Labor spying in the United States had involved people recruited or employed for the purpose of gathering intelligence, committing sabotage, sowing dissent, or engaging in other similar activities, in the context of an employer/labor organization relationship. Spying by companies on union activities has been illegal in the United States since the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. However, non-union monitoring of employee activities while at work is perfectly legal and, according to the American Management Association, nearly 80% of major US companies actively monitor their employees.
Statistics suggest that historically trade unions have been frequent targets of labor spying.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pp. 75–96. Labor spying is most typically used by companies or their agents, and such activity often complements union busting. In at least one case, an employer hired labor spies to spy not only upon strikers, but also upon strikebreakers that he had hired.William Philpott, The Lessons of Leadville, Colorado Historical Society, 1995, p. 8.
Sidney Howard observed in 1921 that the labor spy, "often unknown to the very employer who retains him through his agency, is in a position of immense strength. There is no power to hold him to truth-telling."Sidney Howard, The Labor Spy, A Survey of Industrial Espionage, Chapter 1, The New Republic, reprinted in Mixer and server, Volume 30, Hotel and Restaurant Employee's International Alliance and Bartenders' International League of America, April 15, 1921, p. 42 Because the labor spy operates in secret, "all [co-workers] are suspected, and intense bitterness is aroused against employers, the innocent and the guilty alike."Richard C. Cabot, Introduction, The Labor Spy--A Survey of Industrial Espionage, by Sidney Howard and Robert Dunn, Under the Auspices of the Cabot Fund for Industrial Research, published in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine, Volume 71, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 1921, p. 31
Historically, one of the most incriminating indictments of the labor spy business may have been the testimony of Albert Balanow (some sources list the name as Ballin or Blanow) during an investigation of the detective agencies' roles during the Red Scare. Albert Balanow had worked with both the Burns Detective Agency and the Thiel Detective Agency. Balanow testified that the Red Scare was all about shaking down businessmen for protection money. "If there is no conspiracy, you've got to make a conspiracy in order to hold your job."William R. Hunt, Front-page detective: William J. Burns and the detective profession, 1880–1930, Popular Press, 1990, p. 166Donald Oscar Johnson, The challenge to American freedoms: World War I and the rise of the American Civil Liberties Union, Mississippi Valley Historical Association, University of Kentucky Press, 1963, p. 170Mary Heaton Vorse, A footnote to folly: reminiscences of Mary Heaton Vorse, Ayer Publishing, 1980, pp. 307–308
The sudden exposure of labor spies has driven workers "to violence and unreason", including at least one shooting war.Advocate, Volumes 28–29, Richard C. Cabot, Introduction, The Labor Spy—A Survey of Industrial Espionage, by Sidney Howard and Robert Dunn, Under the Auspices of the Cabot Fund for Industrial Research, published by the Retail Clerks International Association, 1921, p. 10Robert Michael Smith, From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, 2003, pp. 78–79
Definition Labor spies are usually agents employed by corporations, or hired through the services of union busting agencies, for the purpose of monitoring, disempowering, subverting, or destroying labor unions, or undermining actions taken by those unions.
[The labor spy] capitalizes the employer's ignorance and prejudice and enters the [workplace] specifically to identify the leaders of the Labor organization, to propagandize against them and blacklist them and to disrupt and corrupt their union. He is under cover, disguised as a worker, hired to betray the workers' cause.Richard C. Cabot, Introduction, The Labor Spy—A Survey of Industrial Espionage, by Sidney Howard and Robert Dunn, Under the Auspices of the Cabot Fund for Industrial Research, published in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine, Volume 71, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 1921, p. 27
Labor spies may be referred to as spies, operatives, agents, agents provocateurs, saboteurs, infiltrators, informants, spotters, plants, special police, or detectives. However, Dr. Richard C. Cabot, Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard, observed that labor spies are different from our normal view of detectives. While detectives investigate people suspected of crimes, the labor spy shadows and spies upon people who are not suspected of having committed any crime, nor are they suspected of planning any crime. During the mid-to-late-19th century, a period during which there was intense distaste for the detective profession, the Pinkerton and Thiel detective agencies referred to their field agents as operatives or testers. The Pinkerton logo inspired the expression private eye.J. Anthony Lukas, Big Trouble, 1997, pp. 80, 84.
Operatives employed for labor spying may be professional, recruited from the public, or recruited from members of a particular workforce for a specific operation such as strike breaking. They may be directly employed by the company, or they may report to the company through an agency.
