'Lazy,' 'Money-Oriented,' 'Single Mother': How Union-Busting Firms Compile Dossiers on Employees

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdqaz/lazy-money-oriented-single-mother-
how-union-busting-firms-compile-dossiers-on-employees

Leaked files from IRI Consultants, a top union avoidance firm hired by 
Google, show how it collects data on workers' personality, motivations, 
and work ethic to bust unions.

A leaked internal "polling" spreadsheet from one of the country's top 
union avoidance firms offers an inside look into a highly secretive 
industry that specializes in helping employers derail union drives using 
sophisticated, tested, and, at times, legally questionable methods.

The spreadsheet was used by union avoidance firms that tried to thwart a 
union drive at two Seattle hospitals owned by Conifer Health Solutions in 
2019. One of the union avoidance firms involved in that campaign was IRI 
Consultants, which was retained by Google in 2019 amid a wave of 
unprecedented worker organizing at the company. On Monday, hundreds of 
Google workers revealed they formed a union with the Communications 
Workers of America. 

According to documents obtained by Motherboard, IRI union avoidance 
consultants regularly gathered information about 83 rank-and-file hospital 
employees' personality, temperament, motivations, ethnicity, family 
background, spouses' employment, finances, health issues, work ethic, job 
performance, disciplinary history, and involvement in union activity in 
the lead-up to a union election. Each employee was then given a rating for 
how likely the company believed they were to vote for the union. 

In the notes for one employee, IRI consultants wrote that they were 
"lazy," "money oriented," "aloof," "from Samoa," "tired of people on team 
and doesn't want to assist them," and told managers that "'the union is 
full of crap.'"

Notes described another employee as a "follower," "impressionable," "a 
single mother," adding that their "rent [had] increased" and they couldn't 
"afford [union] dues" and "will do whatever friends do." 

A source familiar with IRI's practices told Motherboard that collecting 
detailed personal information on each rank-and-file employee in order to 
assess their union sympathies is standard practice for how IRI Consultants 
and other union avoidance firms conduct work for all of their clients.

IRI Consultants did not respond to multiple requests for comment for this 
article. Consultants from at least one other union avoidance firm worked 
on the union drive. 

The new labor union at Google raises IRI's profile in what is expected to 
become a full-blown drive to organize and welcome its parent company 
Alphabet’s tens of thousands of workers into a union. Although IRI is 
highly secretive about its methods and clients, it also appears to work 
with major hospitals and healthcare companies, auto manufacturers, 
universities, charter schools, tribal associations, food manufacturers, 
and retailers in 49 states and boasts online that it has successfully 
convinced workers at a national healthcare company with 50,000 employees 
to avoid a union drive despite unions "devoting millions of dollars" to 
the campaign. 

The documents obtained by Motherboard offer a rare look into the 
strategies used by IRI and the union avoidance industry as a whole to 
defeat workers' efforts to organize for higher wages, benefits, and their 
improved safety and well-being at work. According to a 2019 report by the 
Economic Policy Institute, employers in the United States spend roughly 
$340 million on union avoidance consultants each year, who often report 
being paid in the neighborhood of $350 hourly rates or $2,500 a day for 
their work fending off unions. 

"As a consultant, you're trying to figure how many kids a worker has, if 
they have a boyfriend, girlfriend or both, if they're married, or have 
relatives in management at the company. You try to figure out things that 
will make them motivated to [vote no].”

A spokesperson for Google said that neither Google nor any consulting 
firms had ever collected personal data on its workforce, or ranked workers 
based on their likelihood to join unions. "We've engaged dozens of outside 
law and consulting firms to provide us with their advice on a wide range 
of topics,” a Google spokesperson said. “No-one at Google, nor any 
consultant or firm who we've ever engaged or worked with, has done what 
you've described."

In response, the Alphabet Workers Union, the new union representing Google 
workers told Motherboard, "Google claims to value privacy, then expends 
resources on consultants like IRI who are intent on collecting worker data 
in order to manipulate employees to work against their best interests. 
Instead of pouring resources into the very workers that drive the company, 
particularly those exploited by Alphabet’s two tiered employment system, 
Google is engaging with a company that violates the privacy of workers 
while pretending to welcome open discourse."

Union avoidance consultants, often hired as independent contractors which 
allows firms to circumvent federal reporting requirements, often work with 
multiple clients at once, sometimes parachuting into a worksite for just a 
few weeks or days to train managers and hold "educational" meetings with 
workers. 

Tracking the union avoidance firms behind anti-union campaigns is 
intentionally made difficult by firms that subcontract out work to other 
firms that hire independent contractors to avoid federal reporting 
requirements laid out by the Department of Labor and shield themselves 
from public scrutiny. For example, evidence reviewed by Motherboard 
reveals that IRI Consultants worked with an independent contractor working 
for a firm in Colleyville, Texas called Employer Labor Solutions on the 
Conifer Health Solutions union drive in 2019. Emails obtained by 
Motherboard confirm that consultants using IRI email addresses created 
anti-union materials and handouts for the same Conifer union drive. 

