Reminder that it’s direct supervisors, not paid muscle or CEOs, who are on the union busters’ front line. All unionization attempts should identify social leaders early and often, either co-opting them before management realizes the game being played or neutralizing them if they’re going to side with middle/upper management. There’s a good chance that corporate warned them ahead of time, “your workers may corner you with a list of demands and not let you leave. This is a form of kidnapping and assault and should be reported to HR immediately.” Their initial response was probably, “yeah whatever, my team would never do that.” But then as soon as they’re in the situation, even if they’re fully capable of leaving, all they can think about is the training and the fact that what is happening to them is “kidnapping and assault”. At that point they shut down and trust their superiors implicitly.

The same thing works in the opposite direction. Once you’ve built a relationship with someone over time, you can warn them about how the playbook works. They probably won’t believe you. Until they do. This process is called inoculation and while it’s important not to do it too soon, it is the single most important step in fighting union busting. The only things more important in the whole process of forming a union are to move slow/methodically and to keeps records of Protected and Concerted Actions.