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Confessions of a Union Buster
A former union buster exposes the dirty tricks that elevated him to the top of his profession and that have transformed the war on organized labor into a billion-dollars-per-year industry. This book is the story of a man who has decided to come in out of the cold, to clear his conscience, and to share the hard lessons he has learned. Line drawings.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published August 24, 1993
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September 17, 2023
A very revealing look into the life of the hired guns of the ruling class. Levitt's personal trials and tribulations are relatively banal and uninteresting, but the look into the bosses side of a union busting campaign is very educational. So many of the tactics described in this book are still in use today. Starbucks workers have faced many of the same pressure campaigns, fake crocodile tears from supervisors, and bad faith bargaining campaigns that Levitt ran against the workers of Copeland Oaks retirement community in the 1980s. Definitely recommended for organizers as a way to better know your enemy.
August 6, 2024
A memoir written by a union buster of 20 years, who directed more than 200 successful anti-union campaigns that had a change of heart. The book details different tactics and strategies employed by companies in what Levitt terms "counter-organizing drives" i.e. union busting. These include using direct supervisors recruited through propaganda and intimidation to pressure workers, discrediting union organizers by digging up dirt, using legal delay tactics to sap the energy of the union drive (such as filing frivolous petitions to expand or narrow the size of the proposed bargaining unit or filing unfair labor practices against the union), illegally wiretapping union organizing meetings, stoking racial sentiments among workers, and institutionalizing dissent to make unionization unattractive. It also includes a brief section of the suppression that happens even after a successful union campaign, such as surface bargaining during first contract negotiations and stoking anti-union sentiments for a decertification campaign.
I think the book highlights very well the severe limitations in American labor law, particularly the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Landrum-Griffin Act, and Railway Labor Act that allow bosses to skirt regulations and ultimately stifle and weaken unions. This book also shows the way that union busting firms don't only hurt workers who want to unionize. They also take advantage of businesses by misleading them to buy services they don’t even need (such as attitude surveys for business with no active union organizing movement designed to show worker dissatisfaction making owners feel that they are vulnerable to a union drive and thus pay for union prevention consulting) and outright fraud by inflating billable hours.
Although many readers question the genuineness of the author in renouncing his union busting, I think much insight can be gained from the book about the ruthless strategies union busters employ.
I think the book highlights very well the severe limitations in American labor law, particularly the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), Landrum-Griffin Act, and Railway Labor Act that allow bosses to skirt regulations and ultimately stifle and weaken unions. This book also shows the way that union busting firms don't only hurt workers who want to unionize. They also take advantage of businesses by misleading them to buy services they don’t even need (such as attitude surveys for business with no active union organizing movement designed to show worker dissatisfaction making owners feel that they are vulnerable to a union drive and thus pay for union prevention consulting) and outright fraud by inflating billable hours.
Although many readers question the genuineness of the author in renouncing his union busting, I think much insight can be gained from the book about the ruthless strategies union busters employ.
February 24, 2012
He started looking around the hospital. What he saw disturbed him: hundreds of workers, most of them blacks and other minorities, toiled for years at heavy, dirty, emotionally draining jobs for rock-bottom pay. The workers were frightened and distrustful, even of one another. They had no protection from the disciplinary whims of their erratic supervisors, no job guarantees, little hope for promotions, and no hope at all of one day earning a living wage. The more Jim saw, the more he wanted to know, so he started poking around, asking questions. And the more he heard, the more determined he became that something had to change. Jim found janitors and nurse's aides with ten, fifteen years at the hospital who still made well under two dollars an hour. He found a capricious wage structure that totally disregarded experience and seniority. He found long entrenched work rules that discouraged groups of employees from gathering. And he found a system of selective threats and promises that encouraged employees to compete with one another rather than to cooperate. That's when he decided to do something.