UFCW Local 21, the union representing healthcare workers, told Motherboard 
that they were aware that Conifer had hired Employer Labor Solutions to 
fight the union drive, thanks for federal reports to the Department of 
Labor, but the union had not known of IRI’s involvement in the anti-union 
campaign.

According to the anti-union spreadsheet, detailed personal information 
collected on employees is used by consultants to periodically rate workers 
on a one-to-five scale based on their likelihood of voting "yes" in a 
union drive. The data is then compiled into charts and graphs that help 
companies assess the likelihood of workers voting to unionize and 
developing strategies for persuading employees who remain on the fence to 
vote "no."

In the documents, union avoidance consultants—known as "educators" and 
"persuaders" in the industry—also offered up suggestions for appealing to 
workers' motivations to flip those on the fence to "no" votes. For 
example, consultants suggested "educating" certain workers about "union 
dues" and others about "seniority." 

"Collecting this data is absolutely standard anti-union consultant 
playbook," said Celine McNicholas, labor legal counsel at the Economic 
Policy Institute. "There's an incredible amount of coercion to frustrate 
workers."

"As a consultant, you're trying to figure how many kids a worker has, if 
they have a boyfriend, girlfriend or both, if they're married, or have 
relatives in management at the company," a union avoidance consultant who 
did work for IRI Consultants and wished to remain anonymous because they 
feared negative repercussions in the industry, told Motherboard. "You try 
to figure out things that will make them motivated to [vote no]. Are they 
motivated by economics? Do they like their supervisor or do they hate 
their supervisor?"

While it is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 for 
companies and managers to spy on workers' labor organizing activity, 
create the impression of surveillance, or even ask employees about whether 
they support a union drive, union avoidance companies have developed 
methods and conversational tactics for gathering data and persuading 
workers to vote "no" that do not break labor laws. Often managers 
themselves who have direct access to and more leverage over their 
subordinates are trained by union avoidance firms to deploy these tactics. 

“You can judge who supports the union and who has been to a union meeting 
by reading people’s responses, body language, looking at who's nodding 
along. I can tell you who attended a union meeting based on the questions 
they ask, the verbiage they use."

"Consultants specialize in operating in the grey areas of the law," said 
John Logan, a professor at San Francisco State University who researches 
the union avoidance industry. 

"They’re not quite illegal but they’re sort of bending the law if they’re 
not breaking it," he continued. "You cannot interrogate people about their 
union sympathies. You can’t spy to figure out workers’ possible 
sympathies, you can’t threaten them. You can’t make promises."

"Managers are often deployed as part of a coordinated campaign effort 
across a workplace," McNicholas, the union avoidance expert at the 
Economic Policy Institute told Motherboard.

In the spreadsheet, IRI Consultants recorded their own observations as 
well those of managers about whether employees were respected by their 
coworkers, and tracked their comments, composure, and participation during 
so-called captive audience meetings—mandatory meetings held on-the-clock 
by management to persuade workers not to vote "yes" in a union drive, as 
well as one-on-one meetings with managers. 

"When union avoidance consultants hold meetings with workers, you're not 
holding a meeting but you're trying to do an assessment. You can judge who 
supports the union and who has been to a union meeting by reading people’s 
responses, body language, looking at who's nodding along. I can tell you 
who attended a union meeting based on the questions they ask, the verbiage 
they use," the union avoidance consultant who did work for IRI Consultants 
said. "Then you go and note that information in their file." 

Other characteristics consultants used to describe Conifer employees were 
"stone-faced," "angry about everything," "dingy but good at her job," 
"very full of herself," "strong personality so most people stay away from 
her," and "fabulous."

"Should have been fired but saved him," the comments on another worker 
read. "Good worker but he thinks he is better than he is."

According to the spreadsheet, the rating system used by consultants is 
used to predict the outcome of union elections. A worker who received a 
"one" rating has been identified by consultants as the most "pro-union." 
This type of worker is defined as an "internal organizer actively 
recruiting union supporters, signed petition, pictured in flyer, 
participated in picketing or other union actions, hosting meetings." 
Meanwhile, a worker who receives a five rating has been identified as the 
most "pro-company." IRI defines this type of worker as "actively working 
against the union, vocal in public about not supporting the union and has 
a reason for why, validated by another source."


Based on the rating system, IRI's internal polling predicted that 58 
percent of the Conifer hospital employees eligible to vote in the 2019 
union election were "pro-union," 42 percent were "pro-hospital," and no 
workers remained unassessed by the consultants. 

