out the desire to "advance the human rights of all people", hiring anti-union law firm Hunton Andrews Kirth. You can read more about the SPLC union at their own site, splcunion.org, or follow their Twitter feed at twitter.com/splcunion
I'll paste some extracts from the Baffler article below.
- Bruce
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https://thebaffler.com/working-stiff/the-new-face-of-union-busting-kelly
The New Face of Union-Busting
Anti-labor strategies with a liberal twist
The thing about union-busting as a tactic of workplace warfare is that it is extremely adaptable...
Over the years, the anti-union industrial complex has evolved into a lucrative field unto itself; it’s not all brash targeted firings and stuffy, captive audience meetings anymore. Some solutions are quieter, sneakier, and more suited to the image that outwardly progressive or even “social justice”-oriented organizations seek to convey...
A recent spate of union-busting tussles and general bad boss behavior has thrown a harsh spotlight on the rot at the top of various nonprofits, liberal political organizations, and beloved cultural institutions. While the myth of the progressive boss has gone some way toward shielding these leaders from scrutiny, that glossy veneer can only hide so much...
Take the case of the ACLU of Kansas. Earlier this summer, their staff decided to join the United Media Guild Local 36047, a local union within the NewsGuild-Communication Workers of America. A union representative told Kansas.com that the workers’ primary reason for organizing was the “toxic work environment” under Executive Director Nadine Johnson, who responded by refusing to voluntarily recognize the union. Instead, Johnson hired Ogletree Deakins...
For its part, Ogletree Deakins makes no bones about its stated mission to help its clients “minimize the risk of unionization.” Their hiring was a blatant signal to Johnson’s workers that the ACLU of Kansas wasn’t going to recognize their union without a fight...
“Union-busting can look a little different at nonprofits compared with for-profit companies, but they use many of the same dirty tricks,” NPEU President Kayla Blado explained via email. “By forcing their staff to have an unnecessary union election at the Trump NLRB instead of simple card-check, management is prolonging the process and displaying a lack of trust and willingness to work in good faith with their staff...
Blado’s point about the current state of the NLRB is especially important. In theory, the NLRB is tasked with upholding U.S. workers’ rights, but the dawn of the Trump era has rendered that idea moot. Now, the board is controlled by his appointee John F. Ring, a former management-side partner at another union-busting law firm, Morgan Lewis. Trump’s NLRB has handed down a number of explicitly anti-labor rulings...