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Activist at a May Day protest in Ybor City, Florida on May 3, 2025. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\nActivist at a May Day protest in Ybor City, Florida on May 3, 2025. Credit: Dave Decker \/ Creative Loafing Tampa Bay<\/p>\n
A three-day \u2018positive employee relations\u2019 conference<\/a> coming to Tampa this weekend, hosted by an organization that goes by the seemingly-innocuous acronym \u201cCUE.\u201d<\/p>\n But the gathering is drawing criticism from local labor leaders who are calling it a \u201cgathering of union busters.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n The focus of the semiannual conference is publicly touted as \u201cstrengthening positive employee relations.\u201d But as The Intercept<\/a> reported in 2022, the conference, in practice, serves as a three-day brainstorming and strategy session for anti-union employers and the multi-million dollar union avoidance industry<\/a>.<\/p>\n While large, multibillion-dollar companies like Amazon and Starbucks have run scorched-earth campaigns in recent years to counter union drives<\/a>\u2014utilizing high-cost labor attorneys<\/a> and third-party consultants<\/a>\u2014the vast majority of nonunion U.S. employers report feeling unprepared<\/a> to respond to union organizing activity.\u00a0<\/p>\n Stephanie Yocum, a Polk County high school teacher and president of the West Central Florida Labor Council, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay in a statement that while CUE\u2014formerly known<\/a> as the Council on Union-Free Environment\u2014claims to be a \u201ccommunity for positive employee relations,\u201d an observer \u201conly needs to look at the agenda and keynote speakers to see that this event is a gathering of union busters, a $400 million industry of parasites who earn a living making the lives of working families more difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Indeed, the group\u2019s semiannual \u201cemployee relations\u201d conference, running from April 19-21 at the Hilton Tampa Downtown, is expected to bring together scores of company representatives and union avoidance consultants\u2014dubbed \u201cunion busters\u201d by critics\u2014to discuss topics such as the \u201cu\u201d word, how to \u201clawfully\u201d and \u201ceffectively\u201d talk to workers about unions, and how to handle worker strikes, according to a public agenda<\/a> posted online.\u00a0<\/p>\n Participants will even get the chance to walk through a \u201chighly realistic\u201d simulation of a union organizing drive, led by a representative of LuLuLemon. \u201cWhat happens when early employee concerns escalate into visible protest actions, walkouts, legal challenges, and a union election?\u201d a description<\/a> of the workshop reads. \u201cIn this hands-on simulation, participants will step into the role of organizational leaders responding to a fictional\u2014but highly realistic\u2014organizing campaign.\u201d<\/p>\n CUE Inc., a nonprofit and membership-based organization, doesn\u2019t publicly affiliate itself with the former \u201cCouncil for a Union-Free Environment,\u201d an organization founded<\/a> in 1977 by the National Association of Manufacturers, a business advocacy group. According to union buster watchdog Bob Funk, that\u2019s a calculated decision made by the industry as a sort of rebranding exercise.<\/p>\n \u201cCUE is an organization that dares not speak its own name,\u201d Funk, founder and executive director of the pro-union nonprofit LaborLab, told CL. \u201cIts mission is to organize and arm employers to wage class war from above through ruthless, relentless union-busting. But it has to camouflage that mission because the vast majority of Americans support unions and workers\u2019 rights.\u201d<\/p>\n Countering the union \u2018threat\u2019<\/p>\n A Gallup survey published last August found that 68% of U.S. adults support labor unions<\/a>\u2014a near-record high\u2014even though the rate of union membership in the U.S. is at a near-record low of 10%<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n This decline may be in part attributed to a calculated investment by U.S. employers\u2014coupled with decades of anti-union policy shifts\u2014who collectively spend upwards of $400 million annually<\/a> on union avoidance consultants and employer-friendly labor law firms<\/a> like Littler Mendelson and Jackson Lewis to counter the \u201cthreat<\/a>\u201d of unionization. Many of these high-priced attorneys and consultants are expected to be at the CUE conference this next week.<\/p>\n One of the conference\u2019s keynote speakers, for instance, is Phil Wilson, a longtime labor consultant, CUE advisory committee member, and president of the Labor Relations Institute, also known as LRI Consulting. Described as \u201ccorporate America\u2019s favorite union busting firm<\/a>,\u201d LRI is one of the most active union avoidance firms in the country, charging upwards of $400-plus per hour<\/a> to persuade workers against unionization.<\/p>\n In 2025 alone, Wilson\u2019s firm raked in at least $5 million<\/a> from companies such as Domino\u2019s Pizza, Petsmart, and Ford Motors\u2019 electrical battery venture BlueOval SK, according to a financial disclosure report filed with the U.S. Department of Labor. His firm has historically worked with the likes of companies such as Hershey<\/a>, Williams-Sonoma<\/a>, and Walgreens<\/a>, while openly touting<\/a> its talent for helping companies \u201cprevent potential vulnerabilities\u201d to unionization \u201cbefore it\u2019s too late.