Who knows if anything in this book is true? Marty Levitt casts himself as a slick talking, double crossing, amoral, impervious bastard. He writes this book as an act of redemption (in due to his alcoholism), but if you read any section of this book you see his garrulous use of emotion in order to convey affect for the purpose of manipulation. All that being said, and taken with a grain of salt, here's what to expect from a union buster:
Before anything, you have to understand the context in which he works. Usually a tough, cheap boss doesn't want to consent to worker's rights. They call in the union buster to subtly remove the problem. His job is to conduct a program without the workers ever knowing they have been had. He will promote the worst position to "supervisor" and have them brainwashed to become his paramilitary. He is ruthless, genius and as emotionless as a ghost.
Organizers will go around the country trying to provide for workers whose rights are hindered and whose company reigns them with fear: Hanley's organizers were out in force, crisscrossing the country, rallying hotel and restaurant workers around the hope of a living wage and dignity on the job
1) His job is to surreptitiously remove the threat of a union. Because of the Landrum-Griffin Act, as a worker you won't see the union buster:
The law states that management consultants only have to file financial disclosures if they engage in certain kinds of activities, essentially attempting to persuade employees not to join a union or supplying the employer with information regarding the activities of employees or a union in connection with a labor relations matter. Of course, that is precisely what anti-union consultants do, have always done. Yet i never filed iwth Landrum-Griffin in my life, and few union busters do. Here's why not: According to the law, in order to be considered engaging in "persuader" activities, the consultant must speak directly to the employees in the voting unit. As long as he deals directly only with supervisors and management, he can easily slide out from under the scrutiny of the Department of Labor, which collects the Landrum-Griffin reports
2) Because of this, the atmosphere of the supervisors changes considerably. Levitt has a trick of creating an environment that turns from general camaraderie amidst an ordinarily shitty job into a stark, tense place where workers can no longer be friendly to one another. He gets the supervisors to blame this on the union:
My command in place, I dug a deep trench down the middle of the work force, ordering supervisors to cease all the informal socializing with the rank and file. It was an assault on the very playfulness that made work at Copeland bearable and an implied harbinger of things to come should Copeland be "unionized." I wanted supervisors and subordinates alike to wrestle with the irritations of an organizing drive every day and to hate the union for it.
3) There is the general carrot and stick routine. Rewards are given for loyalty, penalty for insubordination. Incentives are threatened. All is blamed on the union.
4) Levitt does a fine job in this book detailing not only his own strategy and philosophy, but outlining all of his fellow union-busters techniques. From the employee surveys that are doled as acts of concern but in reality are ploys to gauge whom the actors of dissent are; to the round-table discussions which is a ploy to gauge where discontent lies and who is troubled, always keeping a rotating shift of who attends this monthly meeting so as not not build up any group strength; to the posters that are put up displaying propaganda, eschewed statistics and corny images which serve as tools. He outlines a batman villain menagerie of lowly, despicable, ingenious bastards:
Bannon ticked off a list of the five key corporate failings that drive workers to seek union help: lack of recogntion, weak management, poor communication, substandard working conditions, and non-competitive wages and benefits. If a company takes care of those problems itself, Bannon said, it can achieve a happy work force and never have to fear a union invasion.
...
But the smile and the belly laughs masked the deadly seriousness with which he worked. It was Nick, after all, who taught me how to snuff out any spark of defiance in a supervisor. He taught me the value of the well-timed, accurately placed threat. When Nick ran a counterorganizing drive, he made sure supervisors went home wondering if they would have a job in the morning; and he was very effective
...
The golden rule of management control, as I taught it, was Incorporate dissent, institutionalize it. They would find, I promised my disciples, that dissension won't be half as attractive tot he masses once the rebels are sitting down with the bosses. Like the clever parents who, wanting to cool their teenage daughter's desires fro a leather-clad longhair, start inviting the objectionable beau to dinner, so the cunning managers hsould embrace his workplace rebels. Be grateful for them, I offered, for they are your most effective shield against the union. If you can convince the activists that they'll accomplish more, perhaps have more power, without a union, why, you've won the war.
