Portland Public Schools' General Counsel (Re)Hires a Union-Busting Firm for Contract Negotiations
Meanwhile, on November 15, 2022, PPS General Counsel Liz Large was granted $300,000 by the School Board to hire the firm CDR Labor Law LLC for "legal services on an as-needed basis" for "Direct Negotiation." According to the district's Board books, the duration of the contract with CDR is from 11/16/22 to 6/30/24.
CDR Labor Law LLC was co-founded by three attorneys in 2020 as a "management-side labor law firm." The founders, J. Chris Duckworth, Dan Rowan, and Adam Collier, were colleagues at Bullard Law, and have over 33 years of collective experience at Bullard, a firm with a notorious union-busting reputation. Willamette Week's journalist Nigel Jaquiss called out the firm in 2019, saying "Bullard has carved out a position as perhaps Portland's go-to law firm for employers seeking to avoid unionization or defeat unions in negotiations."
Jaquiss further explained:
"Bullard, for instance, represents Fred Meyer, which along with other grocers is in bitter negotiations with 20,000 United Food and Commercial Workers in Oregon and Southwest Washington. The firm's founder, Garry Bullard, represented Portland in police negotiations in the 1970s. But organized labor . . . looks dimly on the Bullard firm now."
On its website, Bullard Law states, "Labor law is at the heart of what we do. We recognize that many employers are facing increasing challenges from well-organized labor groups." The firm lists "Union Avoidance" as one of its specialty areas.LaborLab, a nonprofit watchdog organization that tracks, monitors, and reports on union-busting activities throughout the U.S., identifies "union avoidance" as a euphemism for union-busting. LaborLab says: "There is a very profitable industry that has been built around silencing workers. High-paid consultants and lawyers call it 'union avoidance,' but the rest of the world, including us, calls it 'union-busting.'" The Cambridge Dictionary defines union-busting as "the activity of reducing or destroying the power of a labor union." A paper in the British Journal of Industrial Relations provides an overview of the "union avoidance" industry in the U.S. The industry incorporates management consultants, "union avoidance" law firms, psychologists and behavioral scientists who design anti-union tactics for employers, as well as strikebreaking firms. The industry has a long history, having originated in the post-World War II era and grown exponentially especially since the 1990s.
Although it has become a commonplace, even legally permissible tactic for employers to hire law firms with a union-busting track record during contract negotiations, it is a practice that should in a fairer world and in and of itself constitute anti-union animus. PPS expenditures show where the district's values lie. Liz Large is contracted by PPS to provide the district legal services, but works for the Office of General Counsel Network, a private enterprise she co-founded. Large further initiates and oversees PPS contracts with private legal consultants with a history of defending management against organized labor, all this for hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. PPS School Board has now twice unquestioningly approved two contracts with CDR Labor Law totaling more than half a million dollars, and prior to that with Bullard to the tune of $250,000. Meanwhile, the district claims budget constraints when challenged to raise its most underpaid employees' wages.
In a moment when pro-union support is at the highest level in decades nationally, tactics to undermine labor organizations should receive more scrutiny and pushback as anti-democratic, against the interest of the working people, and expressly anti-woman, anti-family, and anti-worker of color, as these groups are the ones to most benefit from belonging to a union.
Under its "Union Avoidance" services, Bullard Law promises employers the following:
There are countless examples chronicled online of Bullard's anti-union work, including last year's Drop Bullard Law campaign by LGBTQ+ Crush Bar workers whose management firm retained Bullard in an effort to thwart their drive to unionize. In another recent example, door manufacturer Pacific Architectural Wood Products tried to unionize, and management hired Bullard Law to crush them. Northwest Labor Press reported: "Management hired the anti-union management-side law firm Bullard Law. By the end of the week, workers found anti-union literature attached to their paychecks," meanwhile the company began "holding anti-union meetings each Monday." The state’s most prominent Latino immigrant rights group, Causa Oregon, closed down after 27 years earlier this year after bringing on Dan Rowan, one of the CDR Labor Law partners, to advise Causa management with its labor contract negotiations.
Anti-worker values indisputably make up the foundation of CDR Labor Law which is now providing legal services for PPS during contract negotiations with the teacher union, as it did once before in 2020 and 2021, again thanks to Liz Large. According to the CDR website, J. Chris Duckworth "has experience handling employment law issues, defending employers against employee claims before state and federal courts and administrative agencies against all types of employment-law claims." Dan Rowan "frequently represents clients during collective bargaining, labor arbitration, unfair labor practice cases, and union representation proceedings. Dan also advises clients on a variety of labor and employment matters and leads training sessions for employers and industry groups." Finally, Adam Collier "possesses extensive experience defending employers before the Bureau of Labor and Industries and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." All three founders are white men.
