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A management-side labor law firm advised on a private webinar that employers with a “high risk tolerance” could ignore a recent Rhode Island ban on forced employee attendance at anti-union meetings, because the meetings offer “tremendous value” to fighting union elections.
“We are not in the habit of advising you lightly that you should challenge laws,” said Jillian Folger-Hartwell, an attorney with leading anti-union law firm Littler Mendelson on the August 19 webinar, a transcript and PowerPoint presentation of which the Prospect exclusively obtained. But “if you are a bit more risk tolerant, and you want to continue” to hold the meetings, “that is a choice that you can make.”
While acknowledging that this would expose employers to litigation, Folger-Hartwell explained her firm’s view that there are “strong arguments” that the law is unconstitutional, and that ignoring it would be a “vehicle” for a legal challenge.
“I think it’s a classic case of corporate greed,” said Patrick Crowley, president of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO. “We pass a law in the state of Rhode Island and these people think they’re so above the law that they’re advising clients to just ignore it? The arrogance of what they’re saying is just obnoxious.”
The Littler lawyers on the webinar did not respond to a request for comment from the Prospect.
Advice that anti-union law firms give companies is not typically made public. But Littler promoted the webinar on its own website. Crowley and other labor officials in Rhode Island organized roughly three dozen union members to attend, but they were kicked off the call. The materials leaked anyway, and they offer a unique window into how Littler and other firms skirt the edges of labor law to help companies prevent collective bargaining among their workers.
In fact, Littler is proud of this reputation. One PowerPoint slide quotes approvingly from a 1996 San Francisco Chronicle article on the firm, in which a union lawyer said, “They’ll do about anything to accomplish their ends. They push the line as far as they possibly can and eventually step over.” |