On July 29, 2019, IRI's assessment proved correct. The workers 
overwhelmingly voted to join UFCW Local 21. As UFCW Local 21 notes on 
Facebook, the employer, Conifer Health Solutions "threw everything they 
had at this group of 80 workers, flying in top union busters from Los 
Angeles and New York."

"It’s horrifying that Conifer has engaged in these creepy practices," said 
Matt Loveday, campaign director at UFCW Local 21. "This is the employment 
future we’re headed toward: your whole life is just data for your employer 
to mine and exploit.”

Although the documents obtained by Motherboard were used to assess a joint 
union drive at two hospitals in the Seattle suburbs, St. Joseph Medical 
Center and St. Elizabeth Hospital, both owned by Conifer Health Solutions, 
in 2019, the union avoidance consultant familiar with IRI Consultants' 
work told Motherboard that conducting internal "polling" of a workplace 
and collecting information on employees is a standard practice for IRI 
Consultants and other union avoidance firms in the industry. 

"Most union avoidance firms use their access to employees to create an 
internal poll," the union avoidance consultant who worked for IRI said. 
"IRI is very good at charting, looking for clusters of employees, for 
example, they'll note that a small group of Haitians are pro-company, 
while the Cubans are pro-union. You definitely utilize big data because it 
helps make decisions."

Collecting data on workers, their shifts, and union sympathies, 
identifying leaders, and mapping out workplace relationships at a given 
worksite is also a common tactic of union organizers trying to win union 
campaigns.

"There's all sorts of ways of collecting data on your workforce," said 
Logan, the union avoidance expert at San Francisco State University. 
"Beginning in the 1970s, we started to see fly-by-night union avoidance 
consultants using behavior techniques crafted by industrial psychologists 
to persuade workers not to support a union. Since then, they've become 
much more sophisticated in terms of data analytics and the way they convey 
the anti union message."

Collecting data on workers, their shifts, and union sympathies, 
identifying leaders, and mapping out workplace relationships at a given 
worksite is also a common tactic of union organizers trying to win union 
campaigns. But employers have the advantage of having direct access to 
employees and information about their workforce, particularly the size and 
layout of their workforce. Union organizers, though, say that while 
companies often engage in invasive or illegal activities to access 
information about employees and their sentiments toward unions, workers 
collaborate to gather this information to win union elections.

"We should draw a really clear line between how union busters surveil 
workers, versus how workers offer up their own connections via wall place 
charting [an exercise unions use to identify social and communication 
networks within a workplace and track progress toward winning a union 
drive] in an effort to win [union elections]," Jane McAlevey, a union 
organizer and the author of No Shortcuts: Organizing for Power in the New 
Gilded Age, told Motherboard. In 2016, when Einstein Medical Center in 
Philadelphia spent millions of dollars on IRI Consultants to fight a union 
drive, McAlevey helped organize workers to successfully win their union 
election and bargain a contract.

The website for IRI Consultants offers little information about IRI's high 
profile clients, beyond saying the firm has been hired by universities, 
renewable energy companies, auto-makers,"the nation's largest food 
manufacturers," and "several top ten worldwide retailers." It has been 
reported, though, that IRI Consultants has been brought in to fight off 
union drives at Sanford University's ValleyCare Hospital, Huntington 
Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, California, Einstein Medical Center in 
Philadelphia, and the Los Angeles Film School. 

Notably, in 2019, the New York Times reported that Google retained IRI 
Consultants to advise management on how to handle a wave of internal 
worker dissent. At the time, workers had discovered internal company 
calendars showing meetings between IRI and Google. In December, the 
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) charged Google with illegally 
firing, spying on, interrogating employees active in labor organizing in 
the company in 2019.

While Motherboard has not obtained evidence that IRI collected detailed 
data and information about Google employees that violated federal labor 
law, and Google has denied collecting this information—experts say union 
avoidance consultants are often hired to simply stamp out any sort of 
collective action led by workers, even if there isn't an active union 
drive. 

"It looks like IRI had previously taken a hands off approach at Google, 
mostly helping craft policy changes,” said Laurence Berland, one of the 
fired Google engineer activists that the NLRB charged Google with 
wrongfully terminating. “Now that [their union] is public, I expect IRI 
will be more active."

Do you have a tip to share with us about the union avoidance industry? 
We’d love to hear from you. You can reach out to the reporter Lauren Kaori 
Gurley on Signal at 201-897-2109 or via email [email protected].

"Union avoidance firms like IRI are useful in identifying supporters and 
opponents of any sort of a collective action by employees such as what's 
happening at Google," said Gordon Lafer, an expert on the union avoidance 
industry at the University of Oregon. 

"They advise employers on splitting up core groups of people physically or 
by assignment, firing people, having managers intimidate workers," he 
continued. "In the case of Google, it'd make sense they'd use a firm like 
this to stop employee organizing."


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