-Caveat Lector- Working Lives Who you gonna call? A secretive new army of consultants is about to arrive from the US. Their mission: to help keep restless British workers in check. Diane Taylor enters the shadowy world of the union-busters Guardian (London) Wednesday November 1, 2000 The scene could be a call centre, a factory, a supermarket. The first signs of their presence in the workplace seem innocuous - comical even. There are the cutesy baseball caps bearing propagandising slogans, the gaudy leaflets, the "informative" videos made compulsory viewing for all staff and subtly peddling their message. There might - as happened at one major manufacturer in the US in recent months - be time off work for a company picnic, a lavish, feelgood away-day featuring speeches and presentations that seem to be slanted in a certain direction. And then come the more sinister aspects: the hints that employees are being surreptitiously filmed at work; the workers "let go" in mysterious circumstances; the strangers at out-of-work gatherings pretending to be people they're not. By then, it should be clear: the union-busters - consul tants hired by employers to help them avoid or frustrate plans to organise unions in the workplace - have arrived. Their message to staff: organising a union would see salaries go into freefall and competitiveness take a battering, throwing the very survival of their company into doubt. There are an estimated 10,000 anti-union consultants in the United States, many attached to law firms - and they are on their way to Britain. Demand for their services in this country is booming thanks to new employment legislation making it easier for unions to win recognition. Their pitch plays on the paranoia of senior managers, summoning images of the most notorious instances of union might: the winter of discontent, the miners' strike. And the first such company to cross the Atlantic, PTI Labor Research, is due to open an office in London any day now. A specific date is a little harder to come by, since PTI, based in Houston, Texas, proves reluctant to return telephone calls, and certainly doesn't seem to be planning an all-singing, all-dancing opening ceremony. "The opening of PTI's London office hasn't officially been announced yet," a spokeswoman finally reveals, "but we'll know more in the next month or so." It is just five months since the 1999 Employment Relations Act came into force, setting out regulations aimed at reintroducing compulsory procedures for union recognition for the first time since the 1980s. The new laws mean that recognition must follow if 40% of the relevant segment of a workforce votes in favour. Where union recognition laws are strongest, the consultants calculate, new business will be easiest to come by. PTI's website gives few indications of how its British operation will function, explaining only that the company is already "advising UK companies on strategies for remaining union-free_ Due to the sensitive nature of our business, we ask that you contact us for further information". PTI partner Stuart Keene is understood to be in London for the forthcoming launch, but he can only be contacted through the Texas headquarters. Even there, he is not returning calls. The firm has already been outlining its strategies to British managers. At a conference on employment law earlier this year organised by the UK law firm Eversheds, a PTI representative spoke on anti-union strategies before numerous employers, believed to include McDonald's, Gap and Tower Records. (Eversheds partner Roger Steel is anxious to distance his company from PTI, arguing, "If PTI did introduce the same tactics over here as they employ in the US, it would misjudge the mood.") A leading anti-union law firm, Jackson Lewis Schnitzler and Krugman, which counts the US-based bookstore giant Borders among past clients, is also understood to be advising British businesses. In the US, Borders has been repeatedly involved in controversy for its anti-union campaigns, threatening to shut down bookshops where staff vote for recognition. The union-busters will bring two decades of US experience to exploiting loopholes in the new British employment law, warns Carolyn Jones of the Institute for Employment Rights. "During the consultation period, we urged the government to adopt the European model of union recognition, which does more to safeguard workers' rights," she says. "We said, 'If you're really serious about strengthening unions and collective bargaining, don't go for laws based on the American system.' But they did." Employers who panic at the prospect of union organisation can end up in self-defeating dead ends, says Kate Bronfenbenner, an expert on employment relations at Cornell University in New York state. "Sometimes a company which is barely solvent will end up paying tens of thousands of dollars to a union-buster - far more than it would ever have cost to negotiate with the union for better terms and conditions for staff," she says. "Union-busters see a good business opportunity in the UK: they're telling British employers that the unions will destroy their businesses, and that they are the one group of people who can protect them." But the Trades Union Congress, having previously undertaken confidential investigations into the consultants' activities, now argues that British workplace culture will prove profoundly antipathetic to the American import. "Making it compulsory to wear a baseball cap won't go down well over here," a spokesman says firmly. "In fact, companies like PTI could be handing unions the best recruitment tool they've ever been given. In the UK, there's a significant union-friendly sector and only a small anti-union one, often in US-owned businesses. The new legislation is complex, and for those companies who don't want unions, good old-fashioned British bureaucracy is likely to be a more effective tool than Texans in baseball caps." The process involved in rejecting calls for recognition involves employers in an arduous process that requires them to canvass employees and seek a ruling from a central arbitration committee if negotiations break down. But bureaucracy has also proved a useful tool for the anti-union consultants, according to Greg Tarpinian of the US union-backed Labor Research Association. "They will resort to any tactics, advising employers on specific legal strategies to deploy. In the US, it's illegal to fire a worker because they're involved in a union - but the penalties are so minimal that it's worth it. It can take up to 10 years through the courts to get people reinstated." <A HREF="http://www.ctrl.org/">www.ctrl.org</A> DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion & informational exchange list. Proselytizing propagandic screeds are unwelcomed. Substance�not soap-boxing�please! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory'�with its many half-truths, mis- directions and outright frauds�is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. 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