Corporate compaigns in context

Corporate Campaigns in Context

C H A R L E S R. PERRY

University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA 19104

I. Introduction

Over the past decade the AFL-CIO, its departments, and its member unions have developed, refined, and used with increasing frequency "new" strategies to exert pressure on companies and managements whose policies, practices, or business strategies are of concern to union leaders and, at least in theory, to current or potential union members. Such new strategies involve the use of "nontraditional" or "alternative" tactics which are "variously known as comprehensive campaigns, corporate campaigns, or strategic approaches. ''1 While these terms have been used interchange- ably in the popular press and to a lesser extent by the labor movement, the term "corporate campaign" has been and continues to be the phrase of choice in the academic community beginning with Perry's study of Union Corporate Campaigns, 2 continuing with Jarley and Maranto's, "Union Corporate Campaigns: An Assess- ment, ''3 and, more recently, Northrup's work on "Union Corporate Campaigns and Inside Games as a Strike Form. ' '4

II. Historical Background

The origin of corporate campaigns generally is traced to "a corporate campaign designed to isolate [J.P.] Stevens from the rest of the business and financial community ''5 conducted by the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union during the mid-1970s. Perry, however, notes the possibility that the Stevens campaign may have had an antecedent in a "relatively successful boycott and public relations campaign" conducted by the same union against Farah Manufacturing in the early t970s. 6 The Bureau of National Affairs (BNA), while noting that the term "corporate campaign" was first used in the Stevens case, suggests that "the tactics used today have their antecedents even further back in the United Auto Workers' sit-down strike at General Motors in the 1930s. ''7

The strategy and tactics of the Stevens campaign were formally embraced by the AFL-CIO in 1985 when its Committee on the Evolution of Work urged the development of "research and other capabilities needed to mount an effective corporate campaign "'8 The recognition of research as a central element in a corporate campaign was not entirely new. The Industrial Union Department of the AFL-CIO had recognized the importance of research and built a capability to conduct it in conjunc- tion with its coalition bargaining initiatives of the late 1960s and 1970s. The Food

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330 JOURNAL OF LABOR RESEARCH

and Beverage Trades Department (now the Food and Allied Service Trades Depart- ment) did the same by the end of the 1970s when it first published its Manual of Corporate Investigation: Building Profiles of Public and Private Companies. 9

The matter of other capabilities also was addressed in 1985 when the Industrial Union Department published Developing New Tactics: Winning with Coordinated Corporate Campaigns. 1° In 1986, the Industrial Union Department published The Inside Game: Winning with Workplace Strategies, 11 elaborating on the last and least developed of the new tactics, "in-plant tactics," cited in its earlier guide. Individual member unions have developed their own guides to campaign tactics as exemplified by the Service Employees International Union's Contract Campaign Manual. 12 Labor Notes, which is hardly part of the labor establishment, also has gotten into the campaign guide business in its publication of A Troublemaker's Handbook: How to Fight Back where You Work - - And Win. 13

Corporate campaigns have been the subject of considerable attention, if not fasci- nation, by the popular, business, and labor press, but have not been similarly favored in the academic literature. An intensive study of the J.P. Stevens campaign was published in the Journal of Labor Research in 1982,14 and a similar study of the ongoing campaign against Food Lion appeared recently in the Labor Law Journal. 15 Perry's intensive study of the conduct and outcomes of ten campaigns, excluding the Stevens and Food Lion campaigns, launched between 1978 and 1985 was published in 1987.16 It was followed by Jarley and Maranto's extensive study of 28 campaigns, including both Stevens and Food Lion, published in the Industrial and Labor Rela- tions Review in 1990.17 Finally, there is Northrup's study focused primarily on the inside game, which received little attention in the other studies, published in the Employee Relations Law Journal in 1994.18

III. The Trend in Corporate Campaigns

There appears to be a widely held view that the trend in corporate campaign activity has been and will continue to be upward. That view was clearly expressed in a BNA special report in October 1994 entitled "Labor Unions Turn More Often to Strategies Other than Strikes. ''19 Unfortunately, there is little objective evidence to either support or refute this view of the trend in corporate campaign activity. Independent of the question of trend, there is good subjective evidence that the corporate campaign, by whatever name it is called, has become an important part of the union movement's arsenal of weapons. That fact raises the question, "Why?" The answer to that question lies in the changes in the environment in which unions operate in the U.S. which have taken place not only recently but over the past 30-some years and in the potential economic and legal advantages that campaign tactics afford to unions for coping with their changed environment.

