When workers dare to arrange their office, a $1.7 billion industry of consultants and legislation companies springs into motion. In response to the Labor Department, one thing like 75% of employers enlist union avoidance consultants to quash union efforts. A few of them, together with main corporations like Amazon and 3M, spend many millions of dollars on these consultants, who can even double as authorized illustration—whereas the legislation companies which have made a enterprise out of combating unions reportedly earn tens of millions of {dollars} for his or her work with employers.
However fairly often, the employees who tackle main firms have little perception into what they’re up in opposition to.
As of 2025, about 16.5 million staff are represented by a union—the best share in about 16 years, however a a lot smaller determine than the 50 million People who’ve expressed a want to affix a union. Labor advocates argue that’s partly as a result of corporations put a lot cash behind combating unions.
The nonprofit staff’ rights watchdog LaborLab launched instruments at the moment that would assist give staff larger visibility into how their employer could push again on their organizing efforts, and what they’re prepared to spend within the course of.
A search tool captures information from authorities filings to provide staff intel on 800 consultants and 1000’s of legislation companies and attorneys—together with who they characterize and what they cost, in addition to their observe file with earlier union campaigns. The union-busting cost calculator estimates various prices that corporations rack up by combating these efforts as a substitute of voluntarily recognizing the union, from authorized bills to misplaced productivity.
Whereas corporations are legally required to reveal what they spend on union avoidance, it’s not simple to look federal databases and observe down that data. There are additionally various loopholes that permit employers to underreport the full prices of union avoidance, thereby preserving sure bills off the books.
Consultants don’t, for instance, should report when they’re merely providing “recommendation”—a time period that isn’t clearly outlined—or not dealing instantly with staff. Even when corporations do have to supply this data underneath the legislation, they don’t essentially comply. According to LaborLab, over half of employers who employed a union avoidance advisor in 2024, and have been required to supply a monetary disclosure, failed to take action by June 2025, three months after the submitting deadline.
Various organizers have already turned to LaborLab’s instruments as they navigate their very own union campaigns. Sam Doyle, a nurse practitioner who works on the Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Heart in Seattle, has confronted vital resistance during the last 12 months and a half whereas attempting to arrange nurse practitioners and doctor assistants. However she was nonetheless shocked to understand how a lot cash could have gone into combating the union.
“I’m new to this world of organizing, and I don’t are typically a numbers and cents individual,” Doyle says. “However the calculator, to me, was horrifying. I couldn’t consider that our employer would spend practically half 1,000,000 {dollars} on combating us.”
Zachary Gelnaw-Rubin, a bartender who helped manage the New York cocktail bar Attaboy, discovered that getting background data on the legislation agency employed by his employer—together with the character of the agency’s earlier work for different corporations—was additionally an efficient method to provoke his colleagues.
“It was very useful in our ongoing efforts to construct and preserve inside cohesion,” Gelnaw-Rubin says. “For the agitation portion of our organizing, it was nice as a result of we have been capable of present it to different staff and be like, ‘Have a look at this shit.’” (Attaboy staff voted to unionize earlier this 12 months.)
LaborLab’s instruments additionally helped organizers on the Fred Hutchinson Most cancers Heart get extra data on a union avoidance advisor that had been introduced in to talk with workers. “For these of us who need to manage, we don’t go in with this technical data,” Doyle says. “The calculator and web site actually helped us perceive, ‘Oh wow, we’re a cog on this large wheel of union-busting.’”
In the event that they finally get to the bargaining stage, Doyle believes the calculator will show helpful when administration says there isn’t sufficient cash to spend on raises and different adjustments that will profit its workers.
“It will make me query the veracity of what they’re claiming—that ‘we don’t have the funds to do that,’” she says. “Now we have simply discovered that you simply do have cash to do issues, and it’s a matter of the place your values are and the way you need to deal with your workers.”
