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Despite the fierce individualist and competitive spirit among them, the first CEOs and executives in Silicon Valley were united about one innovation: being union-free. As far back as the 1970s, when Intel’s founder and CEO, Robert Noyce, decided to establish his new silicon-chip processor company a…

The engineers were essentially functioning like a good union without officially being one. They came together as a team, collectively working out demands for management that mattered to them, in order to improve their quality of work life. The union they called told them if they privately signed un…

Public-sector workers didn’t secure the right to collective bargaining until the civil rights movement made unionization a central issue. African Americans moved into government positions in large numbers on the heels of black veterans returning from World War II. And as the civil rights movement g…

Shefferman hooked his clients on the idea that the unscrupulous tactics required to keep, or make, companies union-free would best be done at arm’s length, so the companies would not be liable for the kind of illegal tactical warfare required to thwart a very natural human desire for their betterme…

ONE MAJOR CORPORATION STOOD OUT for its lasting contribution to the development of professional union busting: the retail giant Sears, Roebuck. Sears had always fought its workers’ attempts to unionize, but the NLRA made it considerably trickier when it outlawed overt intimidation by management, li…