However, as globalization increases and capital and labor become more mobile, employers outside the U.S. are adopting American union-avoidance tactics,[1] and comprehensive campaigns are becoming more common in Europe and Asia.
Innovations in grass-roots community organizing, developed outside the labor movement in the 1960s, offered American unions a new way with which to exercise power vis-a-vis employers.
Picketing may occur at charity events, at the homes of board members or senior corporate officers, at the workplace, or at the place of business of subsidiaries, customers or suppliers.
Research into the employer's finances, business strategy, governance, structure, leadership, board of directors, vendors and suppliers, building plans, staffing, billing, and operations (among other things) occurs six months or more before the comprehensive campaign begins.
Comprehensive campaigns are research-driven: The information discovered is analyzed, assessed and fit into short- and long-term strategies, which then drive additional research as well as dictate the pace, timing, and actions undertaken in the media, legal, community and other realms.
[14] Another element of the comprehensive campaign is writing, introducing and seeking the passage of local, county, state or federal legislation inimical to the employer's business interests.
[15] Proposed legislation may be as broad as universal healthcare or comprehensive workplace safety laws or as narrow as requiring the employer to collect and publicly report information which is not otherwise available (and which the union may later analyze and use).
The use of "white papers", press conferences, advertising (in all media) or the distribution of research (independent or not) often is an important aspect of the publicity campaign.
In part, this is because research, publicity, building community coalitions, legislative work, legal pressure and other elements of the comprehensive campaign are time-consuming and not immediately effective.
Business and professional licensure, zoning procedures, building permitting and other laws and regulations may also be advantageously (and legitimately) used to hinder, harass and influence the employer to recognize the union, negotiate a contract, or achieve other goals.
In many ways, the building of international coalitions of trade unions, environmental groups, consumer federations and others has been an element of comprehensive campaigns since the mid-1980s.
In the 2000s, international coalition-building—especially with unions in Western Europe (who represent workers at, and have strong working relationships with, the parent companies of American subsidiaries)—became far more important in the U.S.
The process by which potential members are educated about unions and the labor movement, local leaders are trained, and effective, democratic organizations established is known as "union-building."
Ray Rogers, a staff organizer with the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA), ran a comprehensive campaign against J.P. Stevens, a large textile manufacturer in the South.
OCAW mounted a campaign that involved environmental groups and unions in West Germany, and ultimately pressured BASF to end the lockout and sign a contract.
[25] That same year, a corporate campaign run by the Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC), AFL–CIO, ended a six-year strike and boycott and won the union its first contract.
While some growers were willing to negotiate, big canners such as the Campbell Soup Company were unwilling to pay the higher prices which would accompany a unionized workforce.
The first known publication of a work examining comprehensive campaigns was Lawrence Mishel's article, "Strengths and Limits of Non-Workplace Strategies," published in the Fall 1985 issue of Labor Research Review.
The campaign is notable because of the extensive international pressure the USW brought to bear on Ravenswood and for the creative legal strategies the union employed.
Most importantly, however, the Ravenswood effort showed that, properly undertaken and financed, a comprehensive campaign could put so much pressure on an employer that even recourse to permanent replacements could not defeat the union (as the tactic had at Hormel and International Paper).
An essential part of the union strategy was an innovative class-action lawsuit by about 400 current and former Food Lion workers, who alleged they had been forced by their employer to work off-the-clock.
Although Food Lion's lawsuit was eventually dismissed, UFCW was unable to organized the workers, achieve recognition of the union or negotiate a collective bargaining agreement.
They claim that comprehensive campaigns ignore the established policies and election procedures of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and that—through the use of neutrality and card check agreements—they violate workers' freedom of speech and choice.
For example, a number of employers have asserted that unions file frivolous lawsuits as part of such efforts, clogging the courts, taking the organizing process out of workers' hands and putting it into those of judges, and diverting resources from useful and efficient causes to "wasteful" legal causes.
In 1958, the Supreme Court ruled in NLRB v. Wooster Division of Borg-Warner Corp., 356 U.S. 342, that unions are prohibited from striking over subjects of bargaining not encompassed by "wages, hours, and other terms or conditions of employment" (the phrase used in the NLRA).
As unions work with other organizations, it is claimed that they form, essentially, a commercial enterprise which seeks to economically dominate the market much in the same way that a monopoly does.
Worst of all, the comprehensive campaign diverts attention away from employees' goals and needs and toward the economic weaknesses of the employer, and It also subordinates the timing of the organizing drive to court calendars.
Lawsuits in state or federal court are far more expensive than the hearings and adjudications held under the auspices of the NLRB, and take longer to resolve.
Increasingly, they point out, workers and unions are being sued for libel, slander, tortious business interference and a variety of other state and federal claims which carry heavy fines.
[46] Finally, an emerging union-side argument against comprehensive campaigns is that legal action may expose the union's internal operations and strategies to employer scrutiny.