As expected, the young CDR Labor Law firm has followed in the footsteps of Bullard Law's anti-union antics. When Portland-based children’s nutrition advocacy group workers at the Alliance For A Healthier Generation tired to unionize, the non-profit hired CDR to represent its interests while waging a campaign to fight the employees' unionization drive. As Northwest Labor Press reported in March: "Alliance For A Healthier Generation, represented by Portland-based CDR Labor Law, . . . waged a campaign to fight the union effort. . . Management held meetings and shared literature with employees to persuade them out of unionizing."
CDR Labor Law was only a one-month-old infant when Liz Large hired the firm for the district's 2020 negotiations, this time for $250,000 with the contract spanning from 2/26/20 to 6/30/21. This was a time when the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted and shifted the course of bargaining not only for PAT, but also for other unions negotiating with the district, including SEIU 503 representing nutritional workers and custodians.
The UC Berkley Labor Center's 2021 report, Turning the Tables: Participation and Power in Negotiations by Jane McAlevey and Abby Lawlor, defines the terms Anti-Union Campaign, also known as Union Avoidance or Union Busting:
They are "umbrella terms for a variety of employer strategies and tactics to undermine workers’ organizing rights by discouraging union membership and union activity, in particular during union recognition and contract campaigns. These include anti-union communications, captive audience meetings, retaliation against pro-union workers, and refusal to recognize or bargain with the union, as well as bargaining proposals which would undermine a union standard. Too often, these activities are entirely permissible under current labor law, and companies frequently hire specialized consulting firms to instruct them on how to avoid legal liability for interfering with worker organizing. In other cases, such as explicit retaliation, anti-union tactics may constitute unfair labor practices."
- Strategies to maintain a union-free workplace
- Employee communications
- Employment law compliance
- Employee relations
- Minimization of union activity
Liz Large contracted Bullard Law for "as needed legal services: Labor & employment, investigations, and union negotiations" for a price tag of $250,000 from 11/28/18 through 12/31/19. (Rowan is listed as PPS's legal counsel already in August 2018 in a lawsuit between PPS and the United Association of Plumbers and Pipefitters Local 290, preceding Bullard's and CDR's contracts with PPS, signaling that Rowan's relationship with PPS predates his leaving Bullard to found CDR.)
Anti-worker values indisputably make up the foundation of CDR Labor Law which is now providing legal services for PPS during contract negotiations with the teacher union, as it did once before in 2020 and 2021, again thanks to Liz Large. According to the CDR website, J. Chris Duckworth "has experience handling employment law issues, defending employers against employee claims before state and federal courts and administrative agencies against all types of employment-law claims." Dan Rowan "frequently represents clients during collective bargaining, labor arbitration, unfair labor practice cases, and union representation proceedings. Dan also advises clients on a variety of labor and employment matters and leads training sessions for employers and industry groups." Finally, Adam Collier "possesses extensive experience defending employers before the Bureau of Labor and Industries and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission." All three founders are white men.
As expected, the young CDR Labor Law firm has followed in the footsteps of Bullard Law's anti-union antics. When Portland-based children’s nutrition advocacy group workers at the Alliance For A Healthier Generation tired to unionize, the non-profit hired CDR to represent its interests while waging a campaign to fight the employees' unionization drive. As Northwest Labor Press reported in March: "Alliance For A Healthier Generation, represented by Portland-based CDR Labor Law, . . . waged a campaign to fight the union effort. . . Management held meetings and shared literature with employees to persuade them out of unionizing."
They are "umbrella terms for a variety of employer strategies and tactics to undermine workers’ organizing rights by discouraging union membership and union activity, in particular during union recognition and contract campaigns. These include anti-union communications, captive audience meetings, retaliation against pro-union workers, and refusal to recognize or bargain with the union, as well as bargaining proposals which would undermine a union standard. Too often, these activities are entirely permissible under current labor law, and companies frequently hire specialized consulting firms to instruct them on how to avoid legal liability for interfering with worker organizing. In other cases, such as explicit retaliation, anti-union tactics may constitute unfair labor practices."
Although it has become a commonplace, even legally permissible tactic for employers to hire law firms with a union-busting track record during contract negotiations, it is a practice that should in a fairer world and in and of itself constitute anti-union animus. PPS expenditures show where the district's values lie. Liz Large is contracted by PPS to provide the district legal services, but works for the Office of General Counsel Network, a private enterprise she co-founded. Large further initiates and oversees PPS contracts with private legal consultants with a history of defending management against organized labor, all this for hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. PPS School Board has now twice unquestioningly approved two contracts with CDR Labor Law totaling more than half a million dollars, and prior to that with Bullard to the tune of $250,000. Meanwhile, the district claims budget constraints when challenged to raise its most underpaid employees' wages.
Our public schools serve working families and the public should defend worker protections for the taxes that it pays. As PAT says, PPS staff working conditions are our students' learning conditions. The public's hard-earned dollars should not be diverted to private firms that make their profit off trampling on the rights of the workers providing direct services to our community's families.
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