Retail giant Amazon spent at least $3.1 million on anti-union consultants last year, with a chunk of that paid out to consultants reportedly based in Florida.
Federal financial disclosure reports show that $122,958 of that alone went to two “union avoidance” consultants affiliated with a labor relations firm in the greater Orlando area.
The business address of one of the anti-union consultants, Aaron Butler, is listed in a report submitted to the U.S. labor department at an address that doesn’t exist.
Another address listed for consultant Marcia Carter, his business partner, similarly misidentifies their firm’s address in Clermont, Florida for an address in California that also doesn’t exist.
Both performed consultancy work last year for Amazon through an agreement they had with the Rayla Group, an anti-union consultancy firm.
A financial disclosure report filed by the Rayla Group shows the firm contracted Butler and Carter for a job with Amazon to “persuade employees to exercise or not to exercise, or persuade employees as to the manner of exercising, the right to organize and bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing.”
According to the report filed, both were specifically directed “to educate employees on their rights under the [National Labor Relations Act],” which is generally code for holding anti-union meetings with employees, also known as “captive audience” meetings.
Workers have described these meetings as coercive in nature; they are held during employees’ work hours (causing disruption to workflow) and are specifically meant to spook workers away from the idea of forming or joining a labor union to advocate for better wages and working conditions.
According to a separate report filed by the same firm in December, Butler and Carter were two of seven consultants contracted by the firm in 2023 to carry out their agreements with Amazon, which vaguely list several facilities or types of facilities as targets.
The company explained in their own report to the U.S. Department of Labor that the firm was retained “in response to large scale union organizing efforts, including to assist us in expressing the companys [sic] opinion on union representation, and to educate employees about the issues, election process and their rights under the law.”
The individual consultants assigned to each facility are not clarified.
According to reports filed, the Seattle-based retail company paid the Rayla Group alone $1.3 million in 2023 to deliver its anti-union messaging to employees.
But Amazon also contracted the services of four other so-called “union avoidance” consultancy firms — including Road Warrior Productions (aka RWP Labor), a union-busting firm headquartered in Satellite Beach, Florida.
That firm is headed by CEO Russell “Russ” Brown, who also serves as president of the Center for Independent Employees, an out-of-state group partnered with the conservative State Policy Network that has taken credit for helping to craft a sweeping anti-union law in Florida last year that has so far caused thousands of public sector workers in Florida to lose their union representation.
One of the consultants Brown enlisted last year, according to financial disclosures, was Monica Meija, a consultant who is reportedly based in Casselberry, north of Orlando. Brown paid Meija at least $115,076 in 2023 to “educate” employees at ONT8, an Amazon warehouse based in Moreno Valley, California.
A consultant affiliated with a firm in Celebration, Florida — a manufactured community near Orlando, originally developed by the Walt Disney Co. — and three consultants with a firm based in Del Ray Beach were also enlisted last year to convince Amazon workers not to unionize.
According to that report, filed by the Illinois-based Government Resources Consultants of America Inc, the target of their work was “various employees across the Eastern Region of the US as may be requested from time to time.”
Another firm contracted by Amazon — Lev Labor, based in Maryland — also paid three labor consultants affiliated with Florida-based consultancy outfits nearly $278,000 collectively to do union-busting for Amazon, although it’s unclear where that work took place.
Believe it or not, this is a decline from previous years. According to HuffPost, Amazon spent over $14 million on anti-union consultants in 2022, and $4.3 million the year before that to thwart unionization efforts by their employees.
The company — which reported net sales of $578 billion last year — has faced multiple union organizing drives in New York, Alabama and other states across the country (not including Florida) in recent years.
The independent Amazon Labor Union (ALU) successfully organized the first union Amazon warehouse in the country in Staten Island, New York in April 2022 — marking a historic (and frankly, surprise) victory for the labor movement.
A year before that, Amazon workers in Bessemer, Alabama, similarly tried to organize with another, more established union — the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) — but that effort was ultimately unsuccessful, even after the National Labor Relations Board ordered a second, rerun election after concluding Amazon’s violations of labor law had unlawfully tainted the first vote.
The company ran a scorched-earth union-busting campaign in Bessemer — which consultant Nekeya Nunn of the Orlando-based Labor Pros was also rumored (but not confirmed) to have worked on, according to professor John Logan, who serves as director of Labor and Employment Studies at San Francisco State University.
