Confessions of a Union Buster. - book reviews

Monthly Review, June, 1994 by Michael D. Yates

The union knew that a union buster was at work, but Levitt kept the initiative and was there every day. The union could not legally be on the employer's property, so it was always in the position of responding to Levitt's attack. He had questions planted in a suggestion box for the supervisors to answer or for spies to ask at a union meeting. Each question was meant to put the union on the spot and to sow seeds of distrust among the workers. One might imply that everyone would be forced to join the union. Another one might suggest that the union could force them out on strike. Another might imply that they could lose the benefits they now had if the union won. By the time the union could respond, a lot of damage had already been done.

Levitt went so far as to organize an anti-union group among the residents of the home. Some of the residents had been corporate executives and did not have to be persuaded to help the anti-union campaign. Others joined when supervisors told them that union supporters might physically harm them and would probably go on strike, making their continued care difficult. Residents began to harass union advocates, and they sent out a letter urging employees to reject the union. Levitt knew that a union would, if anything, improve the care given to the aged residents, but he also knew that the emotional attachment which the workers had with the old people made them very susceptible to his manipulations.

V.

Despite Levitt's best efforts, the union won a narrow victory in the representation election. When the NLRB agent who conducted the election accidently left the ballot box unattended, Levitt actually contemplated vandalizing it. But he was so confident of victory that he let this opportunity pass. After the loss, he wished that he had tampered with the ballot box. However, Levitt was quick to sense that the employer was not about to deal with the union, so he responded enthusiastically to a request that he continue to work to defeat it, this time at the bargaining table. When the employer's attorney refused to participate in a campaign of bad-faith bargaining, Levitt found one who would. He did not hesitate to break the law, because he understood that the law against bad-faith bargaining was poorly enforced and weakly punished. This was especially the case with the Reagan NLRB, staffed with persons hostile to the very law they were sworn to enforce.

The bad-faith bargaining campaign began with a series of meetings with the supervisors. Playing upon their fears and anger, Levitt easily got them to cooperate with his new game plan. Supervisors were ordered to run their departments strictly by the book and to never relate to their workers as human beings. Workers were again denied any close personal contact with patients. The workers had been told before that a union would make worklife subject to rigid contract rules, so now that the union had won, the employer instituted and enforced such rules. Workers were told that they would have to bargain to keep the benefits which they already enjoyed, and the employer began to (illegally) take away benefits such as rest breaks and free meals. Employees were told that the employer could not give them any wage or benefit increases because there was a union in place (This is not true if the union agrees to the raises or they had already been scheduled by the employer). Each union stalwart was subject to still tighter supervision, given difficult assignments, and followed around and harassed by supervisors in the hope that she would quit.