U.S. employers spend more than $1.5 billion annually on union avoidance

Key takeaways

• Many U.S. employers hire union avoidance consultants to keep their workers from organizing and bargaining for better pay and working conditions. We estimate that employers spend roughly $1.7 billion a year on union avoidance consultants and law firms for this purpose, which has an undeniable impact on workers’ ability to organize and bargain collectively.

• Over the past several decades, large law firms have developed substantial business specializing in union avoidance services. This includes exploiting the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) administrative processes and creating nearly endless delays for workers who are trying to form a union.

• Large law firms—such as Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Jackson Lewis—have represented employers in their fights against some of the largest organizing efforts over the last decade, including Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s.

Introduction

In 2025, unionization in the United States grew to its highest levels since 2009 (McNicholas, Poydock, and Shierholz 2026). This growth is a testament to the fact that Americans increasingly view unions favorably and recognize them as critical instruments for building a just economy. Yet more than 50 million nonunion workers would join a union but are unable to do so because our nation’s labor laws allow employers to derail workers’ unionization efforts (McNicholas et al. 2019).

It is well documented that employers often hire union avoidance consultants to dissuade and weaken workers’ unionization efforts. These consultants work to prevent a union election from taking place—and if that fails, to ensure that workers vote against the union and then stall negotiations over a first collective bargaining agreement. Over the past several decades, large law firms have developed substantial business specializing in union avoidance services. These firms now play a significant role in denying workers their rights to a union and collective bargaining (Kaufman and Stephan 1995).

The role of these law firms in defeating workers’ organizing campaigns and frustrating workers’ attempts to reach a first contract has largely gone unexamined. While employers are required to disclose money spent on lawyers engaged in persuading employees on their union and collective bargaining rights, there is an exemption around reporting money spent on “advice” services, which is ill-defined under the law. Union avoidance law firms have taken full advantage of this reporting loophole and have constructed an industry providing counsel on union busting. Further, many union avoidance law firms provide employers services beyond these persuader activities, including representation at the NLRB and the stalling of first contract negotiations. 

In this report, we examine the union avoidance industry and the law firms that play integral roles in this business. We calculate the revenue law firms generate from employers who try to avoid unions and undermine collective bargaining with their workers. Further, we discuss the impacts of the union avoidance industry on workers’ ability to organize and what it means for workers, our economy, and our democracy.

Employers spend millions on union avoidance consultants

When workers seek to form a union, employers often hire union avoidance consultants to dissuade and weaken workers’ unionization efforts. These consultants include both non-attorney consultants and attorney consultants. Under the Labor–Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), employers and the consultants they hire must file disclosure reports on agreements in which the consultant is engaging in union-busting activities. Table 1 lists just a few of the employers who filed mandatory reports with the Department of Labor during 2025.

Table 1

Employers spend millions on union avoidance consultantsAmounts that union avoidance consultants reported receiving from selected employers for work performed in 2025

Company	Total Spending
Amazon	$26,640,897
UnityPoint Health	$2,138,994
LabCorp	$2,015,293
Premier Health	$801,575
American Rock Products	$584,915
Sygma Network	$559,863
Corewell Health	$526,669
3M	$501,703
Comfort Systems USA Southwest	$471,751
Dartmouth Health	$452,022

Source: LaborLab’s analysis of LM-10 forms filed by consultants with the U.S. Department of Labor’s (DOL) Office of Labor–Management Standards (OLMS), in 2025, rounded to the nearest thousand dollars.

Notes: *The authors have discounted law firms' U.S. labor practice revenue by 50%, on the conservative assumption that half of the revenue generated by attorneys in a company’s labor practice was earned for work performed in other areas of law than labor law. (Many labor relations attorneys belong to multiple practices, often practicing both labor law and employment law at the same company.)

Percentages in the table were rounded to the nearest tenth. 

Source: LaborLab's analysis of Law.com and National Labor Relations Board case data from Gregg 2026. 

Union avoidance law firms

Prominent law firms—such as Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Jackson Lewis—have generated substantial business in union avoidance work on behalf of U.S. employers seeking to frustrate worker organizing and collective bargaining. As shown in Table 2, these law firms do a great deal of business before the National Labor Relations Board, the independent agency charged with enforcing the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). The NLRA is the nation’s fundamental labor law that guarantees most private-sector workers the right to organize and the right to collective bargaining. However, decades of federal policy and court decisions have weakened the NLRA (Shierholz et al. 2024). Union avoidance consultants and law firms have long exploited the law’s significant loopholes, making it harder and harder for workers to win unions. For nearly 80 years, policymakers have failed to address the NLRA’s weaknesses and restore meaningful union and collective bargaining rights to workers.

These law firms have represented employers in fighting against some of the largest organizing efforts over the last decade, including worker organizing drives at Amazon, Starbucks, and Trader Joe’s (Logan 2025). These law firms have essentially created a specialized practice of union busting and together have generated billions of dollars in revenue, as shown in Table 2. The firms range from exclusively labor and employment firms to full-service corporate firms offering representation in a range of matters. The following are profiles of three law firms that have been at the center of the largest union avoidance campaigns in recent years.

