Anti-union corporate staff meetings recorded

One example from a Popular Resistance story:

These Staples meetings were held at one of the company’s distribution centers in Atlanta. As is common in such meetings, one of the managers leading it starts by noting that anyone in the room is free to unionize.

“The choice on whether to have a union or not is yours,” he says.

And yet he paints unionization as an awful idea:

“Unions are divisive in the workplace.”

“Unions come between employers and employees.”

“Unions can pit associates against one another.”

“Unions are a business that needs your money. Don’t be fooled: Unions are first and foremost a business.”

But he later adds, “I’m trying to give you an objective opinion.”

A woman helping to lead the meeting acknowledges the discontent among the Staples workers — after all, union campaigns don’t spring from nowhere — but says there’s little that anyone can do about it. She says Staples is being squeezed by the economy and the general business climate, as well as by Obamacare.

“There’s stuff that a lot of people are unhappy with [that] the company is doing,” she says. “But guess what? The bottom line is we need to stay competitive. We’re not making the money we need to make. It’s not the same climate out there.”

(Faced with growing online competition, Staples announced that it would close 140 stores this year amid lagging sales. The company did, however, beat analysts’ predictions with an $82 million profit last quarter.)

After being told that unionizing could be expensive, one worker shoots back: “We get treated like dirt now. So, like, what’s the point? Who cares?”

A worker who made one of the recordings told HuffPost he supports the union efforts because of what he described as low pay and a lack of job security at the facility.

“They tried to tell us we don’t need a union and a third party to come in to negotiate,” the worker said. “They said ‘y’all could end up losing money, the union people are only here to make money, they won’t want to sell office supplies, they go on lavish vacations.’ All that stuff.”

He added, “We pushed back on them.”

According to the worker, the presentation included an obviously dated video about what workers need to think about when going into a union election. (The video can be heard at the start of the second recording. Sample dialogue: “Signing a union authorization card would be like signing a blank check!”) Judging from the actors’ clothes and the cars they drove, the worker said, he estimated the video was from the 1970s.

“They had old hairdos, and they talked about stuff that’s probably not even happening anymore,” the worker said. “It was on a [VHS] cassette tape — not even a DVD.”

A Staples spokeswoman didn’t respond to multiple requests for comment on the recordings.