by James Parks, Feb 22, 2008

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber, right, and Stewart Acuff.

U.S. corporations are exporting more than consumer goods these days—they’re increasingly exporting their anti-workers practices as well. In countries such as the United Kingdom, which still enjoys a high rate of union membership, more and more employers there are beginning to use American union-busters. 

In one of the first concrete steps to continue the global solidarity of the historic Global Organizing Summit in December, the AFL-CIO and the British Trades Union Congress (TUC) are joining forces to try to eliminate the vicious intimidation practices employers use to prevent workers from seeking a better quality of life.  

AFL-CIO President John Sweeney and TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber signed a joint agreement Feb. 12 to work together to eliminate the intimidation of workers who want to improve the quality of their families’ lives by forming a union.  

The two union federations agreed to share information about the activity of union-busting firms in the United States and Britain, develop a shared database of union-busting activity and create “Busting the Union-Busters” training materials. Both will jointly lobby governments and relevant international bodies to restrict the activities of the union-busters. Click here to read the agreement. 

The TUC reports that one of America’s worst union-busting firms, the Burke Group, has opened offices in Britain and across Europe.     

According to Barber:  

The underhand tactics employed in the shadowy world of the union-busting consultant are proving increasingly attractive to a handful of employers in the U.K. This is a U.S. export that U.K. workplaces could well do without. Thankfully, the activities of the union-busters are still small scale here compared with the influence they exercise in the States, but it’s important that we do all we can to stop them dead in their tracks. That’s why our agreement to work together with the American unions to counter the propaganda put about by the union-busters is so important. 

Accompanying Sweeney in Britain, AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff met with British unionists around the nation and shared strategies and lessons learned from decades of American unions fighting union-busters. Acuff, who was part of the union movement’s 1996 fight to ensure family-supporting jobs during the Olympic games in Atlanta, shared those experiences with British workers seeking to form unions in anticipation of the 2012 London Olympics.  

Said Acuff:  

The U.S.’s $4 billion union-busting industry is by far our worst export. As the industry grows in the U.K., it makes sense that we band together to fight these highly paid, morally bankrupt agents of corporate greed. Our fundamental source of power is workers united and in motion. 

Acuff also attended the first-ever TUC strategic research training and held a series of meetings with organizers across the country. In numerous media interviews throughout the weeklong tour, Acuff made it clear the fate of workers in both countries are linked. He said passage of the Employee Free Choice Act in the United States would benefit workers not only here but also in other developed nations. 

In a report released to coincide with the signing of the agreement, London School of Economics scholar John Logan said the introduction of professional union-busters into Europe is a direct threat to the welfare of working people. Union Avoidance Consultants: A Threat to the Rights of British Workers points out that even though some 60 million Americans say they would like to join a union, employers intimidation and tactics used by union-busters have thwarted efforts to join unions.  

Logan writes:  

The United States has an entire industry dedicated exclusively to stopping workers from forming a union. Several of these U.S. consultants are now operating internationally and are seeking to expand their business in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. It is essential that union-busting is not allowed to flourish on this side of the Atlantic. 

The report includes examples of U.K. companies that have used union-busters, including Kettle Chips, where workers, many of whom are immigrants from Eastern Europe, Africa and Portugal, voted last October not to join the British union Unite. Kettle hired the Burke Group, which launched an anti-union campaign where supervisors stressed to individual workers the threat of strikes in the event of a union victory. Click here to read the full report. 

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