Training materials for 2019 session said company ‘will not tolerate’ unionizing.
(Bloomberg) — Comcast Corp.’s NBCUniversal held a role-play session for managers about how to defeat union drives, a task the training materials for the exercise said was necessary for employees to keep their jobs.
In the hourslong simulation, managers were tasked with running a television station called WSEE-TV that had to figure out how to prevent employees from unionizing with the Communications Workers of America. Training materials that accompanied the 2019 session laid out the importance of keeping unions at bay.
“Your corporate management will not tolerate losing WSEE’s nonunion status,” according to the document, which was viewed by Bloomberg News. “It is a well established, unwritten policy for NBCUniversal managers that the continuing nonunion status of union-free operations is a condition of employment.”
The materials give a rare glimpse into how one of the largest US media conglomerates has confronted a resurgent labor movement. The company, which Comcast acquired a decade ago from General Electric Co., includes such brands as NBC, Telemundo and Universal Pictures, as well as cable networks USA and MSNBC. “A small overall portion” of the media company’s full-time US staff is unionized, according to a Comcast filing.
The company has been in negotiations for years with a couple hundred digital editorial workers for several of its brands. Those workers voted to unionize in late 2019 with the CWA’s NewsGuild, but have yet to secure a collective bargaining agreement.
In a statement, NBCUniversal said that the WSEE training session doesn’t reflect its true attitude toward unions. The company also said it is negotiating with the guild in good faith and trying to reach an agreement promptly.
“This training exercise is a completely made-up scenario and in no way representative of NBCUniversal’s views around employees choosing to organize,” the company said. “To the contrary, at NBCUniversal we respect an employee’s right to organize and train managers on how to appropriately and lawfully work with employees if they decide to undertake this process.”
The media company said it only conducted the role-play session once in the past four years. “This specific training exercise purposely showcases an extreme example of what not to do as part of our broader management training aimed at respecting an employee’s right to organize,” NBCUniversal said.
The NewsGuild said it was disturbed to learn about the training exercise.
“It’s embarrassing that our managers continue to waste time and money on union-busting tricks to fight our right to organize for a better workplace, and it’s long past time for NBC to agree to a fair contract,” video editor and union leader Tate James said in a statement.
The role-play session was part of an annual five-day training on “positive workforce leadership,” held in Florida for select managers from various NBC brands, according to the documents viewed by Bloomberg. The gatherings have been held on the premises of the company’s Universal Orlando Resort.
“Participants will learn to promote a positive work environment and recognize risk factors within their workforce through an immersive learning experience,” an NBCUniversal employment attorney wrote in an email at the time. “The program includes an in-depth discussion of effective communication, leadership behaviors and leadership styles.”
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The training material for the role-playing activity included a memo from a pretend human resources director saying, “If the tempo of the union campaign should pick up, I would suggest we embark on a vigorous union awareness campaign of our own.”
The instructions for the exercise stated, “Your task as a management team is to use and respond to all of this information in a manner that will allow you to maintain the non-union status of your WSEE employees.” A fact sheet describing the scenario stated that the company was “committed to pay no more than necessary” to workers.
Legal experts said that a company telling managers that it wouldn’t tolerate unionization — and that keeping out unions was a condition of employment — could violate federal labor law, even if couched in a role-play exercise.
“There’s no doubt it’s coercive,” said former National Labor Relations Board member Wilma Liebman, who served as chair of the agency under President Barack Obama.
Such comments are legally fraught, Liebman said. For one, they could reasonably be interpreted by managers as a directive to do whatever they deemed necessary to defeat organizing, she said. Also, if the message leaked to rank-and-file employees, they could interpret it as a threat to retaliate against them.
A key premise of US workplace law, dating back to the New Deal era, is that the decision whether to unionize should belong to employees, rather than management, said Harvard Law School professor Benjamin Sachs. “To say that we will not tolerate a union environment is to violate the spirit of the federal law,” he said, “if not the letter.”
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