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The Guardian - US
The Guardian - US
World
Steven Greenhouse in New York

Wave of union victories suggests union-busting consultants may have lost their sway

Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted for a union in spite of the company’s intense union-busting tactics.
Workers at an Amazon warehouse in Staten Island, New York, voted for a union in spite of the company’s intense union-busting tactics. Photograph: Eduardo Munoz Avarez/AP

The nation’s anti-union consultants and lawyers – who have made millions of dollars fighting against union drives – have just been through some of their worst weeks ever as unions racked up wins at Amazon, Starbucks, REI, the New York Times, MIT and other places.

These consultants and lawyers – often called “union busters” – have done so poorly that John Logan, a professor who has studied “union avoidance” efforts for two decades, says their anti-union kryptonite seems to have suddenly lost much of its power. “For decades, the consultants have seemed almost invincible. Many firms have boasted victory rates of over 95%,” said Logan, a professor at San Francisco State. But in Staten Island, “the Amazon Labor Union turned the tables on the company’s anti-union consultants” and showed they may have been “more of a liability than an asset”.

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