CHARLES R. PERRY 331

IV. The Institutional Environment

Three theoretically distinct but operationally interrelated changes in the U.S. industrial relations system have been cited as giving rise to the need for new tactics. The first is the growing resistance of management to unions in organizing campaigns at the bargaining table and on the picket line. The second is (or was) an increasingly unfriendly regulatory environment that failed to adequately restrain management resistance while maintaining or expanding restraints on the traditional tactics of unions. The third is the growing vulnerability of unions to corporate business strategy and investment decisions in an increasingly competitive and capital-mobile world.

The IUD guide to Winning with Coordinated Corporate Campaigns clearly suggests that such campaigns are a response to management resistance to traditional union tactics and goals. Specifically, it indicates three situations in which corporate campaigns may be useful: (1) operating during strikes; (2) resistance in organizing campaigns and/or refusal to bargain in good faith over a first contract; and (3) demands for concessions with or without threats to move or close operations. 20 The typology developed by Jarley and Maranto paralleled the IUD's list in categorizing campaigns as: (1) organizing; (2) strike complement; and (3) strike substitute. 21 The goals of organizing campaigns include neutrality pledges, recognition based on card checks or other non-NLRB election mechanisms, accretion agreements, and expedit- ing conclusion of initial contracts after union recognition. Strike substitute campaigns may be or become the most interesting because they can involve both inside and outside games as was the case at Caterpillar after the UAW "recessed" its initial strike there in the face of the threat of the hiring of permanent replacements. Bridge- stone/Firestone, which was subjected to an external campaign shortly after the United Rubber Workers ended its strike there, may face the same combination when its has recalled enough strikers to replace their permanent replacements.

The development of corporate campaigns in the mid-1980s as a response to growing management resistance should be viewed as a belated reaction to a trend that had been going on for 25 years when that trend reached a critical mass. There is suggestive evidence in the record of plant operation during strikes that suggests that the entente cordiale in union-management relations developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s became strained with the 1958 recession and was further weakened in the recessions of the early 1970s and early 1980s. 22 The early 1980s also produced a dramatic increase in the use of permanent as opposed to temporary replacements in order to operate during strikes.

There has been much emotional debate regarding the extent to which the growing willingness of management to operate during strikes and other forms of resistance to unions are ideologically or economically motivated. There is no definitive resolution to that debate, but it is clear that there is a correlation between managerial resistance and short-run and long-run changes in the stringency of competitive market constraints on management. Those changes both reflect and highlight the growing


inability of the American union movement to take (and keep) labor out of competition through the traditional means of organizing to the extent of the market and bargaining for standardized wages. The growing need for U.S. companies to deal with foreign competition in both domestic and international markets is an important part of the union problem, but so is the domestic nonunion competition that has come to characterize such traditional union strongholds as coal mining, meat packing, trucking, and autos.

A second environmental change often cited as giving rise to a need for new tactics is the hostile regulatory climate created by the Reagan National Labor Rela- tions Board (NLRB) in the early 1980s - - an NLRB characterized as undertaking "aggressive attempts to shift the balance of power under the NLRA. ''23 Without bela- boring the "evils" of the Reagan Board, it is clear that the philosophic orientation of the Bush and particularly the Clinton Boards has been less hostile and more supportive of unions as evidenced in the case of the Bush Board by its decisions in Dubuque Packing 24 and Electromation 25 and in the case of the Clinton Board by its expanded use of 10J injunctions. The impact of such a liberalization of the regulatory environment on the need for and use of corporate campaigns is uncertain. Jarley and Maranto in their conclusions regarding prospects for the "frequency and success of future corporate campaigns" point out that, "although the need for corporate campaigns may be greater when unions are operating in a hostile regulatory environment, the prospects for campaign success are significantly improved when labor boards are supportive of unions. ''26

The regulatory environment in which unions operate goes well beyond the philosophical bent of the sitting NLRB. The procedural and remedial deficiencies of the NLRB from the union standpoint under the NLRA were the subject of proposed labor law reform 27 during the Carter Administration and the focus of review by the Commission on the Future of Worker-Management relations during the Clinton Administration. 28 Labor law reform did not pass the Senate in 1978 and the similar recommendations of the Commission are not likely to find favor in the current Republican Congress. The failure of the Senate to act on striker replacement legisla- tion in 1994 represented yet another setback for unions in their search for a more hospitable public policy environment for their traditional tactics.

