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Martin Levitt, a one-time anti-union consultant, wrote a memoir, Confessions of a Union Buster in the early 1990s. He famously said that union busting is a “dirty business” which is “populated by bullies and built on deceit. A campaign against a union is an assault on individuals and a war on the truth. The only way to bust a union is to lie, distort, manipulate, threaten, and always attack.” 

He reflected the current Amazon’s ongoing anti-union campaign in Bessemer, Alabama, where 5,800 workers are voting by mail on whether or not to join the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store (RWDSU)

Amazon is now paying almost $10,000 per day plus expenses to three anti-union consultants: Russell Brown, Rebecca Smith and Bill Monroe having hired one of the country’s largest and most expensive union-avoidance law firms, Morgan Lewis.

Brown and Smith have previously run controversial, high-profile anti-union drives at Mission Hospital in Asheville, North Carolina, in 2020, at which nurses preparing for the COVID-19 pandemic were subjected to a “relentless” anti-union campaign; and in 2017, at Kumho Tires in Macon, Georgia, where the National Labor Relations Board found that the company committed “numerous and egregious” unlawful anti-union actions. 

In 2019, while writing for the right-wing Competitive Enterprise Institute Russell Brown, offered a detailed insight into what he does during the course of his anti-union campaigns. Brown’s campaign description mirrors closely his anti-union actions at the Amazon facility in Bessemer. Moreover, he shows how the principal role of anti-union consultants is to mislead and confuse employees, not, as he claims, to educate and enlighten them.

The relentless, consultant-driven, anti-union campaign at Amazon provides a compelling case demonstrating the need for the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, the labor movement’s main legislative priority for the Biden administration, which was passed by the House of Representatives in February 2020.  Several provisions of the PRO Act would restrict corporations’ ability to conduct no-holds-barred anti-union campaigns: It would prohibit mandatory “captive audience” anti-union meetings; it would limit employers’ ability to delay the union certification process (and thus extend the anti-union campaign); and it would require that employers and consultants report their financial arrangement to the Department of Labor, even if the consultants avoid face-to-face contact with employees.

The battle between the RWDSU and Amazon at Bessemer is a real “David vs. Goliath” fight.

Amazon Is Paying Consultants Nearly $10,000 a Day to Obstruct Union Drive (truthout.org)