LaborLab, a workers' rights watchdog, has unveiled two free online tools designed to give workers unprecedented insight into the $1.7 billion union-avoidance industry in the United States. The union-buster search tool and cost calculator, launched on September 8, aim to pull back the curtain on the attorneys and consultants that employers hire to discourage organizing and bargaining for better pay and working conditions.
Many U.S. employers hire anti-union consultants and law firms that are typically paid more than $400 per hour. These specialists coach supervisors on anti-union messaging, track union support, prepare campaign literature and speeches designed to sow fear and doubt, and sometimes directly persuade workers while presenting themselves as "educators." By law, many of these relationships must be disclosed, but the information has been scattered across federal databases that are notoriously difficult to search.
LaborLab's search tool compiles data from National Labor Relations Board and Department of Labor filings on more than 800 consultants, 8,000 law firms, and 21,000 attorneys. Users can see which employers union-busters represent, the rates they charge, their campaign history, the unions they target most often, and where available, their win-loss records, with direct links to NLRB cases and DOL disclosures. The tool is available at https://www.laborlab.org/search.
Complementing the search tool is LaborLab's new cost calculator, which allows workers to generate an estimate of the full cost of their employer's anti-union campaign. It estimates up to seven costs employers bear by fighting a union rather than voluntarily recognizing one upon proof of majority support. These include direct expenditures on attorneys and consultants and hidden internal costs, such as paid employee time spent in anti-union one-on-ones and staff meetings. The calculator also estimates a wage increase that the employer could have provided with those resources instead. LaborLab's estimates have been presented to the Minnesota Senate and cited in coverage of organizing campaigns by nurses, therapists and mechanics. The cost calculator is accessible at https://www.laborlab.org/costcalculator.
"These tools advance LaborLab's vision of providing resources that can help directly empower workers to organize their workplaces," said Bob Funk, executive director of LaborLab. "We envision worker-organizers, union staffers and labor attorneys using the search tool to identify unions that have previously dealt with a particular anti-union attorney or consultant, learn from their experience and share that information with other workers."
The launch comes amid long-standing failures to enforce disclosure requirements. In 1959, Congress required union-avoidance consultants and employers to disclose many of their activities and related payments, concluding that "this type of activity by or on behalf of employers is reprehensible" and "should be exposed to public view." But reporting loopholes, weak enforcement and fragmented government databases have long made that information difficult for workers to find.
As the Department of Labor and Congress fail to implement long-needed reforms, LaborLab's new tools are an important step towards closing the information gap for workers – a gap detailed in a new LaborLab report. Founded in 2021, LaborLab is the nation's leading watchdog tracking the union-avoidance industry. It empowers tens of thousands of workers annually through research and educational resources and holds corporations accountable for violating workers' rights. LaborLab is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that tracks, exposes, and counters the employer opposition industry through LMRDA compliance monitoring, investigative research, and real-time campaign intelligence, helping workers organize and win strong first contracts.
