Union-Busting Is As Easy As ABC (the Associated Builders and Contractors)

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http://www.inthesetimes.com/working/entry/13321/union-busting_is_as_easy_as_abc_the_associated_builders_and_contractors/

Employer union-busting is as old as workers forming unions. Techniques and strategies change, but the impulse of bosses to prevent workers from acting together seems primordial. At best, employer resistance can be dampened and contained, as the high rate of unionization and triumphant social democratic politics have accomplished for decades in western Europe.

In American labor history, the Associated Builders and Contractors—well-known in the building trades as just ABC but little-known elsewhere—played a key role in unleashing the anti-union juggernaut of the past half century. And a new report by Thomas J. Kriger, a labor studies professor at the National Labor College, provides an informative look at just what ABC is and does.

Founded in 1950 by seven anti-union contractors in Baltimore, ABC came to political prominence in the late 1960s. It was a time of tight labor markets, war-induced inflation, and successful union demands for higher wages. Many big businesses that had prospered with unions were beginning to decide that they could escape a tightening profit squeeze by avoiding unions or fleeing the country.

As Kriger recounts, the CEOs of a group of big industrial companies, led by Roger Blough of U.S. Steel, formed the Construction Users Anti-Inflation Roundtable (CUAIR), which later became the Business Roundtable, a key group in the defeat of labor law reform in the late-1970s. CUAIR thought construction workers' wages were driving up industrial plant costs and were inspiring industrial workers to demand more pay.