There are a number of other public policies that may have given impetus to the search for new tactics and may encourage their use in the future. The deregulation of transportation has destabilized the industrial relations systems in trucking and, to a lesser extent, airlines by introducing new patterns of competition and new challenges to unions that had been largely successful in taking labor out of competition. The impact of bankruptcy law on the integrity of union contracts has had a similarly destabilizing impact in the meatpacking industry by undermining wage patterns. The Supreme Court did unions a favor with respect to secondary activities which are an important part of corporate campaigns in its Debartolo decision, 29 but did the oppo- site with respect to union access to private property in organizing campaigns in its


Lechmere decision, 3° although that decision may also encourage use of alternative tactics. The Clinton Administration may also have complicated the union movement's life with its successful support of NAFTA, but may have simplified it with its Executive Order permitting the sanctioning of government contractors that hire permanent replacements for strikers. 31

The third variable encouraging the use of corporate campaigns is the growing vulnerability of unions to business strategy decisions made far from the bargaining table. In fact that vulnerability is not new or growing, but union awareness of and sensitivity to it is. The result has been recognition of the necessity of going beyond the traditional scope of bargaining goals if unions are to preserve their power and protect their members' interests in the long run. This institutional imperative found at least indirect expression in the "partnership" concept which was a central element in the recent White Paper on high performance work systems issued by the AFL-CIO Committee on the Evolution of Work. 32 Although that report treated partnerships as a willing quid pro quo for union acceptance of and participation in new work arrange- ments, it is clearly possible that a corporate campaign or threat thereof could be used to encourage a partnership on a reluctant partner. This possibility is consistent with the view of corporate campaigns as union attempts to move labor disputes beyond traditional collective bargaining to the firm's strategic decision-making level in an effort to produce a long-term shift in business strategy favorable to union interests put forth by Kochan, Katz, and McKersie. 33 Perry tentatively recognized a similar "possibility that corporate campaigns can and will be used to gain a measure of con- trol by unions over management decisions not currently subject to the obligation to bargain in good faith, except as to their effects. ''34

One obvious focus of union interest in business strategy is on decisions regarding capital investment and disinvestment, particularly since, in a less than totally unionized world, such decisions may reflect, by accident or design, a pattern of investment away from unionism. Disinvestment decisions have been of particular interest in the recent era of downsizing and there have been a number of reported local union-community coalitions using corporate campaign tactics in efforts to prevent plant closings, including a 3M plant in New Jersey and GM plants in California and Michigan. A similar coalition reportedly emerged in the Twin Cities in an effort to induce Unisys to retool a closed defense products plant to manufacture a line of products totally new and unfamiliar to the company. Decisions regarding consolida- tion of overlapping operations, and sale of lines of business and their inverse - - investment in new facilities and acquisition of new lines of business - - are of no less potential significance to the long-run interests of incumbent unions, particularly where they suggest business strategies that entail an industrial or geographical shift away from the organizational reach of those unions.

A second possible focus of union interest in business strategy is that not of their bargaining partners but of their competitors, particularly if they are nonunion. This possibility was foreseen by Wollett writing on the subject of picketing and boycotts


some 40 years ago when he noted "unions, particularly in industries characterized by intense competition, a multiplicity of small employment units, and high labor cost, understood that they could neither hold nor improve the gains made for their members . . . against the market competition of unorganized employers enjoying the advantage of lower labor costs. It was necessary either to keep nonunion products [employers] out of the market or to organize all of the jobs in the competitive area. ''35 One industry that approximates such conditions is the supermarket industry. A union official in that industry has noted that "a consumer boycott can be a powerful part of a pressure campaign . . . . In retail food, with its minuscule profit margins and its need for high volume and repeat business, the customer is worshipped. If a supermarket loses 10% of its customers, its profitability is probably eliminated. Any more than that over a protracted period and it's out of business. ''36 Such boycotts, or as the union official termed them "reverse marketing" efforts, were waged against Auchon in Chicago and Carrefour in Philadelphia and are ongoing against Food Lion region- ally and Wal-Mart nationally.

