History of union busting in the United States

As workers moved from farms to factories, mines and other hard labor, they faced harsh working conditions such as long hours, low pay and health risks.

Shaped by wars, depressions, government policies, judicial rulings, and global competition, the early years of the battleground between unions and management were adversarial and often identified with aggressive hostility.

Around this time, the coopers' union opposed Pratt's efforts to cut back on certain manual operations, as they were the craftsmen who made the barrels that held the oil.

In 1907, Morris Friedman reported that a Pinkerton agent who had infiltrated the Western Federation of Miners managed to gain control of a strike relief fund, and attempted to exhaust that union's treasury by awarding lavish benefits to strikers.

After workers went on strike in September 1913 with grievances ranging from requests for an eight-hour day to allegations of subjugation, Colorado governor Elias Ammons called in the National Guard in October 1913.

The Homestead struggle of 1892, the Pullman walkout of 1894, and the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903 are examples of unions destroyed or significantly damaged by the deployment of military force.

But he suffered from tuberculosis, and as he faced death, he declared that he turned down the job of breaking a streetcar strike in Philadelphia because this time, "the strikers were in the right.

[17] In 1909, the Pressed Steel Car Company at McKees Rocks, Pennsylvania fired forty men, and eight thousand employees walked out under the banner of the Industrial Workers of the World.

Bergoff's agency hired strikebreaking toughs from the Bowery, and shipped vessels filled with unsuspecting immigrant workers directly into the strike zone.

[19] Other testimony indicated that Bergoff's "right-hand man", described as "huge in stature, weighing perhaps 240 pounds", surrounded himself with thirty-five guards who intimidated and fleeced the strikebreakers, locking them into a boxcar prison with no sanitation facilities when they defied orders.

"Missionaries" were undercover operatives trained to use whispering campaigns or unfounded rumors to create dissension on the picket lines and in union halls.

For example, female missionaries might systematically visit the strikers' wives in the home, relating a sob story of how a strike had destroyed their own families.

[24] In the 1930s, the Pinkerton Agency employed twelve hundred labor spies, and nearly one-third of them held high level positions in the targeted unions.

The International Association of Machinists was damaged when Sam Brady, a veteran Pinkerton operative, held a high enough position in that union that he was able to precipitate a premature strike.

At the Underwood Elliott-Fisher Company plant, the union local was so badly injured by undercover operatives that membership dropped from more than twenty five hundred to fewer than seventy-five.

Shefferman's operatives set up anti-union employee groups called "Vote No" committees, developed ruses to identify pro-union workers, and helped arrange sweetheart contracts with unions that would not challenge management.

"[31] Shefferman built "a daunting business on a foundation of false premises", of which "perhaps the most incredible—and most widely believed—is the myth that companies are at a disadvantage to unions organizationally, legally, and financially during a union-organizing drive."

[49] According to Steve Early of The Boston Globe, "PATCO's destruction ushered in a decade of lost strikes and lockouts, triggered by management demands for pay and benefit givebacks that continue to this day in a wide range of industries.

[57] One difference is that Canadian law allows for card certification and first-contract arbitrations (both features of the proposed Employee Free Choice Act promoted by labor unions in the United States).

[95][96] In June 2024, the Communications Workers of America filed an unfair labor practice charge with the NLRB against Lionbridge Technologies, which is contracted to perform QA testing for Activision, alleging that the company fired "substantially all of the approximately 160 employees working at its Boise, ID, worksite" in retaliation for union-related activities, including "protected organizing activities and protected speech when raising issues regarding their working conditions," and accusing the company of having a "documented union-busting track record.

[101] In August 2024, the UAW filed unfair labor practice charges against Donald Trump and Elon Musk, accusing them of illegally threatening to fire striking workers during a livestream on X (formerly Twitter).

[103] In April 2019, an NLRB judge found that Lowe’s Home Centers violated the National Labor Relations Act by forbidding workers from discussing their pay.

[104] In May 2019, following a complaint filed by the United Steelworkers in November 2017, an NLRB judge found Kumho Tire had engaged in "pervasive" illegal conduct during a unionization campaign at the company's tire manufacturing plant in Macon, Georgia, with at least 12 managers including the company’s CEO issuing illegal threats to lay off employees or to close the plant if it unionized.

[108] In March 2021, the NLRB ruled that Tesla violated labor law when it fired a union organizer, Richard Ortiz, and when the company's CEO, Elon Musk, posted a tweet that was viewed as threatening to labor organizers within the company, and it ordered Tesla to have Musk delete the anti-union tweet and to reinstate Ortiz and to compensate him for the loss of earnings.

[111] In April 2023, the NLRB ruled that Tesla violated labor law by prohibiting workers at an Orlando, Florida service center from discussing pay or raising grievances about working conditions with upper management.

[124] In December 2022, the NLRB ruled that Apple illegally interrogated and made coercive statements to retail store workers in Atlanta, Georgia during a union drive.

[128] In January 2024, the NLRB accused SpaceX of illegally firing a group of employees who wrote an open letter in June 2022 that was critical of the company's CEO Elon Musk.

Railroad workers wanted to make sure they had an opportunity to organize, be recognized as the exclusive bargaining agent in dealing with a company, negotiate new agreements and enforce existing ones.

Pursuant to LMRDA Section 203(b) employers are required to disclose the costs of any persuader activity as it regards consultants and potential bargaining unit employees.

"[151] Levitt stated: With the help of our trusted attorneys, our anti-union activities were carried out [under Landrum-Griffin] in backstage secrecy; meanwhile we gleefully showcased every detail of union finances that could be twisted into implications of impropriety or incompetence.