Union-Busting Has Become A Multimillion-Dollar Industry

Union-busting is big business in the United States – and there’s a massive, $340 MILLION DOLLAR industry fighting against worker’s rights. Mike Papantonio & Farron Cousins discuss more.

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

Union busting is big, big business in the United States, and there's a massive $340 million industry fighting against workers' rights. This $340 million that they came up with is probably so understated because they, they can only follow so much about how, how all this takes place. But this fund of money, it's, what I find is interesting about this story, Farron, is they finally figured out that the union busting business, they're using the same old tactics, intimidation, firing, closing stores, personal attacks. But now they, they've come up with this, they call it the new language of union busting. They've hired these law firms, Jones Day, for example. You know, go, first of all, go read the book about Jones Day. It's an awful, awful law firm. But they, they represent corporate America. You know, if there's something ugly to be done, bring in Jones Day. Jones Day are the people that are kind of, they head this kind of thing up. But talk about that new language, the new way that we're going to talk about union busting.

Yeah. It's, you know, we're a family. They're trying to invoke, and Starbucks is one of the worst with this because Starbucks likes to pretend, we're this big progressive group. We love diversity, we love, you know, different people. So how could you say that we are treating you unfairly? We're family. We're brothers and sisters here. We love you and we take care of you. We're doing so many good things. So it's that almost guilting you into thinking, well, I can't, I can't go against my, my family here. And so they're psychologically manipulating these people. And they do, they hire these psychologists.

Yes.

To help them craft the language and learn how to manipulate these people. It's truly disturbing.

Yeah. One thing that you're, you're going at these, all these folks that are new immigrants from Guatemala and Mexico, you're putting their lives in danger because they're coming here to the United States to get a job. And you doing this, you're interfering with that, that new worker that's a part of the new workforce, you're interfering with their ability to send that money. It's stuff like that and it's coming out of people. I mean, you know what the embarrassing thing about this, the American Bar Association.

Yeah.

You know, of course I'm not a member. I don't, I don't have any allegiance to it. There's, people don't understand in the, in the lawyering business, there's the American Bar Association that is represented, they represent corporate America. All the silk stocking, you know, the, the Jones Day types. The, the big silk stocking law firms. And then on the other side, you have a group, the trial lawyers. It's a, it's an organization not, almost separate and apart, because it's almost like, that polarization of the two. But the American Bar Association is really big into this, aren't they?

Yeah, they are. They, they've actually teamed up with the US Chamber of Commerce. And their whole big thing is trying to undo, like one of the few good things Obama did, he put in new rules to kind of strengthen the National Labor Relations Board.

Right.

With overtime pay and things like that. So that a bar association along with the Chamber of Commerce have joined their evil forces together to fight all of these things. They're spending huge money on lobbying, you know, reaching out to these law firms that are already a part of the ABA and trying to get it all undone, just so corporations can squeeze more out of the workforce.

And the American Bar Association has more folks that are heading up that effort. It's embarrassing to me. I mean, you know, I have no kinship with the American Bar Association at all. So the, the point is this, it's that language that's so nauseating to me.