V. The Institutional Advantage

Above and beyond the underlying environmental forces that have led unions to search for new tactics are a number of more immediate factors that make corporate campaigns an institutionally attractive alternative to traditional tactics. The BNA's special report cited earlier suggested three proximate causes for the popularity of corporate campaigns: (1) union leaders recognize that the strike is not as effective as it once was; (2) union leaders believe that corporate campaigns are effective; and (3) union leaders perceive corporate campaigns to be cost effective. 37

There is a clear negative correlation between the level of union strike activity and union interest in alternative tactics over the past 10-15 years. Over that period there was a dramatic and, until very recently, consistent downward trend in the number of major work stoppages (those involving 1,000 or more employees) from 187 in 1980 to 44 in 1990 and 45 in 1994. 38 The proximate cause of that decline is generally thought to be the growing willingness and ability of employers to credibly threaten to and, if necessary, actually exercise their legal fight to operate during a strike by hiring permanent replacements. To the extent that this "new" management tactic has, as union leaders claim, rendered the right to strike an "empty" right, it creates a clear institutional imperative to find a countervailing power asset - - a strike substitute or strike supplement. Corporate campaigns are one option in this regard. The early record of the effectiveness of corporate campaigns as strike substitutes or supplements was not particularly good from the union standpoint, which may account for the growing use of in-plant tactics as a strike substitute, but not to the exclusion of other campaign tactics as a supplement to in-plant action. Where a strike or lockout bars access to the in-plant action option, corporate campaigns continue to be a viable option.

The union view that corporate campaigns "work" is not strongly supported by the early academic research on the outcome of campaigns. Jarley and Maranto found


that "in general, few corporate campaigns seem to have produced observable gains" although they did report "procedural gains (such as employer neutrality pledges, extension of bargaining terms to new units, and establishment of joint labor-management committees)" in some organizing situations. 39 Their findings parallelled those of Perry who concluded that the successes of campaigns were often more symbolic than substantive, which was also the conclusion of Mullins and Luebke in their study of the outcome of the original Stevens campaign.

The fact that academics and unionists disagree on the effectiveness of corporate campaigns may be a function of time. The academic studies are "old" and cannot reflect whatever "new" sophistication unions bring to more recent campaigns as a result of added experience. More importantly, the disagreement may be a matter of definition of "success." While academics focus on substance, unionists may focus on process as is suggested by the following characterization of corporate campaigns: "a part of what a corporate campaign does is not only to organize our side, but to disorganize management . . . . [W]hen w e . . . disorganize management, we find that as this takes place, it has the reverse effect of organizing ourselves . . . . -40 Nowhere is this definitional difference more evident than in two movies made about two failed campaigns - - "We're Not Leaving" (Phelps-Dodge) 41 and "The American Dream" (Hormel). 42 To the academic, both campaigns might appear to be cases of escalating commitment to a failed cause. To the unionists involved, the campaigns were about maintaining dignity and building esprit de corps and solidarity in the face of hostile management and government (and, in the Hormel case, a hostile parent international union).

Perhaps the greatest institutional advantage of corporate campaigns is that they are cost effective - - "cheap" - - in terms of union resources. The most obvious case is that of a strike substitute campaign in which, "while there obviously are costs associated with the necessary research and public relations involved . . . . it is still less costly to the union than paying strike benefits. ''43 The recent experience of the Team- sters in their master freight contract strike and the Rubber Workers in their strike against Bridgestone/Firestone suggests such "savings" are not institutionally trivial. Even the UAW, which can take on Caterpillar with ease, seems to have become reluctant to take on GM on a company-wide basis after what its 1970 master contract strike there did to its strike fund and has chosen instead a strategy of local plant grievance strikes as permitted under its master contract. A more subtle, but no less important, "saving" associated with a strike substitute campaign is preservation of another type of union capital - - member loyalty and solidarity. The source of that saving lies in the fact that the union need not ask its members to risk loss of their jobs to permanent replacements by going on strike - - something even the UAW was reluctant to do when Caterpillar first threatened to hire permanent replacements for 16,000 striking UAW members in the spring of 1993.

Corporate campaigns may also have some institutional benefits in the context of collective bargaining both prior to and during a strike. Negotiations, particularly over


a first contract, are a time-consuming process marked by few milestones visible to those not directly involved. The resultant institutional problem is member impatience with the process and doubt about their representatives. A campaign which involves members in "away-from-the-table" activities designed to "support" their representatives at the table or to "force" management to the table may alleviate such problems simply by giving members something to do. In the words of one local union leader, "it's an opportunity to build membership participation in the local union - - through handbilling, rallies, picketing, telepicketing, letter writing, assisting with research, attending stockholder meetings, contacting politicians and community groups and other unions, and all the tasks that potentially need to be carried out, as part of a pressure campaign. It is also an effective way to educate the rank and file about the reality of the marketplace. ''44