5) His specialty is corniness. He attempts to make the company feel like a family. The supervisors are rendered paternalistic. The GM becomes corny grand-dad, with Ronald Reagan cheeks. He details how he gets more than 400 female airline office workers to rip up their union cards for the sake of seeing a hunky supervisor in the cargo bay (a young Tom Selleck in his prime) to go streaking through the airport. He gets secretaries to go out and fill shopping carts with $200 worth of food so he can put it on display on the factory floor with the sign, "HERE'S WHAT YOU COULD BUY WITH JUST ONE YEAR OF UNION DUES". Meanwhile, he is making 70 grand.
His corniness is indefatigable and effective. With bells and whistles, he creatively extinguishes the momentum of a serious campaign by mocking it like a clown:
The next day E. Timm Scott swallowed his pride, donned his mask, light-up finger and Vote No T-shirt, picked up a large placard that read "E.T. SAYS PLEASE VOTE NO," and climbed into a shopping cart. The plant manager, George Mitro, grabbed hold of the cart, strapped on a grin, and pushed his way onto the plant floor.
When the UAW organizer entered the room and laid eyes on his mocking antagonist, he lost his usually unshakable composrure. Doubtless Smith had seen the newspaper the morning before and had come to the conference already seething. But when he saw the E.T. getup, his anger bubbled to the surface. Smith's face reddened, and his jowls shook. His eyes widened. He could barely speak. He gestured erratically, as if her were fighting an invisible assailant. He looked small and impotent and pathetic next to the six-foot-six-inch figure who had just made a big fat joke out of his union.
The workers' second organizing effort ended in defeat.
...
All in all, I found this book to be very informative, with good detail and a good handbook for his technique and others. It does get sort of bogged in his personal struggles, but i think they are relevant. The more he dismisses the recognition of his evil talents, the more his addiction consumes him. If it was truly his reality, then it was truly his reality and this book is his exorcism. I'd like to think that is true and this is not just a rouse to misguide or to incite fear for no reason, but that it is, as it is called, a Confession.
Who knows if anything in this book is true? Marty Levitt casts himself as a slick talking, double crossing, amoral, impervious bastard. He writes this book as an act of redemption (in due to his alcoholism), but if you read any section of this book you see his garrulous use of emotion in order to convey affect for the purpose of manipulation. All that being said, and taken with a grain of salt, here's what to expect from a union buster:
Before anything, you have to understand the context in which he works. Usually a tough, cheap boss doesn't want to consent to worker's rights. They call in the union buster to subtly remove the problem. His job is to conduct a program without the workers ever knowing they have been had. He will promote the worst position to "supervisor" and have them brainwashed to become his paramilitary. He is ruthless, genius and as emotionless as a ghost.
Organizers will go around the country trying to provide for workers whose rights are hindered and whose company reigns them with fear: Hanley's organizers were out in force, crisscrossing the country, rallying hotel and restaurant workers around the hope of a living wage and dignity on the job
1) His job is to surreptitiously remove the threat of a union. Because of the Landrum-Griffin Act, as a worker you won't see the union buster:
The law states that management consultants only have to file financial disclosures if they engage in certain kinds of activities, essentially attempting to persuade employees not to join a union or supplying the employer with information regarding the activities of employees or a union in connection with a labor relations matter. Of course, that is precisely what anti-union consultants do, have always done. Yet i never filed iwth Landrum-Griffin in my life, and few union busters do. Here's why not: According to the law, in order to be considered engaging in "persuader" activities, the consultant must speak directly to the employees in the voting unit. As long as he deals directly only with supervisors and management, he can easily slide out from under the scrutiny of the Department of Labor, which collects the Landrum-Griffin reports
2) Because of this, the atmosphere of the supervisors changes considerably. Levitt has a trick of creating an environment that turns from general camaraderie amidst an ordinarily shitty job into a stark, tense place where workers can no longer be friendly to one another. He gets the supervisors to blame this on the union:
My command in place, I dug a deep trench down the middle of the work force, ordering supervisors to cease all the informal socializing with the rank and file. It was an assault on the very playfulness that made work at Copeland bearable and an implied harbinger of things to come should Copeland be "unionized." I wanted supervisors and subordinates alike to wrestle with the irritations of an organizing drive every day and to hate the union for it.