Littler Mendelson

One of the largest union avoidance law firms is Littler Mendelson, a global management-side law firm with more than 1,800 attorneys who can make upwards of $1,700 an hour (Littler Mendelson 2026).4 In Littler Mendelson’s 80-year history, it has represented the likes of Amazon, Delta Airlines, and McDonald’s and has played a predominant role in Starbucks’s anti-union campaign (Logan 2022; Logan 2025). Beyond offering their union-busting services to employers, Littler Mendelson has expanded their services to include promoting anti-worker legislation. For example, Littler Mendelson’s Workplace Policy Institute (WPI) played a predominant role in opposing California’s Assembly Bill (AB) 5, legislation aimed at protecting workers by combatting misclassification (Poydock 2020). WPI also supported the passage of Proposition 22, which exempted gig workers from AB5 (McNicholas and Poydock 2019). WPI is part of the Coalition for Workplace Innovation, which has lobbied for proposals that weaken workers’ rights, including the exclusion of gig/app-based workers from employee status (Pinto 2022).

Morgan Lewis

Morgan Lewis also has a large practice aimed at union avoidance (Morgan Lewis 2026). The firm is a global law firm with nearly 2,000 attorneys, representing the likes of Amazon, REI, and McDonald’s. In addition to being one of the largest union avoidance law firms, Morgan Lewis is also known as one of the most expensive firms, with partners making $1,100 to $1,900 an hour.5 Morgan Lewis is the lead law firm engaged in the legal challenge to have the NLRB declared unconstitutional, despite employing multiple former NLRB officials (Rhinehart and McNicholas 2024).

Jackson Lewis

Another law firm with a significant union avoidance practice is Jackson Lewis, a national labor and employment law firm with a nearly 70-year history in union avoidance (Jackson Lewis 2026). The firm has over 1,000 attorneys who can make upwards of $730 per hour.6 Jackson Lewis has an especially robust presence in the higher education and health care industries but also serves major companies in a wide range of other industries, such as ExxonMobil, Amazon, and Google. As with other union avoidance law firms, Jackson Lewis’s services go beyond legal representation—often providing employers a “full-service” campaign in which they train supervisors and design materials, including speeches, to dissuade workers from organizing a union (Correia 2019).

How union avoidance law firms frustrate worker organizing

The NLRB election process is designed to be straightforward. Workers seeking to form a union file an election petition with the NLRB with signatures of at least 30% of the proposed bargaining unit. If parties cannot agree on a bargaining unit and election logistics, the NLRB will hold a hearing on issues of disagreement and then issue a decision and direct that an election be held. Either party can file post-election objections over the conduct of the election and other issues. Once these issues are resolved, if a majority of workers casting valid ballots in the election vote for union representation, the NLRB will certify the union and direct the parties to begin bargaining. 

While the NLRB election process is supposed to be relatively simple, the strategy of union avoidance law firms follows a standard playbook—they use their overwhelming resources to exploit the NLRB’s administrative processes and sometimes create nearly endless delays. This includes challenging bargaining units and election results and filing endless appeals of adverse decisions (See Appendix Table 1 for examples). The result is to create an unnecessarily complicated and protracted legal process for workers. The NLRB’s own performance objectives aim to ensure that the median age of representation and unfair labor practice cases before the Board is 180 days or less (NLRB 2025). While the NLRB has achieved this goal for many years, the median age for cases is over 100 days and for some workers, it can take years. For example, the NLRB only recently ordered Amazon—an employer known for hiring Littler Mendelson, Morgan Lewis, and Ogletree Deakins—to bargain with workers who voted to unionize over four years ago (Bensinger 2026).

Impact of union avoidance

The roughly $1.7 billion U.S. employers spend each year on anti-union law firms and consultants has an undeniable impact on workers’ ability to organize and bargain collectively. It also contributes to the creation of an economy marked by inequality: It has been well documented that the decline in unionization has contributed to increased income inequality over the last several decades (Bivens et al. 2023). It is no coincidence that the overall decline in unionization follows decades of federal policy neglect that have weakened U.S. labor law. The loopholes in U.S. labor law, which union avoidance consultants and law firms exploit, routinely frustrate workers’ organizing and collective bargaining, enabling wealthy corporations to prosper at workers’ expense.

Why would these corporations want to frustrate workers’ organizing? Consider the benefits unions provide for workers and their communities. When workers join together in a union and engage in collective bargaining, they see higher wages and better benefits (McNicholas, Poydock, and Shierholz 2026). Further, in communities with higher union density rates, working families have higher incomes, greater access to health care, and few voter restrictions (McNicholas et al. 2025). It is clear that when unions are strong, workers have more power and their communities thrive.

Despite the erosion of U.S. labor law and the standard playbook of union avoidance, workers do win unions and union contracts. In 2025, 16.5 million workers in the United States were represented by a union—an increase of 463,000 from 2024 and the highest number of unionized workers in the U.S. in 16 years. The 2025 rise in union density coincides with a high public favorability toward unions, with nearly 70% of people in the U.S. viewing unions favorably (Brenan 2025). Further, research from the Pew Research Center finds that most people in the U.S. see the decline in union density as bad for the country (60%) and bad for working people (62%) (Van Green 2025).

To sustain the modest gains seen in union density in 2025, policymakers must act to restore workers’ rights to a union and collective bargaining. This is critical to the health of our economy and to ensuring that workers receive a fair share of the profits they help produce. Policymakers must pass the Richard L. Trumka Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act, which would help restore private-sector workers’ ability to form unions and bargain collectively.7 The PRO Act addresses many of the major shortcomings with U.S. labor law by establishing civil penalties for employers who violate workers’ rights, creating an election process that limits employer interference, and establishing a bargaining process for reaching a first contract in a timely manner. The PRO Act also would shed light on the union avoidance industry by requiring prompt disclosure of union-busting activities and closing the “advice” loophole through which employers and consultants have evaded reporting (McNicholas, Poydock, and Rhinehart 2021).

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Joe Fast and Hannah Faris for their research assistance for this report.