Corporate campaigns in the organizing context also offer opportunities for substantial savings. Bottom-up organizing, when done right, is a time-consuming, labor intensive, and expensive process because the key to this process is extensive and repeated personal contact. Even such contact does not negate the persuasive power of employer free speech where the employer elects to and has time to exercise that power to oppose union organizing efforts. To the extent that a corporate campaign can be used to induce an employer to limit or abandon the exercise of the right of free speech, as was done in some campaigns, the union's required investment in organizing may be reduced or its rate of return on that investment increased. The ideal in this regard would be to replace bottom-up with top-down organizing based on employer recognition absent any showing of majority worker support for the union. Accretion agreements approach this ideal, in fact if not in theory. It is also possible that corporate campaigns could be used as a substitute for the organizational picketing once used effectively in top-down organizing by some unions prior to statutory and regulatory limitation of such picketing under the Landrum-Griffin Act amendments to the NLRA. Again in the words of one union leader speaking on the subject of "organize employers, not employees," "organizing is war. The objective is to convince employers to do something that they do not want to do. That means a fight. If you don't have a war mentality your chances of success are limited. Organiz- ing without the NLRB means putting enough pressure on employers, costing them enough time, energy and money, to either eliminate them or get them to surrender to the union." 45

VI. The Emerging Questions

Corporate campaigns are potentially powerful union weapons that may be used to support a broad range of union objectives. As such they inevitability raise a host of possible policy questions to which there are likely to be no consensus answers. One such question of great current interest is, "What effect will they have on the need to level the union-management playing field?" If one agrees with the proponents of the view that the playing field defined by the existing statutory/regulatory web of rules governing union-management relations is tilted toward management, then one must


ask whether the corporate campaign is a sufficient self-help device to level the playing field. If the answer to that question is "yes," then a laissez-faire approach to the nettlesome issue of a level playing field would seem appropriate; if "no," the issue remains a subject for policy attention and possible action. If one adheres to the view that the playing field is level as it is, then one must question whether corporate campaigns will so unlevel that field as to require policy changes to relevel it. If the answer to that question is "no," then the issue disappears; if "yes," the issue becomes a subject for policy attention and possible action.

The modern history of U.S. labor policy has featured a relatively laissez-faire approach to the efforts of unions and managements to accumulate power assets for use in their confrontations in whatever arena. There is much to be said for this approach in general with respect to playing fields and corporate campaigns. It is clear that unions are becoming more experienced and sophisticated in their use of corporate campaign tactics and that trend can be expected to continue. There is also evidence of growing management aggressiveness in coping with and countering corporate campaign tactics within the existing statutory/regulatory framework of union-management relations. As Jarley and Maranto observed, "employers have become more sophisticated in responding to corporate campaigns" and "some employers are taking the offensive" by filing law suits and unfair labor charges. Both such actions were taken by BASF in response to its campaign conducted by OCAW 46 and there are now two recently filed Racketeer Influenced Corrupt Organi- zation (RICO) suits against unions arising out of prolonged labor-management confrontations. 47 To date the courts and the NLRB have not responded positively to such management legal counteroffensives, but that cannot predict what they might do in the future.

The advent of a new weapon in labor's arsenal does, however, give rise to a nar- rower set of means/ends questions which are not unfamiliar in the field. Because corporate campaign tactics other than in-plant actions are inherently secondary in character - - i.e., involve third parties - - questions arise regarding the regulation of the relationships between unions and third parties and between third parties and target management. The web of statutory/regulatory rules that already governs such relationships is complex to say the least but may have to be made even more complex if it is decided that third parties' role as union allies or management adversaries in labor disputes should be controlled or limited. A central issue in these means questions may be First Amendment rights. Public relations are a central element in any corporate campaign, making the media an important potential ally of a union and adversary to a target management. As one union leader noted, "unless you have a lot of money, purchased TV time is out of the question. However, if you dig up some 'juicy' information on a targeted employer's business practices, a local [or national] TV investigative reporter may be interested in revealing the details to the viewing public." That allegedly was the case in ABC's "Prime Time Live" segment on Food Lion which aired in November 1992 and is now the subject of a RICO suit filed by Food Lion. 48 Similarly, because coalition forumtion is a central element in campaigns,


there is a question whether labor-community coalitions can lawfully engage in secondary activity which would be unlawful for a union to undertake acting alone. For example, community groups supporting the efforts of a UAW local union to keep GM's Van Nuys plant open were able to picket GM dealerships in the Los Angeles area to that end, while the UAW was barred from similar action at Caterpillar dealers during its confrontation with that company.