Some agencies that provide such operatives to corporations offer full protective and union busting services, such as security guards, training, providing weaponry (including, historically, machine guns),The Pinkerton Labor Spy, Morris Friedman, Wilshire Book Company, 1907, p. 29. intelligence gathering, research, and strike-breaker recruitment services. Other agencies are more specialized.
Both the spy agencies and the companies that employ labor spies prefer to keep their activities secret.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pa. xiv. Some labor leaders have likewise sought to downplay the extent of industrial spying.Richard C. Cabot, Introduction, The Labor Spy--A Survey of Industrial Espionage, by Sidney Howard and Robert Dunn, Under the Auspices of the Cabot Fund for Industrial Research, published in the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen's Magazine, Volume 71, Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, 1921, p. 32 This, in spite of the fact that "industrial spies have played both sides against each other, and have been at the bottom of a great deal of the violence and corruption of industrial conflict."
The companies seek to avoid embarrassment and bad public relations. The spy agencies also concern themselves with "possible danger attendant upon discovery, and second, because the operative is thereafter a marked man ... his usefulness to the Agency is ended."The Pinkerton Labor Spy, Morris Friedman, Wilshire Book Company, 1907, p. 8. Therefore, actual labor spy reports, and even records of their existence, are a rare commodity."X," "XX," and "X-3", Spy Reports from the Colorado Fuel & Iron Company Archives, Colorado Heritage/Winter 2004, Jonathan Rees, p. 30.
Corporations are not subject to freedom of information requirements or sunshine laws, and therefore corporate practices such as spying are rarely subject to public scrutiny. However, historic examples of labor spying that have come to light provide a fairly substantive overview.
Labor spy techniques
A letter from the Burns Detective Agency declared to the employer, "[w]ithin the heart of your business is where we operate, down in the dark corners, in out-of-the-way places that cannot be seen from your office ..."Harry Wellington Laidler, Boycotts and the labor struggle economic and legal aspects, John Lane company, 1913, p. 295
Labor spies may employ techniques of surreptitious monitoring, "missionary" work (see below), sabotage, provoking chaos or violence, frameups, intimidation, or insinuating themselves into positions of authority from which they may alter the basic goals of an organization. A National Labor Relations Board chairman testified about the results of these techniques:
The mystery and deadly certainty with which this scheme [labor spying] operated was so baffling to the men that they each suspected the others, were afraid to meet or to talk and the union was completely broken.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, p. 87. The original word in brackets was "espionage."
A labor spy observed,
Those labor unions were so hot, crying about spies, that everything was at fever pitch and they look at each other with blood in their eyes.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, p. 87.
As one example of the impact of spying, a union local at the Underwood Elliot Fisher Company plant was so damaged by undercover operatives that membership dropped from more than twenty-five hundred, to fewer than seventy-five.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, p. 88.
Intelligence
In 1906, officers of the Corporations Auxiliary Company announced that they had labor spies at the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor. For fifteen dollars, prospective clients could have a "full and complete report of the entire proceedings."From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, p. 81. By 1919, spying on workers had become so common that steel company executives had accumulated six hundred spy reports. Some of them were accurate transcriptions of the secret meetings of union locals.From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, p. 82.
In order to elicit business, some agencies would send secret operatives into a prospective client's factory without permission. A report would be prepared and submitted to the startled manager, revealing conspiracies of sabotage and union activities.
Workers who were bribed to provide information to operatives often believed that the destination was an insurance agency, or interested stockholders. They never imagined that their reports on co-workers were destined for the corporation. Such workers were said to be "hooked," and in spy agency parlance those who reeled them in were called "hookers."
Missionary work
Missionary work means deploying undercover operatives to create dissent on the picket lines and in union halls, for example, by utilizing whispering campaigns or unfounded rumors. Missionaries frequently directed their whispering campaigns toward strikers' families and communities. For example, female operatives would visit the wives of strikers in their homes, incorporating their cover story into their spiel. They would tell the wife sad stories about how their own spouse lost a job years ago because of a strike, and hasn't found work since, and "that's why I must sell these products door to door."From Blackjacks To Briefcases — A History of Commercialized Strikebreaking and Unionbusting in the United States, Robert Michael Smith, 2003, pp. 88–89. The quoted text is paraphrased.
Another target was merchants who catered to strikers, who could be turned against the union by asserted claims of financial risks.