So far, the Staten Island warehouse is the only unionized Amazon site in the country. Subcontracted drivers for Amazon in California, employed through one of the company’s delivery partners, also unionized with the Teamsters last year but have similarly faced difficulties in talks with the company, including job terminations.
The warehouse workers in Staten Island are still without a union contract, two years after their historic win, and internal conflict within the union has complicated efforts to build and sustain solidarity amid roadblocks put up by their employer.
The address simply does not exist
Butler, the anti-union consultant reportedly based in Orlando (you’ll get why we say that in a minute), was paid $78,389 last year by the Rayla Group to “educate” Amazon employees about their union rights, records show. Carter, his business partner based in Clermont, was paid $44,569.
Amazon had different agreements for the group, spanning different facilities and different lengths of time, so it’s not unusual to see one consultant paid less or more than another.
What’s odd is: The address listed for Butler — 1584 Montane St. in Orlando — does not exist within city limits, nor does the ZIP code of 31118 listed for the address.
That ZIP code doesn’t appear to exist at all, in Central Florida or otherwise.
The same Orlando address is listed for Butler in another persuader report filed by a different anti-union firm, while several other reports share an address for him in Clermont that matches the address he and Carter have registered with the state for their joint business, Butler Carter Connection.
There is a 1584 Montana Ave. in Orlando, in the Colonialtown North neighborhood, but that’s a different ZIP code than what’s reported, and it’s not home to any sort of property, according to county records, let alone a business setup. Butler’s LinkedIn profile lists his city as Jacksonville.
Marcia Carter’s address, meanwhile, is listed as an address in “Claremount,” California — a city that does not exist.
While there is indeed a city in California called Claremont, all other details of the address listed by the Rayla Group — including the ZIP code — match Butler Carter Connection’s business address in Clermont, Florida.
Neither Butler nor Carter answered Orlando Weekly’’s requests for comment on the address issue or their persuader activity when contacted by phone or email.
However, while there’s no time stamp for reports filed, it appears Carter filed a report on Tuesday, disclosing work for Amazon, after Orlando Weekly called her number. The woman who answered the call (who did not tell us her name) told us we had the wrong number (granted, we called initially asking to speak to her business partner, Butler).
Carter correctly reported her business address in that Tuesday report.
Addresses listed in reports by Lev Labor — another one of the anti-union firms Amazon hired — also incorrectly identified some of their consultants as Florida-based, when a quick Google search reveals their business addresses are actually affiliated with cities outside the state. So did Brown, the CEO of the anti-union firm in Satellite Beach.
Under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act (LMRDA), outside labor consultants (or “persuaders”) contracted by employers are required to file federal reports known as LM-20s and LM-21s with the U.S. Department of Labor, disclosing the details of their contractual arrangements.
These reports are often, accidentally or not, riddled with errors. Many consultants file their reports late, insert typos, use fake names, or file reports with information missing, such as the classification of workers they are interacting with, and the financial details of their arrangements — i.e., their rate of pay.
Consultants are generally paid by the hour — at an hourly rate of up to $400 or so, depending on the agreement — or by the day — with some rates exceeding several thousands of dollars a day, plus initial retainers, travel and other expenses.
These reports are supposed to provide transparency, both to the public and employees involved in these union drives.
Experts expect there’s also “persuader” activity that isn’t reported at all — by either consultants or employers, who are similarly required to file annual reports for any agreements they enter into with anti-union persuaders and how much they pay them.
Butler, for his part, hasn’t filed a single report disclosing his own persuader activity himself. This is despite being listed in several financial disclosure reports filed by union avoidance firms he contracted with, including the Rayla Group — which lists its address as what looks to be a post office box at a UPS office in Michigan.
Carter has filed two of her own reports, but not for the Amazon job. She was also paid last year to try and convince registered nurses at dialysis clinics in California not to unionize with the Service Employees International Union (SEIU).
The greater Orlando area is home to a surprisingly high number of “union avoidance” outfits and individual consultants who have been hired by the likes of Hilton Hotels, Barnes & Noble College Bookstores, Lowe’s and Amy’s Kitchen to prevent employees from unionizing.