\u201d<\/p>\n Yocum, the local labor council head, told CL that CUE and its attendees \u201care not welcome\u201d in West Central Florida. As president of the Polk County teachers\u2019 union, she\u2019s well-versed in the state government\u2019s efforts to undermine unions<\/a> like hers through the passage of legislation in recent years targeting teachers unions at the behest of anti-union special interest groups<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cUnion busters get paid up to thousands of dollars per day to break union organizing efforts and have been found countless times guilty of violating workers\u2019 rights to achieve that end,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n A high-priced gig<\/p>\n Although there is nothing in federal law that necessarily bars companies from hiring union busters, the federal National Labor Relations Act does contain certain guardrails that forbid employers\u2014and any union busters they contract\u2014from firing workers, threatening their jobs, or otherwise retaliating against them in response to their organizing activity. This doesn\u2019t stop them from doing so anyway<\/a>.<\/p>\n Yocum said it\u2019s \u201cfurther insult\u201d that the CUE conference was also scheduled to host a social hour at the Columbia Restaurant in Ybor City next Monday evening, considering Ybor\u2019s radical and militant history of union organizing<\/a> among the city\u2019s cigar workers.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Tampa Bay region, for its part, is no stranger<\/a> to these union avoidance firms and individual consultants that report Tampa-area addresses to the federal government. Under federal law, third-party consultants who are contracted by an employer to \u201cpersuade\u201d workers against unionization are required to file reports with the U.S. labor department disclosing this information, although actual enforcement of these reporting requirements is spotty<\/a>.<\/p>\n Niles Commer, a consultant based out of Sarasota, for instance, was fired from a \u2018union avoidance\u2019 gig<\/a> at a Montana hospital system in 2023 after nurses discovered an internal document of \u201csensitive information\u201d that he had compiled, on behalf of their employer, to counter their organizing drive with the Montana Nurses Association.<\/p>\n LaThesia Hardy, a consultant based out of St. Petersburg, was paid six figures<\/a> in 2023 and another $224,410 in 2025 to \u201ccommunicate\u201d with Amazon employees as a subcontractor of the Massachusetts-based anti-union consultancy firm Lev Labor. Katie Lev, the president of Lev Labor, is also a CUE committee advisory member. Her firm was paid $4.4 million<\/a> by Amazon in 2025 alone, according to federal disclosure filings.<\/p>\n \u201cThe people who attend CUE have complete contempt for the human right to free association and collective bargaining,\u201d Funk argued. \u201cIt is a group of virulently anti-union employers and modern-day Pinkertons committed to preventing or destroying any effort by workers to exercise even a modest degree of independent collective control over their working lives.\u201d<\/p>\n Convening in the \u2018billionaire\u2019s playground\u2019<\/p>\n The conference\u2014which previously visited Tampa in 2018\u2014comes at a time when the U.S. rate of union membership is less than one-third of what it was in the 1940s, when roughly 33%<\/a> of the U.S. workforce was unionized. Most Americans believe that unions\u2019 decline has been bad for the country<\/a>, as income inequality has only grown<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Florida, less than 7% of the workforce has union representation and its associated benefits<\/a>, such as stronger job benefits, reduced racial and gender wage gaps, contractual health and safety protections, and greater retirement security.<\/p>\n This past March, state lawmakers also passed a new bill (SB 1296), now awaiting Gov. Ron DeSantis\u2019s signature, that would make it harder for most public sector employees, in particular, to either keep a union they currently have or form a new one.\u00a0<\/p>\n Public records show that bill was backed and partially drafted<\/a> by billionaire-funded think tanks like the Freedom Foundation, an out-of-state group with ties to the union avoidance industry that positions government unions as the \u201croot cause of every growing national dysfunction<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cFlorida has become a billionaires\u2019 playground,\u201d Dr. Rich Templin, director of politics and policy for the Florida AFL-CIO, told Orlando Weekly just ahead of the bill\u2019s passage. \u201cIf you\u2019ve got billions of dollars and a think-tank and you just want to have some fun with public policy that impacts hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people in some cases, you come to Florida.\u201d<\/p>\n Pitch in to help make the Tampa Bay Journalism Project a success.<\/a><\/p>\n Subscribe to Creative Loafing newsletters.<\/a><\/p>\n Follow us:\u00a0Google News<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0NewsBreak<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Reddit<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Instagram<\/a>\u00a0|\u00a0Facebook\u00a0<\/a>|\u00a0BlueSky<\/a><\/p>\n This article appears in Apr. 16 \u2013 22, 2026<\/a>.<\/p>\n \n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n WE LOVE OUR READERS!<\/p>\n And are love this community. 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