How the Union Suppression Industry Rebranded as DEI Consultants

Workers are warned that union dues will go to “old white guys,” a native land acknowledgement before an anti-union lecture, and much more.

A brief note to readers:

How has “woke” culture turned into an elite game for keeping workers divided and subservient to the moneyed establishment? This original investigation from a few years ago provides some answers. This reporting project included many weeks of discussions with organizers and union avoidance consultants as well as exclusive reporting inside one aspect of the DEI industry.

-Lee

John Merrell, speaking in a southern drawl, apologized for presenting over Zoom in such casual attire. The lack of a jacket and tie, he said, was intentional. He was on-site with a client.

“I figured this group would appreciate as much as any that you know, when you’ve got a lawyer in your facility, you usually don’t want them to come in looking all lawyered up,” said Merrell, a management labor attorney at the firm Ogletree Deakins, a South Carolina-based law firm that specializes in closely advising businesses on how to counter union organizing drives. “I’m trying to be somewhat incognito.”

The group had gathered to speak candidly about creative new ways in which employers can subtly counter union organizing. There’s a “huge uptick in activity,” Merrell began, not just at name brand companies like Starbucks, but union drives “even in the Carolinas where [I am] based, we’re seeing a lot of an uptick of activity in some kind of unexpected places, unexpected industries, not the industries that you typically think of as being your unionized industries.”

In the “heyday” for union organizing, he continued, “we just thought of them as seeking better wages and working conditions for their workers.” Now, workers were agitating for respect and in opposition to “harassment, bigotry, discrimination and retaliation,” said Merrell, quoting a mission statement from the Alphabet Workers Union, which secured bargaining rights for a small group of Google Fiber workers in Kansas City, Missouri, in March 2022. Corporations, advised Merrell, should be ready to pivot and respond quickly to these “social justice-driven” campaigns.

Across the country, particularly in highly educated workplaces, employee activism has centered on demands that go beyond the bread and butter of higher salaries and better retirement benefits. YouTube and Facebook employees have demanded that management take a greater role in censoring content viewed as sexist or racist. Amazon corporate headquarters workers in June 202 staged a protest to demand that the company restrict the sales of books that are perceived by some activist groups as anti-trans. The union that represents workers at NPR has demanded that the media outlet develop demographic tools to track the race and gender of every source that appears in stories.

Workers now have a “heightened focus on the optics” of race, continued Merrell, so management should do more to match the demographics of the workforce. “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” initiatives, social consciousness-raising, and constant surveys were all on the table as tools to monitor employee sentiment.

Merrell’s presentation was just one in a two-day April 2022 conference that showcased the changing face of union-busting. Over a dozen other presenters who work in “union avoidance” gave talks during the virtual conference, sponsored by a group called CUE, on the latest trends in organizing, strike-breaking, and how to get ahead of changes in the law and political environment that could provide an edge to the labor movement. They included representatives from Kellogg’s, John Deere, Five Below, Lowe’s, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as well as a consultant hired by Amazon to oppose the warehouse worker union drives.

In the new environment, businesses facing worker uprisings are attempting to co-opt the language of social justice movements and embrace trends around self-growth and positive lifestyles to counter demands for unionization — a far cry from the old days of union prevention, a history that featured employers routinely threatening workers with private guards and violent clashes on the picket lines.

Leny Riebli, the vice president of human resources at Ross Stores, noted that given “what’s happening at Amazon and Starbucks,” her company had retooled its training to remain union-free. “We really had to redouble our efforts,” said Riebli. The company, said Riebli, closely monitors employee concerns that might spill over into support for unionization, so managers have been trained not only to spot potential “card check” organizing, but also listen for issues around safety, scheduling, and respect in the workplace.

“This relates to our diversity, equality and inclusion efforts,” explained Riebli, noting that the company sought managers who can be approachable to an array of worker issues.

Virtually none of the presenters identified explicitly as anti-union agents. Many described themselves or had professional biographies emphasizing their role as DEI experts, developers of “human capital,” and champions of workplace “belonging.” The industry has undergone somewhat of a rebranding, with many labor relations executives now identifying as “people experts” and diversity executives.