Secondary activity inevitably raises questions regarding adverse effects on "innocent" third parties, if such truly exist. In the context of corporate campaigns, three potential classes of innocent parties deserve attention: (1) employees; (2) other employers; and (3) consumers.

Employees. One basic principle of U.S. labor policy is that of free choice by employees with respect to union representation. Corporate campaigns conducted with the aim of "securing neutrality agreements or other procedural concessions from the employer, with the ultimate goal of obtaining representation status and a first contract ''49 may, in fact, compromise the right of free choice. That will be the case in any situation in which a corporate campaign successfully exerts pressure on an employer to recognize a union without regard to the wishes of the majority of the employees in question. In this regard, it is worth noting one of the advantages of campaigns cited by a union leader, "you don't need a majority or even 30% support among the employees. A few people inside and outside are all that's necessary to be successful. (Noted: fired employees are a great source of information. They're not afraid and they're motivated!). ''5° The policy issue in this case is analogous to that raised by organizational picketing and poses the same questions regarding the appropriate balance between employee free choice and union free speech. The use of a corporate campaign to exert pressure on an employer to expedite agreement on an initial contract where workers freely have chosen union representation raises no such policy issue.

A corollary to the principle of free choice is freedom from coercion. The opera- tional goal of any corporate campaign is to induce third parties to impose sanctions on the target company. In that regard, they are an extension, albeit a complex one, of a traditional union tactic - - picketing. Wollett, writing on the subject of picketing some 40 years ago, made the following observations which may be equally relevant to corporate campaigns today: "picketing, which threatens the job security and income of every employee in the picketed establishment, seems clearly to fall in that category [conduct which tends to or is reasonably calculated to coerce] . . . . [F]urthermore it makes little difference whether the objective of the picketing is to gain recognition, to organize the employees, or to inform members of the public that the employer is nonunion with the hope that they will take their business elsewhere. Regardless of its objective, picketing threatens the business and therefore tends to restrain or coerce the employees who work there. ''51

Employers. The theory of corporate campaigns is to exploit the points of vulnerability of the target company. In many cases, the most vulnerable points are the target


companies ' links to other companies/employers . The tactic of involving other employers in the campaign is particularly attractive where those other companies are more sensitive to union pressure than the target employer. In general, that is the case where the other employer is more sensitive to product market (boycott) pressure. A current example is union leafletting at Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken, and Taco Bell restaurants as part of an effort to induce their parent company, Pepsico, to cease purchasing syrup from A.E. Staley - - the target of a union campaign. That same campaign produced a call for a boycott of State Farm Insurance because it held investments in a company that, in turn, had an ownership interest in Staley.

The question raised by such involvement of other employers in a campaign is the extent to which such secondary activity is or should be subject to statutory and regulatory limits on secondary boycott activity. Without prejudging the results, the growing use by management of the tactic of operating during strikes and by labor of the tactic of extending campaigns to other employers may warrant a review of existing concepts of a neutral employer or how much protection such an employer should be given.

Consumers. The interests of consumers generally are best served by open and competitive markets to which we are committed as a matter of policy. Within that framework, as a matter of policy, the U.S. has accepted the anti-competitive effects of union success in taking labor out of competition by organizing to the extent of the market and standardizing wages. The elimination of nonunion labor through such labor market activities long has been and should be exempt from anti-trust policies. Where unions pursue the same goal through product market strategies designed to prevent the entry or force the exit of nonunion firms it is not clear the same is or should be the case. The fact that corporate campaigns can and have been used as part of such product market strategies suggests a need to look at ends as well as means in assessing the policy implications of corporate campaigns. This important "ends" issue will face the courts in a recently filed RICO suit by Food Lion against the United Food and Commercial Workers and the Food and Allied Service Trades Department charging that they engaged in a campaign to cause "massive injury" to the company and "ultimately to drive [it] out of business. ''52

VII. Conclusions

It has now been 10 years since the AFL-CIO's Committee on the Evolution of Work recommended the development of "research and other capabilities needed to mount an effective corporate campaign "'53 It is now clear that some departments of the AFL-CIO, most notably the Industrial Union Department and the Food and Allied Service Trades Department, have taken that recommendation seriously. So too have a number of AFL-CIO affiliated unions, most notably the Service Employees, Steel- workers, and Teamsters. As a result, the "corporate campaign" has become an integral part of labor's arsenal of weapons for use in confrontations with management in a substantial and growing segment of the U.S. economy.