3) There is the general carrot and stick routine. Rewards are given for loyalty, penalty for insubordination. Incentives are threatened. All is blamed on the union.
4) Levitt does a fine job in this book detailing not only his own strategy and philosophy, but outlining all of his fellow union-busters techniques. From the employee surveys that are doled as acts of concern but in reality are ploys to gauge whom the actors of dissent are; to the round-table discussions which is a ploy to gauge where discontent lies and who is troubled, always keeping a rotating shift of who attends this monthly meeting so as not not build up any group strength; to the posters that are put up displaying propaganda, eschewed statistics and corny images which serve as tools. He outlines a batman villain menagerie of lowly, despicable, ingenious bastards:
Bannon ticked off a list of the five key corporate failings that drive workers to seek union help: lack of recogntion, weak management, poor communication, substandard working conditions, and non-competitive wages and benefits. If a company takes care of those problems itself, Bannon said, it can achieve a happy work force and never have to fear a union invasion.
...
But the smile and the belly laughs masked the deadly seriousness with which he worked. It was Nick, after all, who taught me how to snuff out any spark of defiance in a supervisor. He taught me the value of the well-timed, accurately placed threat. When Nick ran a counterorganizing drive, he made sure supervisors went home wondering if they would have a job in the morning; and he was very effective
...
The golden rule of management control, as I taught it, was Incorporate dissent, institutionalize it. They would find, I promised my disciples, that dissension won't be half as attractive tot he masses once the rebels are sitting down with the bosses. Like the clever parents who, wanting to cool their teenage daughter's desires fro a leather-clad longhair, start inviting the objectionable beau to dinner, so the cunning managers hsould embrace his workplace rebels. Be grateful for them, I offered, for they are your most effective shield against the union. If you can convince the activists that they'll accomplish more, perhaps have more power, without a union, why, you've won the war.
5) His specialty is corniness. He attempts to make the company feel like a family. The supervisors are rendered paternalistic. The GM becomes corny grand-dad, with Ronald Reagan cheeks. He details how he gets more than 400 female airline office workers to rip up their union cards for the sake of seeing a hunky supervisor in the cargo bay (a young Tom Selleck in his prime) to go streaking through the airport. He gets secretaries to go out and fill shopping carts with $200 worth of food so he can put it on display on the factory floor with the sign, "HERE'S WHAT YOU COULD BUY WITH JUST ONE YEAR OF UNION DUES". Meanwhile, he is making 70 grand.
His corniness is indefatigable and effective. With bells and whistles, he creatively extinguishes the momentum of a serious campaign by mocking it like a clown:
The next day E. Timm Scott swallowed his pride, donned his mask, light-up finger and Vote No T-shirt, picked up a large placard that read "E.T. SAYS PLEASE VOTE NO," and climbed into a shopping cart. The plant manager, George Mitro, grabbed hold of the cart, strapped on a grin, and pushed his way onto the plant floor.
When the UAW organizer entered the room and laid eyes on his mocking antagonist, he lost his usually unshakable composrure. Doubtless Smith had seen the newspaper the morning before and had come to the conference already seething. But when he saw the E.T. getup, his anger bubbled to the surface. Smith's face reddened, and his jowls shook. His eyes widened. He could barely speak. He gestured erratically, as if her were fighting an invisible assailant. He looked small and impotent and pathetic next to the six-foot-six-inch figure who had just made a big fat joke out of his union.