Even the host of the conference was camouflaged. The conference was organized by a group called CUE, which bills itself publicly as simply “a community for positive employee relations.” But that sunny image belies its true agenda: Founded in 1977 by the National Association of Manufacturers, as part of a sweeping crusade against organized labor, CUE is formally known as the “Council for a Union-Free Environment.” The organization provides research and training for the union suppression tactics, an estimated $340-million-per-year cottage industry of lawyers and consultants who specialize in assisting corporations with mitigating the threat of organized labor.

But there was no doubt that they understood how controversial their work can be. Ken Hurley, the vice president of Kellogg’s Co. for human resources and labor relations who presided over the effort to replace striking cereal workers, said he did not want participants to share his slide deck, for fear of leaks. And, after I published his remarks in which he described the union as “behaving more like terrorists than partners,” Hurley left Kellogg’s.

So-called ‘union avoidance’ consultants, also known as persuaders, work in a specialty profession that has been honed in recent decades. They are hired by corporations to train managers to spot union sympathies or to lead “captive audience” lectures — where attendance is mandatory — to pressure workers against voting for a union. These seminars can involve threats of retaliation, warnings that a union will force the company to close down, and claims that union dues will negate any benefit of a union contract. But the most important aspect of these meetings, experts say, can be collecting information to identify union supporters within a workplace so that they may be sidelined or fired before they gain influence with their co-workers.

The persuader industry has evolved to match the cultural trends among many workers. Jason Greer, who has led a diversity seminar at CUE in the past, embodies the evolution of the anti-union industry to match cultural trends among workers.

Greer, founder of the eponymous business Greer Consulting, is a persuader who helps companies fend off unionization drives, but you wouldn’t necessarily know it from talking to him.

“I do leadership coaching. I do diversity management training,” said Greer. “I’m known as the employee whisperer within my industry.” Major corporations are at once under pressure to appear sensitive to employees from marginalized groups and eager to blunt unionization efforts that would hurt their bottom line.

Thanks to consultants like Greer and others, these companies can sometimes kill two birds with one stone by wrapping anti-union talking points in a patina of racial sensitivity and commitment to diversity; Greer’s company advertises “labor relations” alongside “diversity training.”

In 2021 and 2022, Greer and his team have worked for B&H Photo, Keurig Dr Pepper, Studio in a School, and Blues City Brewery, and are paid as much as $2,000 per day to pressure workers not to join a labor union. B&H, notably, settled a federal racial discrimination lawsuit in 2017, and agreed to paying $3.2 million in back pay to over 1,300 individuals.

Employees, said Greer, fundamentally want respect and dignity on the job. Listening to worker demands, he explained, can prevent workers from drifting toward a third party, like a labor union. In some cases, that means providing seminars on leadership and understanding, or creating employee resource groups that provide special recognition to marginalized communities.

“People will work for money, but they will die for respect and die for recognition,” continued Greer. “If your employees are talking about wanting diversity and inclusion practices, don’t shut your eyes and, you know, shut your ears to that.”

The Labor Pros, a Florida-based firm that runs anti-union campaigns across the country, prominently presents a diverse team that conducts diversity training adjacent to interventions to remove the “union threat.” Nekeya Nunn, the chief executive officer of the Labor Pros, has adopted terminology from left-wing, activist spaces.

“I’m a proponent of listening, heart-led leaders, people who make decisions on how they would want somebody else to treat them,” said Nunn, in an interview. Nunn echoed Merrell’s argument, that employees care as much about dignity as wages and benefits.

“People unionize against bad managers, not bad companies,” she said. Programs that help people from different demographics and different nationalities integrate are simply part of a positive workplace culture, she continued.

“People work for companies that make them feel valued and included, so if that’s a tactic to not have a union, then so be it.” A contract I obtained shows that the Labor Pros provided a menu of options to Hilton Hotels in 2021 on options for persuading workers against joining a union.

The firm offered up to four consultants to speak to 80 employees for four days at a cost of $43,120, plus per diem. Danine Clay and Byron Clay of the firm Diverse Workforce Consultants are among the union avoidance professionals who have worked on recent high-profile campaigns to persuade workers against joining a union at Hershey’s and at Mission Hospital in North Carolina, according to disclosures. Their firm touts its “ability to empower management with employee selection, retention, diversity training and skills, and union avoidance tools and strategies are unmatched.”

Danine Clay was listed on disclosure forms as a consultant for Amazon engaged in persuading warehouse workers not to join a union. Over the phone, she said the disclosure form was incorrect but declined to comment further.

