This ‘union-busting’ calculator arms workers with information

When employees dare to organize their workplace, a $1.7 billion industry of consultants and law firms springs into action. According to the Labor Department, something like 75% of employers enlist union avoidance consultants to quash union efforts. Some of them, including major companies like Amazon and 3M, spend many millions of dollars on those consultants, who can also double as legal representation—while the law firms that have made a business out of fighting unions reportedly earn millions of dollars for their work with employers.

But very often, the workers who take on major corporations have little insight into what they’re up against.

As of 2025, about 16.5 million workers are represented by a union—the highest share in about 16 years, but a much smaller figure than the 50 million Americans who have expressed a desire to join a union. Labor advocates argue that’s partly because companies put so much money behind fighting unions.

The nonprofit workers’ rights watchdog LaborLab has launched tools today that could help give workers greater visibility into how their employer may push back on their organizing efforts, and what they’re willing to spend in the process.

A search tool captures data from government filings to give workers intel on 800 consultants and thousands of law firms and attorneys—including who they represent and what they charge, as well as their track record with previous union campaigns. The union-busting cost calculator estimates a number of costs companies rack up by fighting those efforts instead of voluntarily recognizing the union, from legal expenses to lost productivity.

While companies are legally required to disclose what they spend on union avoidance, it’s not easy to search federal databases and track down that information. There are also a number of loopholes that allow employers to underreport the total costs of union avoidance, thereby keeping certain expenses off the books.

Consultants do not, for example, have to report when they are simply offering “advice”—a term that is not clearly defined—or not dealing directly with workers. Even when companies do have to provide this information under the law, they don’t necessarily comply. According to LaborLab, over half of employers who hired a union avoidance consultant in 2024 and were required to provide a financial disclosure failed to do so by June 2025, three months after the filing deadline.

A number of organizers have already turned to LaborLab’s tools as they navigate their own union campaigns. Sam Doyle, a nurse practitioner who works at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, has faced significant resistance over the last year and a half while trying to organize nurse practitioners and physician assistants. But Doyle was still shocked to realize how much money may have gone into fighting the union.

“I’m new to this world of organizing, and I don’t tend to be a numbers and cents person,” Doyle says. “But the calculator, to me, was horrifying. I couldn’t believe that our employer would spend nearly half a million dollars on fighting us.”

Zachary Gelnaw-Rubin, a bartender who helped organize the New York cocktail bar Attaboy, found that getting background information on the law firm hired by their employer—including the nature of the firm’s previous work for other companies—was also an effective way to galvanize his colleagues.

“It was very helpful in our ongoing efforts to build and maintain internal cohesion,” he says. “For the agitation portion of our organizing, it was great because we were able to show it to other workers and be like, ‘Look at this shit.’” (Attaboy workers voted to unionize earlier this year.)

LaborLab’s tools also helped organizers at Fred Hutch get more information on a union avoidance consultant that had been brought in to speak with employees. “For those of us who want to organize, we don’t go in with this technical knowledge,” Doyle says. “The calculator and website really helped us understand: ‘Oh wow, we are a cog in this massive wheel of union-busting.”

If they eventually get to the bargaining stage, Doyle believes the calculator will prove useful when management says there isn’t enough money to spend on raises and other changes that would benefit its employees.

“It would make me question the veracity of what they’re claiming—that ‘we don’t have the funds to do this,’” Doyle says. “We have just learned that you do have money to do things, and it’s a matter of where your values are and how you want to treat your employees.”

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