Brookfield-owned Westinghouse spends $800,000 in anti-union campaign, fails to make federal disclosures

Brookfield-owned Westinghouse Electric spent more than $800,000 on anti-union consultants last year and failed to make required disclosures, according to a complaint filed on August 20 by watchdog group LaborLab with the US Department of Labor’s Office of Labor-Management Standards (OLMS). In 2023-2024, PESP reported on a union-busting campaign by management at Westinghouse’s Hopkins, South Carolina plant, a nuclear fuel fabrication facility. The campaign appears to have violated Brookfield’s own policies and commitments to investors. After months of anti-union efforts with at least a dozenallegations that the company violated federal law, Westinghouse defeated employees’ attempts to unionize in a March 2024 election and those Unfair Labor Practice charges continue to work their way through the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) over a year after the election. 

Federal filings reviewed by PESP reveal that Westinghouse management paid over $800,000 to union-busting consultants, including for 12 separate consultants to discourage employees from unionizing at its South Carolina plant  around an election that occurred on March 2, 2024. OLMS regulations require that when a company hires “persuaders” to come in and lobby employees against unionization, both the company and the individual persuaders have to file disclosures that, under federal law, are intended to require transparency about these lobbying efforts for employees who are deciding whether or not to join a union. Westinghouse filings due in the first quarter of 2025 do not appear on the public OLMS site. 

The LaborLab complaint notes that “the widespread non-compliance with reporting requirements during Westinghouse’s counter-organizing campaign denied IBEW members the ability to learn before a union election at Westinghousebegan about the hiring, contracted activities and pay rates of any of the 12 individual persuaders who were hired to counter IBEW’s organizing drive – thereby completely undermining the purpose of the LM-20 filing requirement,” noting violations such as: 

• Westinghouse failed to file any required disclosures to the OLMS for 2024
• 5 of 12 persuaders failed to file required LM20 disclosures with the OLMS
• Almost all disclosures that were filed were delinquent (more than 30 days late) 
• Most of the persuaders have never filed a required LM21 form with the OLMS
• Numerous filings were missing required information 

“The lack of disclosure compliance around Westinghouse’s anti-union campaign marks an exceptionally egregious denial of those rights and demands immediate corrective action” said the complaint, which asks the OLMS to investigate. 

As noted in PESP’s 2024 blog, Brookfield Renewable Partners’ November 2023 Human Rights Policy includes a commitment to “recognizing the rights to freedom of association and collective bargaining” that Westinghouse appeared to violate by its actions during the union organizing effort such as spending more than $800,000 on anti-union consultants.

Continued anti-union efforts by employers can divert resources, generate NLRB complaints, cause violations of reporting requirements, and create legal or reputational risks for private equity firms and investors. Brookfield investors should inquire whether the firm continues to violate its own commitments and ensure that Westinghouse corrects any violations of federal reporting requirements, settles the pending unfair labor practice charges, and commits to repair its reputation with a real commitment to freedom of association and a broad set of cross-portfolio labor principles.