The greater Orlando area is home to a surprisingly high number of “union avoidance” outfits that have been hired by the likes of Hilton Hotels, Barnes & Noble College Bookstores, Lowe’s and Amy’s Kitchen.
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Tracy Schrey, a former HR manager for what used to be known as Disney’s Reedy Creek district, was enlisted for a job in 2021 to prevent Dollar General workers in Barkhamsted, Connecticut, from joining the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW).
A judge for the federal labor board last year said Dollar General violated federal labor law during that campaign by wrongfully firing a worker and allegedly threatening to close the store if workers unionized (thus, illegally threatening their job security for exercising their protected right to organize).
Schrey, who works out of Winter Garden, Florida, served as a manager for the Reedy Creek special tax district (now known as the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District) until she was fired in 2018. She currently sits on the West Orange Habitat for Humanity’s board of directors.
As Orlando Weekly reported last year, consultants contracted by the Orlando-based Labor Pros firm, based in downtown Orlando, allegedly compared union membership to “chattel slavery” and “Jim Crow” during meetings with employees of a Barnes & Noble college bookstore at Rutgers University, according to an assistant store manager who was supportive of the union effort.
Workers there unanimously voted to unionize, despite weaponized language that the assistant store manager described to Orlando Weekly last year as “jarring.”
Union-busting is a lucrative, decades-old industry, worth billions of dollars. Some consultants in the industry today are ex-union leaders themselves who switched sides, sometimes after being kicked out of their unions for undemocratic (and/or illegal) practices.
This experience within the labor movement gives those former union staffers unique leverage in their pitches to employers that are desperate to thwart the “threat of unionization,” as former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz put it.
Public support for labor unions in the U.S. is at a near-record high, despite the fact that 90 percent of workers in the United States aren’t union members, and the percentage of union membership has declined over the past several decades.
A 2017 poll found that nearly 50 percent of nonunion workers said they would vote for union representation, but decades of anti-union labor policy — especially in southern, “nonunion” states like Florida — have made the job of organizing harder.
Organizing campaigns at companies like Amazon, Starbucks and Trader Joe’s (another union buster) have inspired workers, particularly younger workers in difficult-to-organize sectors like restaurants and hospitality, to consider organizing for improvements on the job.
The National Labor Relations Board, the federal agency overseeing private sector union matters, on Tuesday shared that the number of petitions filed for union elections in the first six months of the current fiscal year rose 35 percent year-over-year.
From Oct. 1, 2023, to March 31, 2024, 1,618 petitions were filed seeking union representation, compared with 1,199 in the first half of the last fiscal year.
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Consulting firm McKinsey & Co. is paying its underperforming staffers to embark on the job hunt.
Instead of taking on new projects, managers at the consultancy’s U.K. offices will receive nine months of pay and continue to have access to its career-coaching services while looking for a new position, London-based newspaper The Times reported over the weekend. There are some strings attached, however: If managers don’t find another job at the end of the nine months, they have to leave the firm.
The opportunity is also on offer at its U.S. offices, sources told the publication, but it’s not known if there are any pay or duration differences between the two programs.
A McKinsey spokesperson told The Times that the program will allow employees to “grow into leaders, whether they stay at McKinsey or continue their careers elsewhere” and that the actions are part of an “ongoing effort to ensure our performance management and development approach is as effective as possible, and to do so in a caring and supportive way.”
McKinsey did not immediately respond to Quartz’s request for comment.
This is an apparent expansion of the firm’s “counseled to leave” approach, a practice reserved for underperforming employees wherein the company keeps the staffer off of client projects and recommends they look for a new employer.
In the last several months, the firm gave 3,000 of its consultants a “concerns” rating over unsatisfactory performance, Bloomberg News reported last month. The rating gives staffers roughly three months to improve the performance, placing them on the “counseled to leave” program. If they’re not able to turn their performance around in that time, they are at risk of being put on the chopping block.
McKinsey has grown its staff size to about 45,000 employees — an increase of 60% from 28,000 employees in 2018.
Layoffs at major consulting firms have become almost run-of-the-mill as they try to pare back their bloated headcounts following a pandemic-era hiring craze. In March 2023, McKinsey culled 1,400 jobs in a rare — but sweeping — headcount reduction, Bloomberg reported at the time.