After l0 years it is appropriate to review what we do and do not know about corporate campaigns. We do have a fairly good subjective concept of what a campaign is - - an "unconventional" war of attrition - - and a good understanding of the possible tactical elements of such a war. We do not have a rigorous definition of what does or does not constitute a true corporate campaign in terms of the n u m b e r or c o m -

bination of tactics needed to qualify a union 's efforts as a campaign. Jarley and Maranto chose to confine their study of corporate campaigns to "those instances in which a union labeled its actions a 'corporate campaign' during the course of the dis- pute. ''54 There is much to be said for the simplicity of that definition and its ease of application, but it does exclude cases in which a union, for whatever legal or strategic reasons, chooses to deny that it is involved in the conduct of a campaign and cases in which a union makes an ex poste claim to having waged a (usually successful) campaign. In this context, the "single tactic" union strategy such as the Coors boycott, Caterpillar inside game, Teamsters "shop-in," and UAW selective strikes at GM pose a particularly difficult definitional problem.

Absent a rigorous definition of what constitutes a corporate campaign, there is no reliable way to measure exactly the level and trend of campaign activity over the past 10 years to test the report that unions "are turning with increased regularity to alternative tactics. ''55 For the same reason, it is unlikely that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will soon provide the same data on campaigns as it does on strikes to con- firm the reported "more union reliance on these alternative pressure tactics [and] expectation of increased reliance on comprehensive campaigns. ''56 The fact that the goals of some campaigns are often as ill-defined as their structure makes it equally difficult to assess their effectiveness, but this is not a problem that is unique to campaigns as opposed to strikes.

Whatever the past, present, and prospective definitional and data deficiencies of our understanding of corporate campaign activity are, we do know what the wielders of that weapon have stated about it. In short, they have said: (1) it's fun - - builds member morale and commitment; (2) it's cheap - - both in terms of union resources and members ' risk of job loss; and (3) it's effective - - however "effective" is defined. Clearly, if union leaders and members believe this to be the case, there can be little doubt that "nontraditionar' tactics increasingly will be used to supplement or sup- plant "traditional" tactics in confrontations with "recalcitrant" managements over whatever "issues" unions have with such managements, ranging from worker representation to business strategy.

The emergence of a new weapon in the warfare between labor and management inevitably will raise a host of arms limitation questions. Should the inside game become an increasingly popular substitute for a strike, one of the possibly more vex- ing issues for the NLRB and the courts may be to develop standards of conduct for union member in-plant actions and management responses thereto. Such standards may have to deal with the definition of a "constructive strike" in which an employer legally could lock out employees and hire pe rmanen t r ep lacements 57 and of "improper individual behaviors" for which management could impose discipline


without violat ing the employee ' s sect ion 7 rights. 58 Should the outs ide game become a more popular substi tute for tradit ional un ion organiz ing and barga in ing tactics, it will raise a host of ethical, poli t ical , and pol icy issues for those third part ies who are, wi l l ingly or unwil l ingly, an integral part o f that game. There seem to be three emerg ing issues in this area: (1) to what extent does the First A m e n d m e n t shield the press and activist groups who, for whatever reasons, serve as un ion allies in a campaign from liabil i ty for damages suffered by the target employer ; (2) to what extent should g o v e r n m e n t regula tory agenc ies expend their resources on i n spec t ions or invest igat ions into the cause or course of a un ion corporate c am pa ign ; and (3) to what extent should limits be imposed on the ends, as opposed to the means, of corporate campaigns .

NOT E S

1Daily Labor Report, "Special Report: Labor Unions Turn More Often to Strategies Other Than Strikes," Bureau of National Affairs, Daily Labor Report, No. 204 (October 25, 1994), p. C-1.

2Charles R. Perry, Union Corporate Campaigns (Philadelphia, Penn.: Industrial Research Unit, The Whar- ton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1987.)

3paul Jarley and Cheryl L. Maranto, "Union Corporate Campaigns: An Assessment," Industrial and Labor Relations Review 43 (July 1990): 505-24.

4Herbert R. Northrup. "'Union Corporate Campaigns and Inside Games as a Strike Form," Employee Rela. tions Lab, Journal 19 (Spring 1994): 507-49.

5Terry W. Mullins and Paul Luebke, "Symbolic Victory and Political Reality in the Southern Textile Industry: The Meaning of the J.E Stevens Settlement for Southern Labor Relations," Journal of Labor Research 3 (Winter 1982), p. 82.

6perry, p. 1.

