Union Avoidance around the World

By International Centre for Trade Union Rights (ICTUR)

Union avoidance consultants are seeking to export their services. The US has led the way in its opposition to unionisation and in the development of the aggressive and ruthless tactics for ensuring non-union workplaces.

The results have been startling. It is estimated that 40 million American workers would like union help but are not able to join.

The campaigns against unions, at a time when rates are lower than ever and real wages are still dropping, has shifted into new terrain recently with television and newspaper advertising campaigns from a "Center For Union Facts" based in Washington and funded by large corporations attacking the entire labour movement.

The current issue of International Union Rights has 4 articles looking at campaigns in the US, Canada, Australia, Ireland and New Zealand respectively. Union avoidance consultants have been at the epicenter of a sustained attack in the US and are exporting their services. These countries seem to be catching up on the US in the anti-union stakes

Also an examination of the ideology driving union-busting and its impact on the public sector.

Authors include Stewart Acuff, John Logan, Sylvie Joly, Michelle O'Sullivan, Rae Cooper and George Lafferty

(International Union Rights vol. 13, issue 2, 2006)