The biggest Wall Street banks cut 30,000 jobs last year, kicked off by Goldman Sachs who informed its staff of plans to make its deepest reductions since the 2008 financial crisis shortly after Christmas 2022.
Goldman’s 3,200 job cuts were swiftly followed by 3,500 at Morgan Stanley, and then 5,000 at Citigroup. Bank of America refrained from deep redundancies, but 4,000 employees departed regardless through its ‘natural attrition’ approach last year.
With the exception of Credit Suisse, which started cutting thousands of roles before being acquired by its biggest rival UBS in March, European banks refrained from deep redundancies last year.
Times have changed.
Whether it’s an attempt to revive a flagging share price, free up funds for buybacks, the march of technology, strategic overhauls or simply reining in costs, top European banks are cutting jobs and reducing bonuses for those that remain.
READ ‘Doughnuts’ loom: Bankers brace for brutal bonus season
“It’s a balancing act for a lot of European banks, particularly after two years of poor performance for investment banking. There’s only so long you can keep paying expensive talent in the hope that revenue will recover,” said Gary Greenwood, a bank analyst at Shore Capital.
Barclays is expected to unveil a strategic overhaul alongside its annual results on 20 February, with the UK lender looking to save £1.25bn in costs. So far, job cuts have mainly hit support functions. Deutsche Bank said that 3,500 jobs will go over the next year, largely in back office functions, as it looks to save €2.5bn after headcount swelled 6% in 2023.
Societe Generale is cutting 900 jobs within its Paris headquarters as part of new CEO Slawomir Krupa’s plans to pull back on costs, while UBS has earmarked around $6.5bn in employee expenses to be stripped out as it integrates Credit Suisse.
On a smaller scale, Rothschild cut around 10 investment banking jobs in January, with former Goldman dealmaker John Brennan departing.
“The US banks are much more reactive in terms of cutting headcount than their European counterparts,” said Stephane Rambosson, co-founder of headhunters Vici Advisory. “European banks are now focused on costs, but each case is specific to their circumstances rather than market conditions. Wall Street banks are also quicker to hire again when the tide turns.”
As well as job cuts, bankers are enduring another brutal bonus round. There is widespread disgruntlement at UBS as the bank spread an already small pool around its existing employees, the influx of Credit Suisse staff and a flurry of senior Barclays dealmakers brought in last year on guarantees, according to bankers.
Barclays has handed zero bonuses to up to a third of dealmakers in some units, bankers told Financial News, with Bloomberg previously reporting that “dozens” of employees were set for doughnuts this year. Deutsche Bank, which also has to digest an expensive hiring spree and its £410m acquisition of City broker Numis, is also set to reduce bonus payments.
READ Investment banks face talent crunch even after deep job cuts
“We have observed a similar, but even more aggressive, trend with the European banks regarding layoffs and bonus pool reductions,” said Chris Connors of Wall Street compensation consultants Johnson Associates. “The European banks have struggled to keep pace with their American counterparts on business results and compensation. From the employee perspective, we anticipate European bankers to be similarly disappointed to US bankers given the muted results in advisory and other units such as underwriting, which are still well below 2021 levels.”
While US banks cut dozens of dealmakers last year, some European players took advantage of the dislocation. Deutsche hired 50 senior bankers, while Santander picked up dealmakers from both the fallout from Credit Suisse’s takeover and from Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.
Most cuts so far at European banks have focused on management or back office functions, and there’s little suggestion that deep investment banker redundancies are on the cards, particularly as banks prepare for a revival in dealmaking activity after a near two-year lull. However, headhunters told FN that many banks were taking a much more cautious approach about bringing in senior talent.
During its fourth quarter earnings call, Deutsche Bank chief executive, Christian Sewing said that the bank had “positioned ourselves for a recovery in origination and advisory” after its hiring spree. “Now, this is where we see considerable growth potential,” he added.
“Investment banking is a people business, so banks will be reluctant to let too much talent depart,” added Greenwood. “This could change — a recovery is possible, but there are still a lot of risks in the market.”
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Paul Clarke
Financial services firms have been cutting jobs for the past year, with no signs of letting up.
Banks, asset managers and consultancies have all cut swathes of jobs in recent months.