7BNA, p. C-1.

8Committee on the Evolution of Work, AFL-CIO, The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions (Washington, D.C.: AFL-CIO, 1985), p. 21.

9Food and Beverage Trades Department, AFL-CIO, Manual of Corporate Investigation (Washington, D.C.: AFL-CIO, 1978).

l°Industrial Union Department, AFL-CIO, Developing New Tactics: Winning with Coordinated Corporate Campaigns (Washington, D.C.: AFL-CIO, 1985).

llIndustrial Union Department, AFL-CIO, The Inside Game: Winning with Workplace Strategies (Wash- ington, D.C.: AFL-CIO, 1986).

12Service Employees International Union, Contract Campaign Manual (Washington D.C." SEIU, N.D.).

t3Dan La Botz, Troublemaker's Handbook. How to Fight Back Where You Work - - And Win (Detroit, Mich.: Labor Notes, 1991),

14Mullins and Luebke.

15Ronald J. Adams, Kenneth M. Jennings, and Dilip D. Kare, "'An Analysis of the UFCW's Corporate Campaign Against Food Lion," Labor Law Journal 45 (September 1994): 555-64.

16perry"


17jarley and Maranto.

18Northrop.

19BNA.

2°IUD, p. 1.

21Jarley and Maranto, pp. 509-10.

22Charles R. Perry, Andrew M. Kramer, and Thomas J. Schneider, Operating During Strikes (Philadel- phia, Penn.: Industrial Research Unit, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1982).

23jarley and Maranto, p. 521.

24Dubuque Packing Co., 303 NLRB 386 (1991).

25Electromation, Inc., 309 NLRB No. 163 (December 16, 1992).


27Edward B. Miller, An Administrative Appraisal of the NLRB (Philadelphia, Penn.: Industrial Research Unit, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, 1977), pp. 109-131.

28Commission on the Future of Worker-Management Relations, Fact-Finding Report (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1994), Chapter III.

29Edward J. DeBartolo Corp. v. Florida Gulf Coast Building and Construction Trades Council, U.S. Sup. Ct. No. 86--1461, Apr. 20, 1988.

3°Lechmere Inc. v. NLRB, US SupCt, No. 90-970, ll27/92.

3 IExecutive Order 12954.

32Committee on the Evolution of Work, AFL-CIO, "The New American Workplace: A Labor Perspective," (Washington, D.C.: AFL-CIO, 1994).

33Thomas A. Kochan, Harry C. Katz, and Robert B. McKersie, The Transportation of American Industrial Relations (New York: Basic Books, 1986) pp. 195-97.

34perry, p. 4.

35Donald H. Wollett, "The Weapons of Conflict: Picketing and Boycotts," in Joseph Shister, Benjamin Aaron and Clyde W. Summers (eds.), Public Policy and Collective Bargaining (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), p. 127.

36Joe Crump, "The Pressure Is On: Organizing Without the NLRB," Labor Research Review 18 (1991), p. 40.

37BNA, p. C-1.

38U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Compensation and Working Conditions, Vol. 47, No. 6 (June 1995), p. 51.

39jarley and Maranto, pp. 509-11.

4°Quoted in La Botz, p. 134.

41United Steelworkers of America, 1985.

42Prestige Films, 1992.

43BNA, Special Report, p. C-1.

44Crump, p. 82,

45Crump, pp. 35-36.

46Cited in Perry, pp. 131-34.


47Food Lion Inc. v. United Food and Commercial Workers, DC WNC, No, 5:95CV90-MCK, 7/25/95 and Bayou Steel Corp. v. United Steelworkers o f America, DC Del, 95~-96, 8/10/95.

48Food Lion, Inc. v. Capital Cities/ABC Inc., DC MNC, No. 6:92CV00592, 3/21/95.


5°Crump, p. 43.

51Wollett, p. 135.

52Daily Labor Report, "Food Lion Charges UFCW and Fast Conspired Damage, Defame, Retailer," Bureau of National Affairs, Daily Labor Report, No. 145 (July 28, 1995), p. A-9.

53Committee on the Evolution of Work, AFL-CIO, p. 21.


55Daily Labor Report, "Special Report . . . . "p. C-1.

56Ibid.

57Johns-Manville Products Corp. v. NLRB, 557 E2d 1126 (5th Cir. 1977).

58Caterpillar, Inc. N.L.R.B. Cases 33-CA-10453, 10554, 10461, May 18, 1995 (Rose, ALl).

Documents

Corporate compaigns in context