Gawker's Hamilton Nolan continues to chronicle the routine anti-union efforts at Target, posting an account by a salaried distribution center management-level employee who left the company in 2010. It's not news that many major corporations have developed extremely sophisticated and totally paranoid ways to identify possible union sympathizers and get rid of them, but the details of how that's done are always fascinating.
For instance, Nolan's correspondent explains how the groundwork was laid well in advance to make retaliatory firings look non-retaliatory:
They maintened a system of negative feedback on all of the hourly employees, whether or not they were a top performer, which could later be used as a paper trail for firing somebody in case they talked about a union. We were told if we caught somebody talking about a union we had "phrases to engage", I believe 9 phrases in total, that we could use when if we heard somebody talking about a union. We weren't allowed to ask certain questions but these phrases were a legal way for us to extract information. We were told to never write down this information and only say it directly to the HR manager. They would then be able to fire that individual and all of the individuals they associated with. They have a database full of negative comments about each employee so they could come up with some other reason to fire them...
That's if anyone who supported unions could get hired to begin with:
We also had training on how to read job applications. They gave us words to look out for which may indicate the employee was in a union at a previous jobs. Those applicants were not to be hired. The official training paperwork didn't say this, but verbally they did...As far as job applications go, I do specifically remember they said if we see words like shop steward, steward, local, brotherhood.
So not only will they fire you for wanting a union, they'll effectively blacklist you if you were ever in one. Welcome to the big box retail economy—and remember, if you're applying for a job at Target, be sure to expunge any suggestion you might not hate unions from your application.