City jobs dried up in the last quarter of 2023, with the number of available financial services roles falling 42% compared with the fourth quarter of 2022, according to Morgan McKinley’s London Employment Monitor.
During the post-pandemic deal boom many major finance firms went on hiring sprees, which left them overstaffed, and a slower job market has meant that fewer of those staff moved on.
READ Bankers, lawyers and accountants won’t quit, stoking fears of more job cuts
Morgan Stanley and PwC both pointed to lower staff attrition rates as part of their motivation for cutting jobs.
Banks have been characteristically brutal in their job cuts, and major disruption such as the merger of UBS with Credit Suisse and Citigroup’s radical overhaul are set to lead to thousands of roles going.
In recent months banks have been followed by asset managers, which are shedding jobs in a tough climate for active fund houses too.
Consultancy and accountancy firms have also cut thousands of jobs as demand for deal advice dries up in a slower market.
These are the banks, consultancy firms and asset managers cutting jobs:
Banks
UBS expects half of planned $13bn cost-cuts to come from employees
UBS rolls out fresh layoffs as Credit Suisse integration continues
Citigroup to cut 20,000 roles in Jane Fraser’s radical overhaul
Citigroup offers generous redundancy package to laid-off UK bankers
Barclays cut 5,000 jobs last year in cost-reduction push
Deutsche Bank to cut 3,500 more jobs in cost-cutting push
Nomura cuts 60 investment bank jobs in difficult dealmaking conditions
Societe Generale to axe 900 jobs in France
Rothschild-owned Redburn Atlantic cuts 20 staff amid UK equity drought
Asset managers
BlackRock to cull 600 jobs as it eyes ‘opportunities for growth’
Abrdn outflows top £12bn as group prepares to cut 500 jobs
Baillie Gifford to cut jobs after fixed income overhaul
Consultancy
EY launches fresh round of UK job cuts
EY is laying off US partners amid tough economic conditions
Deloitte UK to axe 100 jobs amid slow deals market
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email James Booth
EY is set to pay some of its UK consultants to take time away from the business, the latest sign of pressure on a strained market for advisory services.
The Big Four firm has launched a “time out summer programme” for financial services consulting staff, according to an internal memo seen by Financial News.
Employees who are not deployed on an assignment or without an assignment from March to August 2024 can leave their role for up to 12 weeks.
READ EY is laying off US partners amid tough economic conditions
The time out will be unpaid, but staff will receive a bonus of 25% of their notional salary on their return.
The scheme is the latest in a line of money-saving initiatives by leading consultancy firms, which have faced the challenge of highly paid staff sitting idle as key clients like banks and private equity houses suffer from a deal slump and face their own cost pressures.
Practices such as restructuring have held up, but other workstreams have flatlined, raising tough decisions over whether headcount should be trimmed in a bid to keep partner profits strong.
Consulting is bearing the brunt of Deloitte’s 800 planned job cuts. One hundred UK deal advisers are being slashed by KPMG, while PwC is getting rid of 600 roles. Many global consultancies are also pushing back graduate start dates to save immediate costs, and US sector leaders including McKinsey and Boston Consulting Group are set to rack up thousands of redundancies.
EY’s memo says the time out programme creates opportunities “to achieve balance in your work and personal lives” and “constructively use your time either travelling, spending time with family or just time out for yourself.”
READ EY UK defers graduate roles until 2024 after split failure
To be allowed time off, staff must be graded at least “performing as expected”. They will receive their usual benefits for the time away, which must be a minimum of four weeks.
EY can reject requests to join the scheme at its discretion, and requires staff to submit plans to use around 40% of their holiday by the end of June and 70% by the end of August, because the time out supplements existing annual leave.
The short-term pause suggests EY is betting on a deals rebound later in 2024. Bankers are holding out high hopes that UK success stories including Starling, Monzo and Oaknorth could pick London to float and rekindle sluggish capital markets as the government and private sector overhaul listings rules and prepare to launch a new intermittent trading venue to breath life back into the City.
“EY’s UK financial services consulting business is operating an ‘Employee TimeOut’ initiative, offering its people four to twelve weeks of unpaid leave over the summer months,” an EY spokesperson confirmed.
To contact the author of this story with feedback or news, email Justin Cash