They specialize in industries such as entertainment (radio, television and motion picture), hospitality (culinary and food service), communications, manufacturing, aerospace, utilities, and healthcare.

According to the AFL-CIO, "one of the largest U.S. firms, Labor Relations Institute (LRI),[3] offers a "Guaranteed Winner Package": if the corporation does not "win", it does not pay.

Following the repeal of the Combination Laws in 1824, workers were no longer prohibited from forming labor organizations or collective bargaining, although significant restrictions remained.

The sentence of seven years penal transportation to Australia prompted a movement to defend the members, known as the Tolpuddle Martyrs (referring to the village where the organization originated), who were eventually released in 1836 and 1837.

"[9] One of the most significant cases of mass dismissals in the UK occurred in 2005, involving the termination of over 600 Gate Gourmet workers at Heathrow Airport.

The terminations prompted a walkout by British Airways ground staff that paralysed flights and stranded thousands of travellers in the UK.

[14][15] The BBC reported that Andy Cook, Gate Gourmet's director of human resources at the time, said "the company had not been looking to cut the size of the protests, only stop the minority engaged in harassment.

Because employers and governments did little to address these issues, labor movements in the industrialized world were formed to seek better wages, hours, and working conditions.

The clashes between labor and management were often adversarial and were deeply affected by wars, economic conditions, government policies, and court proceedings.

As part of his union busting strategies, all of these activities were performed with the goal of maintaining complete control of the work force by top management.

[23] In 1962 US President John F. Kennedy issued Executive Order 10988,[24] which established the right for public sector employees to form unions with certain limitations regarding collective bargaining and a special caveat making it illegal to strike (later enacted into law as 5 U.S.C. § 7311(3)).

In 1981 the public sector union PATCO (Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization) went on strike in violation of Kennedy's executive order.

[30][31][32][33] In the US, unlike the UK and several other countries, the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) provides a legally protected right for private sector employees to strike in order to gain better wages, benefits, or working conditions without the threat of termination.

However, striking for economic reasons (i.e., protesting workplace conditions or supporting a union's bargaining demands) allows an employer to hire permanent replacements.

In the United States businesses receive little pushback from regulator agencies and when violations are found they are often appealed and eventually dismissed or downplayed by judges, or are insignificantly punishing to prevent the illegal tactics being re-used.

[34] Rügemer and Wigand also referred in their study to US authors such as John Logan, Kate Bronfenbrenner, Martin Jay Levitt, and Joseph McCain.

Generally, in the UK, an application for derecognition must be made to the Central Arbitration Committee (CAC), which declares that a derecognition/decertification ballot election will be held.

When trade union organizing occurs, labor attorneys are generally contacted for advice and often turn to consultants with whom they work on a regular basis who can do supervisory training on site.

In a press release dated March 10, 2008 Andy Stern of the SEIU accused the CNA of union busting: "The California Nurses Association has launched an anti-union campaign against nurses and other healthcare employees in Ohio, seeking to derail a three-year effort by the workers to unite in District 1199 of the Service Employees International Union.

[56] In 1980, the author of Confessions of a Union Buster, Martin J. Levitt, reported that he conducted a counter-organizing drive at a nursing home in Sebring, Ohio.

Harry Wellington Laidler wrote a book in 1913 which reported the use of delaying tactics and provocation by an undercover operative of one of the largest known agencies of the time called Corporations Auxiliary Company.

Major American cities were also experiencing hospital strikes which raised awareness of both labor leaders and the government regarding how to continue life-sustaining patient care delivery during work stoppages.

"[68] In 1998, Catholic Healthcare West, the largest private hospital chain in California and a major recipient of state Medicaid funds, conducted a campaign against the SEIU in Sacramento and Los Angeles at a cost of more than $2.6 million.

A major recipient of state Medicaid funds, the Center for Cerebral Palsy in Albany, New York, hired a law firm to fight a UNITE organizing drive.

In May 2005, a district court judge struck down the labor neutrality law in a ruling that the legal representatives of the Center for Cerebral Palsy described as "an enormous victory for employers".

By 1903, these organizations started to coalesce, and a national employers' movement began to exert a powerful influence on industrial relations and public affairs.

[72][73] In 1901, angry WFM members passed a convention proclamation that a "complete revolution of social and economic conditions" was "the only salvation of the working classes".

In April 1903, David M. Parry spoke to the annual convention of the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM),[76] delivering a speech critical of organized labor, asserting that trade unionism and socialism differ only in method, with both aiming to deny "individual and property rights".

[77] To control this threat to the status quo, Parry advised that the NAM begin organizing employers and manufacturers' associations into a great national anti-union federation.

[citation needed] The Council on Union Free Environment (CUE) had the specific mission of defeating President Carter's labor law reform bill that was designed to make union-organizing efforts more successful by, among other provisions, allowing for elections to occur within 15 days of filing a petition.