The workers' second organizing effort ended in defeat.
...
All in all, I found this book to be very informative, with good detail and a good handbook for his technique and others. It does get sort of bogged in his personal struggles, but i think they are relevant. The more he dismisses the recognition of his evil talents, the more his addiction consumes him. If it was truly his reality, then it was truly his reality and this book is his exorcism. I'd like to think that is true and this is not just a rouse to misguide or to incite fear for no reason, but that it is, as it is called, a Confession.
April 11, 2014
Written by someone who is not a writer, so the quality reflects that: however, the horrible things this guy did in his life, the inside emotional perspectives from the anti-union side, and the engrossing anti-hero narrative makes it a quick read that is also helpful in confirming a lot about what most of us suppose is going through the heads of bad people.
December 7, 2021
While the author has a reputation, the book is an insightful read amongst the limited options people have in a post-pandemic workforce. The book is out of print so it's hard to find, but it's free and available on archive.org.
January 6, 2025
The author dives into a lot of his past and why he became a union buster. Unfortunately, I only found a few of the chapters helpful as a labor organizer. If you’re looking for some quick tips for recognizing union busting tactics, there’s a section at the end of the book dedicated just for that!
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December 1, 2010sensationalist. the guy made a career, then writes a book after he's all done saying its a sham. i guess we all atone, but his tone is self-laudatory. no stars. hah.
May 12, 2021
An insightful peek into the machinations of union busters. The first third of the book is chock full with anti-union tactics and relevant legislative history, granting readers a deeper understanding to modern unionization drives like at Amazon. Martin lays out specific ploys, including roundtable meetings, legal obstruction and withholding of information which make this the Bible for unionizers. Unfortunately, as Martin explores his relationships and health problems, the book devolves into an increasingly narcissistic journal of the trivialities. I must confess that this put me off completing the book, though I would really look forward to someone compiling the relevant bits into a concise version.
July 7, 2021
This was recommended to show some of the tactics a business could use and have used to try to thwart unionizing efforts. Wow. It was an eye opener. This was written by a lawyer who specialized in advising management on how to stop organization efforts, and he had a successful record. Towards the end, he realized what harm he was doing (one of the last companies he went to, even he realized they needed protections).
April 13, 2021
The blurb strongly reminds me of the experience of former sex workers who decided to feed the confirmation biases of moralists in order to gain a living. They would lie, distort, and exaggerate every piece of information. Still, I am curious about Levitt's story and I will be back after reading the book.
June 26, 2022
A hard hitting book outlining the life and times of a union-buster. Outlining tactics and strategies, Marty explains how and why union busters do what they do. It makes one wonder how union organizers have a chance when the deck is stacked against them. Very good read.
April 20, 2020
This book is simply a MUST-READ for anyone involved in anything in even the most remote orbit of ANY union goings-on. Fantastic.
June 23, 2025
Very tragic and saddening.
September 8, 2025
riveting
February 20, 2008
This book took forever to read because of all the personal fluff crap about Marty Levitt's sad little life dispersed throughout. Despite all the garbage about Levitt's alcoholism, ruined personal life, etc., there is a lot to be learned about union busting tactics in this book. Read it if you think you can stand reading about a sad, abominable human being along the way.
March 27, 2016
"In a witch hunt, witches are always in great supply... Disloyalty could be anything: a gripe, a snide remark, a little cheating with the time clock, a mistake, whatever we could use to raise [the Boss's] ire and put pressure on a troublemaker." (p. 106)
October 6, 2010
This provides excellent insight into what tactics companies are capable of in their quest to prevent organizing, but also those used once a union is in place.
March 4, 2014
Great and essential book for any union organizer to read. The book gets a little dry at parts but learning about the ins and outs of the union buster was interesting and pretty horrifying.
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February 17, 2008still reading this
Currently reading
November 23, 2009fascinating
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews