15 Jun Roxanne D. Brown: Greed Costs Them $1.7 Billion A Year.
It’s exciting to watch workers find their voices and exercise their collective power after voting to join the United Steelworkers (USW).
As they bargain for fair wages and working conditions, these new union members also burst with ideas for helping one another get better at their jobs.
They strategize on how to make their workplaces more efficient and competitive. Just as important, the solidarity that carried workers to union victory continues to build and find new outlets, such as collaboration on community service projects.
Given all of these benefits, it’s astonishing that employers squander about $1.7 billion every year to try to keep workers from unionizing.
They don’t do it alone.
The so-called union-avoidance industry exists solely to devour this mind-boggling waste. When a company wants to shell out big bucks to hold workers down, any number of sleazy consultants and law firms stand ready to hoover up the spoils and do the dirty work.
Sad, right? There’s simply no comparing the dedication and enthusiasm union workers bring to their jobs with employers’ efforts to demoralize and divide.Getty Images
Amazon, founded by one of the richest people in the world, dropped nearly $27 million on anti-union “advisers” last year alone, according to an analysis jointly conducted by the Economic Policy Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C., and LaborLab, a pro-worker watchdog group in Helena, Mont. That was more money than any other company listed in the report.
No surprise there.
Amazon has a long record of plastering workplaces, even restrooms stalls, with anti-union propaganda, of illegally retaliating against union activists and of forcing workers into mandatory anti-union brainwashing sessions.
Sadly, Amazon prefers to fill the pockets of consultants willing to carry out these scorched-earth campaigns than give a fair shake to the warehouse workers and delivery drivers who actually generate the company’s enormous wealth.
It’s the same with UnityPoint Health, a hospital network that ostensibly exists to help people live better lives yet doled out more than $2 million to union-busters in 2025 to oppress its own workers. And it’s the same with American Rock Products, which spent half a million last year to keep workers in a dangerous industry from banding together for better lives.
This is the high cost of greed, the price employers pay to show who’s boss, even though it hurts them in the long run.
I say this because studies show that union workers increase a company’s productivity. They know their jobs better than anyone else, and unions provide a platform for driving meaningful change.
Unions also forge stability in the workplace. Fairly compensated, well-trained and safety-focused workers contribute to efficiency. A revolving door of unhappy workers does the opposite.
Besides all of that, there’s the boost employers get when empowered union workers take pride in their good jobs and strive to lift others up as well. For example, USW members throw themselves into their communities in capacities ranging from Scout leader to food pantry volunteer, changing countless lives.
This is why polls show record levels of support for unions. It’s why more and more workers seek to join us, even as employers fritter away billions to block the way.