“It’s intimate to talk about race and identity,” said Duff. “That creates a vulnerability, and to have consultants come in and say, ‘Hey, look, I understand the discrimination you’ve gone through, you can open up to me,’ that can get you a lot of valuable intelligence.”

Such vulnerabilities can be key insights during an organizing drive. In 2011, Pratt Logistics opened a new plant in Pennsylvania. The company brought in a man who only identified himself as an efficiency expert named “Jay.” Jay went around conducting one-on-one interviews with workers, asking them about what problems they faced, their values, and concerns.

Later, when truckers and warehouse workers at Pratt began steps to form a union at the new plant, the company instantly fired union sympathizers. It wasn’t until later that they found out Jay’s real identity: Jason Greer, the union suppression consultant, who had been hired explicitly to identify potential union supporters.

Our business is like a family, patriarchal and oppressive

When workers at vegan food company No Evil Foods, which makes imitation meat products sold at Whole Foods and other upscale groceries, held captive audience anti-union seminars, the company warned workers about the “old white guys” in union leadership and compared union dues to taxpayers funding President Donald Trump’s golf junkets.

In other records leaked out of the No Evil Foods seminars, workers were warned that unions were hotbeds of sexism and sexual harassment, and did not share the vegan food manufacturer’s progressive values. The union drive at the firm ultimately failed.

[…]

One of the most insidious tactics have been the use of supposed employee resource groups, also known as affinity groups or ERGs, to undermine labor activism. Many companies offer specific ERGs for Asian, Black, Latino, or LGBTQ+ individuals, among other identity-based suborganizations as part of a larger diversity and inclusion program.

The management-sanctioned groups are attempts to create safe spaces for historically marginalized identities to voice shared concerns and create a sense of community within the workplace. According to a study published last year by McKinsey & Co. that surveyed 423 organizations employing 12 million people, close to 35 percent of firms have added or expanded ERGs since 2020.

[…] ERGs can provide a useful corporate alternative to unions that places management in control. The tech reporting site Protocol noted that when tech firms such as Mapbox faced a union organizing drive, the company kicked off DEI-related efforts, including ERGs, in order to allay worker concerns.

“ERGs kind of passively work against the idea of a union in that they’re a way for you to kind of spend your energy without it turning into anything,” one tech worker told the media outlet.