Trends in Union Corporate Campaigns - US Chamber of Commerce

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
This briefing book summarizes the phenomenon known as the
“corporate campaign” and identifies current trends in campaign
strategy and tactics. Among the principal observations and findings
are the following:
• The corporate campaign was invented by the New Left in
the 1970s, and by the 1990s was in widespread use by the labor
movement. To date, unions have waged nearly 300 campaigns
against employers, primarily, though not exclusively,
to facilitate organizing.
• Corporate campaigns employ “power structure analysis” to
identify and exploit vulnerabilities in the critical stakeholder
relationships on which all companies depend. This broad
strategic approach is then implemented through tactics that
range from highly sophisticated financial and governance
initiatives to street theater and even psychological warfare.
• Typically, the role of the corporate campaign today is to force
management to accede to union demands for “card check and
neutrality”—a process by which the union certification procedures
administered by the National Labor Relations Board
(NLRB) are effectively circumvented. A recent innovation here
is the substitution of non-NLRB elections for card check, which
has been coupled with a widening attack on the NLRB itself.
• The use and conduct of corporate campaigns has evolved
over time. Some recent trends:
◆ increasing and highly strategic use of shareholder resolutions
and proxy voting to pressure directors and senior management;
Trends in Union Corporate Campaigns
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