In These Times gives us this inside look at a seminar on how to prevent your workers from unionizing.  (HT Kevin Drum)  Here's a sample:

Once the seminar got underway, I learned that all of us were doingthe right thing in resisting unions. We believe that the union isirrelevant for the 21st century, declared Lotito. Unfortunately,unions have new weapons. To make his point, he waved a clipping fromthe New York Times describing some recent public relations woesof Wal-Mart. The risk for some organizations is not that youre goingto be organized from within, he advised us. Its that youre going tobe organized from without.

My fellow students, of whom there were about 20, came from variousparts of the country. We got to know one another a little when Lotitoinvited us to share our reasons for taking the course. It became like asupport group. We want to go to union-free, but weve got a bullseyeon our back, explained Martin, a tough-looking distribution supervisorfor a food services company. Its a big threat.

Donna, a human resources manager for a discount chain store with agung-ho manner, was more upbeat. Ive never dealt with unions, and Imdedicated to making sure that we keep them out of our distributioncenter, she vowed. Its my mission!

Eduardo M. Peñalver is the Allan R. Tessler Dean of the Cornell Law School. The views expressed in the piece are his own, and should not be attributed to Cornell University or Cornell Law School.

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