15 dirty tricks used by union organizers

In order to successfully prevent and defeat labor disputes, it’s critically important that you understand the opposition. In the last 24 years of working with hundreds of clients, Labor Consulting Group, LLC has discovered 15 of the most of the underhanded tactics.

1. Telling employees they cannot lose wages and benefits in negotiations while the opposite is true.
2. Financially reward certain employees in order to buy their support. They often establish a core group of union supporters they call lieutenants and they promise them to be the future union shop stewards.
3. Promise employees they will never sign a contract or go on strike without their full and complete approval. Basically, give employees the perception that they are in full control of their union.
4. Using rumors to confuse and erode company support among employees. “Divide and conquer tactics” are usually implemented.
5. Make unrealistic and irresponsible promises of increased wages and benefits to employees. They try to act as if they are the employer!
6. Union reps promise employees that specific managers and supervisors will be fired if the union wins the election.
7. Running stealth organizing campaigns, deceiving management that there is not enough support for the union by employees.
8. Use intimidation tactics against anyone who opposes the union drive. They usually instruct employees to secretly voice record all conversation between them and local management.
9. Union reps file false charges with the NLRB at your expense and attempt to get the union in without an election.
10. Union reps send union organizers to hire on as employees and work internally to create disharmony in the workplace. It takes one bad apple to spoil a barrel.
11. Put pressure on companies by picketing outside and even more pressure on employees by visiting them at their homes (another form of intimidation).
12. Sabotage company equipment and machinery or employee property.
13. Send letters to customers falsely accusing the company of engaging in illegal or Unfair Labor Practices.
14. Notify banks and lending institutions that the target company is in a labor dispute or violating the law.
15. Tell employees if they signed a “Union Authorization Card” that it is a must for them to vote yes for the union on election day.