Confession of a union buster--Book Review

[Earth Bound Misfit]

Confessions of a Union Buster, by Martin Jay Levitt, Crown Publishers Inc., 302 pp.,ISBN 0517583305, 9780517583302

Martin Jay Levitt joined the union-busting business in 1969. He was 25 years old, divorced, living with his parents, and in need of fast cash. The seduction was too much. Besides, like his first union-busting boss told him, “We do the Lord’s work.”

Even though Levitt wasn’t sure what was meant by the “Lord’s work,” he learned quickly and found out early on that the Lord’s servants were paid handsomely. After all, union busters weren’t “anti-union.” They were “pro-company and pro-employee.” So at age 25 Levitt began making $500 dollars a day and billed the client company for “every single expenditure ... for the duration” of a union-busting campaign.

Levitt’s first union-busting campaigns introduced him to the most “common strateg among management lawyers.” First, Levitt tells us, “Challenge everything ... then take every challenge to a full hearing ... then prolong each hearing” as long as possible, then “appeal every unfavorable decision.”

According to Levitt there was method to the madness. “If you make the union fight drag on long enough, workers...lose faith, lose interest, lose hope.” Taking away people’s hopes, their aspirations for a better future – that was Levitt’s job.

While Levitt understood the strategies of union busting, his understanding of why union busting is such a lucrative profession jelled later on. As Levitt chatted one night with a dinner guest, John Rogers, the “top industrial relations man at Cleveland Trust Bank,” he found out what the union-busting business was all about. “Control,” Rogers told him.

--snip--

One of the most striking things about Confessions is its brutal honesty, its brutal portrayal of the union buster and his awareness of the conditions of the would-be union members he was paid to manipulate, confuse and eventually defeat.

--snip--

In the mid-eighties he decided to seek alcoholic treatment and change his profession. He called the AFL-CIO and told the leadership of his decision. While skeptical at first, the AFL-CIO realized that insider knowledge of the union-busting business was valuable and that Martin Jay Levitt wanted to try to make amends.

At the beginning of Confessions, Levitt tells of a speech he gave at the 1988 Western Conference of the Brotherhood of Carpenters. At the end of the speech many in the audience had tears in their eyes, Levitt writes. He then adds, “It was not joy, but an overwhelming feeling of relief that filled the men who heard me that day: relief to know that the war they had suspected was being waged on them had been a real one all along and not just a creation of a unions paranoid imagination, as so many corporate bosses had told them.”

The war Levitt speaks of has intensified since Bush took office. Confessions should be read widely.

Read more at Link: http://www.pww.org/article/articleview/4255/

Edit to add ISBN

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. I'm sure it's an interesting book. Still, it makes me sad that

total a-h's who have done so much damage, then later get to say, "Well, I'm no longer doing that," publish a book for a lot of money, and get on the speaking circuit as a career.

In a fair world people like these would be working at a normal job and not getting millions for discussing what evil things he did.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

2. No doubt an ugly Mea Culpa,...

and certainly does not qualify him for sainthood, but the book is an extremely useful informational guide which reveals the slimy tricks of the men and women whose job it is to strip away rights from working people.

He reveals that if the union buster cannot defeat a company's workers in the election to choose or reject a union he simply bargains in bad faith (illegal but hard to prove) to prevent a contract.

In one telling scene a business owner orders his attorney to bargain in bad faith in contract negotiations with a union local. The attorney refuses for ethical reasons. But Levitt takes up the owner's cynical offer. "...I was not bound by any code of ethics or any professional canons and therefore would not have to worry about my behavior at the bargaining table."

But the one decent thing Mr. Levitt does is that he finally quits his career in disgust. Seems like after making the mega-bucks he still couldn't drink enough booze to drown his conscience.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

3. It is, it is. Absolutely! As for his conscience, I don't understand someone keeping a job

that hurts people, strictly for the money. I wonder how many people are likely to do that? My guess is that some people don't have enough of a conscience.

[Earth Bound Misfit]

4. Perhaps this song says it best...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDhCtwr6W2U

Maurice White, Charles Stepney & Verdine White

Hearts of fire creates love desire
Take you high and higher to the world you belong
Hearts of fire creates love desire
High and higher to your place on the throne

We’ve come together on this special day
To sing our message loud and clear
Looking back we’ve touched on sorrowful days
Future pass, they disappear

You will find peace of mind
If you look way down in your heart and soul
Don’t hesitate ‘cause the world seems cold
Stay young at heart ‘cause you’re never (never, never, ..) old at heart

That’s the way of the world
Plant your flower and you grow a pearl
A child is born with a heart of gold
The way of the world makes his heart so cold

[Sarah Ibarruri]

7. I like that song. nt

[cpamomfromtexas]

5. From what I hear, this guy married a flight attendant and then got a conscience

[Earth Bound Misfit]

6. I read somewhere he died in 04 or 05...

"married a flight attendant and then got a conscience"

Post hoc ergo propter hoc?

[cpamomfromtexas]

8. Of course that was years ago, but nice to know the history of

how he got a conscience.