“There’s kind of a jiujitsu, to get employees thinking about racial justice issues, at least superficially, as a way to deflect labor and collective bargaining,” said Michael C. Duff, a law professor at the University of Wyoming. Duff attended law school after union organizing cost him his job working for an airline.

He understands why the diversity, equity, and inclusion field has become an asset for companies hoping to skirt unionization — particularly at a time when employee interest in both is rising rapidly. “Labor consultant folks converting into DEI folks,” added Duff.

“It’s really a wonderful kind of psyops, right, because these people are supposed to be close to employees.”

The approach is on display in some of the most high-profile union battles going on now. One example is Starbucks, which has faced growing unionization pressure as over 100 stores have voted to join a union. The company, in response, launched an anti-union website.

Among the reasons not to join a union? The Starbucks website says the firm already provides an “inclusive” environment and maintains a strong commitment to diverse hiring practices. So far, the approach has mostly backfired for the company.

“Starbucks claims to be a progressive company, and they’re using this social justice language, but people see past that,” said Joseph Thompson, a student barista who organized two Starbucks locations in Santa Cruz, California.

Thompson has corresponded with other baristas seeking to form unions around the country as far away as Idaho. Many have voiced frustration at the company’s union-busting tactics in contrast to its purported values, he said. Despite the rosy image of inclusiveness and activism touted in Starbucks press releases, the company has been accused of over 200 violations of federal labor laws, and over 20 baristas say they have been illegally fired in retaliation for attempting to form a union.

“It’s a brutal anti-union campaign, but also one that tries to appeal to the sort of progressive sensibilities of the kinds of people who work at Starbucks,” said John Logan, professor and director of labor and employment studies at San Francisco State University.

Effective or not, it’s becoming a standard playbook. Princeton University, in a page outlining “alternatives to unionizing” for graduate students, notes that the school already welcomes input on all areas of university life, such as professional development and diversity and inclusion. Princeton University has so far prevailed: The graduate student union has not held a unionization vote, there is no recognition to bargain with the graduate students, and they do not have a contract.

When workers at vegan food company No Evil Foods, which makes imitation meat products sold at Whole Foods and other upscale groceries, held captive audience anti-union seminars, the company warned workers about the “old white guys” in union leadership and compared union dues to taxpayers funding President Donald Trump’s golf junkets.

In other records leaked out of the No Evil Foods seminars, workers were warned that unions were hotbeds of sexism and sexual harassment, and did not share the vegan food manufacturer’s progressive values. The union drive at the firm ultimately failed.

Critics say that many corporations merely channel concerns around racial injustice into a reputation-laundering strategy, one that can serve the bottom line of keeping workers in check.

“For lack of a better word, we’re in this woke moment,” said Wes McEnany, a former organizer with CODE-CWA, a project of the Communication Workers of America to unionize the tech industry. “Corporations are trying to hijack the language of liberation as a way to prevent workers from having a voice at the table and a say in their jobs.”

McEnany noted that when he worked on a campaign to organize workers at Mapbox, a technology firm that provides custom online maps, management responded with accusations of bigotry, claiming efforts to prevent the offshoring of jobs reeked of “xenophobia.”

Medium, the publishing website launched by Twitter co-founder Ev Williams, countered a union organizing drive with a promise to increase spending on diversity and inclusion efforts, according to McEnany. After the union vote failed by one vote, Medium liquidated its primary editorial division.

Such left-leaning language and promises were on display in the recent organizing drive at REI, the outdoor clothing and equipment retailer. The company in 2022 posted an internal podcast featuring its chief executive, Eric Artz, and the chief diversity and social impact officer, Wilma Wallace, discussing why “REI doesn’t think unionization is the right thing for the co-op or for the employees.”

Much of the conversation centered on claims that a union would hamper the company’s ability to “listen and communicate directly with our employees” and reduce the company’s ability to be flexible in resolving workplace concerns. Such arguments are routine in most organizations facing a union vote. But what stood out was the language of social justice that filled the discussion.

Wallace began the talk by stating her preferred pronouns and a land acknowledgement to honor the “traditional lands of the Ohlone people.” Artz, while arguing against unionization, peppered his remarks with comments about how REI intends to maintain its focus on “inclusion” and “racial equity.”