Confessions of a Union Buster. - book reviews

Monthly Review, June, 1994 by Michael D. Yates

I.

In this period of capitalist crisis, labor-management cooperation schemes abound. Employers have turned to their employees with a familiar cry in hard times: we are all in this together so we must plan our future cooperatively. Past antagonisms will be forgotten, and a new era of equal partnership will begin. Wrapped in the rhetoric of patriotism, capital and labor will team up to increase productivity, improve quality, and restore the U.S. economy to its former glory.

Every labor leader who has bought into this latest incarnation of "capitalism with a human face" should buy copies of Martin Levitt's, Confessions of a Union Buster and hand them out to the rank and file. Most union officers won't have to read it, because they know that what it says about employers is true: they hate unions and will do whatever is needed to keep their workers uncontaminated by the union virus. The shame is that so many labor "statesmen" have refused to act on this knowledge and instead have become willing participants in what is essentially a management public relations campaign.

II.

Union busters are people employed by a business to prevent employees from forming a union or, if a union already exists, to make it impossible for the union to negotiate a contract. They are an ancient breed, having plied their wares at least since the beginning of industrial capitalism more than 100 years ago. The infamous Pinkerton Agency, which provided the scabs for Andrew Carnegie in the Homestead strike, was founded in 1850. Before the passage of the Wagner Act (formally known as the National Labor Relations Act) in 1935, union busters could do pretty much as they pleased. It was not illegal for a corporation such as General Motors to hire a union buster to spy on workers, to infiltrate their unions and act as a provocateur, to spread rumors and foment distrust among employees even to act as a purchasing agent for arms and ammunition. It was not illegal for an employer to fire workers for union activities and to blacklist them so that no other employer would hire them. It was not at all unusual or illegal for the police, themselves, to do the same things. During the "Little Steel" strike of 1937, a contingent of Chicago police were billeted inside of the Republic Steel plant. The company supplied them with ammunition and special billy clubs, which they used to beat and kill strikers during the Memorial Day Massacre.

The Wagner Act made most of the activities of the union busters illegal, "unfair labor practices" which could be severely penalized by the newly created National Labor Relations Board. The Act did not initially have much effect on what Monthly Review founder, Leo Huberman, called the "Labor Spy Racket" in his classic account. Using the United States Senate's LaFollette Committee reports, Huberman detailed numerous cases of union busting perpetrated after passage of the Wagner Act. It is instructive to note how employers then, as now, sang the sweet phrases of labor-management cooperation. Huberman quotes GM President Alfred P. Sloan:

The Management of General Motors holds that there is no real conflict of interests between employers and employees....Enlightened employers and enlightened employees realize that they have a mutuality of interests such as to dictate the wisdom of maintaining the highest degree of cooperation and harmonious relations.

Just prior to this letter, GM purchased, through the chief of police of Flint, Michigan, "ten no. 16 gun clubs and ten dozen (120) no 16-A shells for same..." in preparation for "labor troubles" at the Chevrolet plant. The seller was the Lake Erie Chemical Company, which also sold GM "two long range gas guns, single action, of the hammer-hinged type, at $40 each, and 12 long range gas charges for these guns, at $80 a dozen, or a total of $170" for "troubles" at the Buick plant.

III.

The great industrial union organizing drives of the late 1930s put the union busters on the defensive as the NLRB began to enforce the Wagner Act. While the most vicious types of union bashing continued to be used, the focus began to shift toward a more sophisticated approach dubbed "union prevention." The first of the new firms, Labor Relations Associates, was formed in 1939, just two years after the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of the Wagner Act. Its founder, Nathan Shefferman, developed many of the techniques utilized by his numerous progeny, including Modern Management Methods and the other firms with which author Levitt was associated.

The labor laws, themselves, provided the key elements in the union busters' bag of tricks. First, supervisors are not considered employees under the National Labor Relations act and do not enjoy its protections. Therefore, it is perfectly legal for employers to force supervisors to spearhead an anti-union campaign under the direction of people like Levitt. Second, the 1947 Taft-Hartley revisions of the Wagner Act gave employers free reign to wage aggressive propaganda campaigns against the unions which were trying to organize their workers. The "free speech" provision of Section 8 (c) of the Act allows an employer to say anything, even something patently false, as long as the employer does not say anything which is coercive or which promises benefits to the employees.