Consultants,lawyers, and the ‘union free’ movement in the USA since the 1970s

This paper provides a qualitative analysis of the services that the anti–union consultants and law firms have provided to American employers during the past three decades and an account of the campaign tactics of several ‘superstars’ of the union–free movement. It describes a multi–million dollar industry that has helped employers to circumvent the intent of federal labour law through a vast array of union–busting tactics, implemented before the union arrives and continuing until after it is defeated: tactics that are designed, at every juncture, to undermine employees’ free choice of bargaining representatives.