LaborLab Launches Tools to Expose $1.7B Union-Busting Industry

LaborLab, a workers' rights watchdog founded in 2021, has launched two free online tools designed to give workers a clearer picture of the forces arrayed against them when they organize. The first is a union-buster search tool that 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. It allows workers to research the attorneys and consultants their employer has hired, see how much they are paid when available, and identify patterns in their activity. The second tool, a cost calculator, estimates the full cost of an employer's anti-union campaign, including direct expenditures on attorneys and consultants and hidden internal costs like paid employee time spent in anti-union meetings. It also estimates the wage increase the employer could have provided with those resources instead. Together, the tools aim to help workers better understand, expose, and push back against the specialists mobilized to deny them a voice at work.

The launch comes as employers spend an estimated $1.7 billion annually on the $1.7 billion union-avoidance industry, often hiring anti-union consultants and law firms to discourage organizing. These specialists, typically paid more than $400 per hour, coach supervisors on anti-union messaging, track union support, and prepare campaign literature designed to sow fear and doubt. While the law requires many of these relationships to be disclosed, the information has been scattered across federal databases that are notoriously difficult to search. LaborLab's new tools bring that information into one place, a step toward closing the information gap for workers as the Department of Labor and Congress fail to implement long-needed reforms.

Bob Funk, executive director of LaborLab, said the tools advance the organization's vision of directly empowering workers to organize their workplaces. He envisions 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. LaborLab's estimates have already been presented to the Minnesota Senate and cited in coverage of organizing campaigns by nurses, therapists, and mechanics. The tools are available online, with the union-buster search tool accessible here and the cost calculator here.