'The company hires these people to basically lie to them': Trucking company hires union busters to obstruct Florida drivers’ effort to unionize

Trucking company MBM Logistics, affiliated with logistics companies DHL Express and VMW Express, has hired two out-of-state “union avoidance” professionals to discourage its drivers in Orlando and other Florida cities from joining forces with the Teamsters.

According to a report recently filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, the company last month entered into an agreement with the anti-union labor relations firm Action Resources to “communicate” with drivers in Orlando, Gainesville, Lakeland, Daytona Beach, and Palm Bay, Florida about “their rights to unionize and refrain from unionizing.”

The Teamsters labor union (formally known as the International Brotherhood of the Teamsters) represents about 1.3 million workers, including tens of thousands of people in Florida who work at places like UPS, Walt Disney World and in the public sector.

Action Resources, a labor relations firm based in Nevada, prides itself on helping employers in “ fending off an organizing campaign .” Records show the firm enlisted two anti-union consultants (also known as “persuaders”) for the job. Both persuaders — Gustavo Flores and Fernando Rivera — have been hired to disrupt organizing campaigns with the Teamsters in the past.

Flores, based out of California, belongs to a family of anti-union persuaders, including at least one former Teamsters official who was allegedly ousted from his union. The Californian also runs his own union avoidance firm out on the West Coast, and his services — pulling workers into meetings, passing out anti-union literature — don't come cheap.

A contract filed with the U.S. labor department in early August shows MBM Logistics agreed to pay Action Resources a daily rate of $3,750 per consultant for onsite “employee relations consulting services,” plus “all reasonable expenses,” including travel costs and meals. Services performed off-site will similarly be billed at a rate of $375 an hour, according to the agreement.

The timing of the agreement is notable. Signed by representatives of both parties, the agreement is dated July 19, 2024 — the very same day that MBM Logistics filed a petition with the National Labor Relations Board for a union election, after a majority of their 115 delivery drivers demonstrated support for unionizing with the Teamsters Local 385.

Under a federal rule finalized last year , an employer is required to file a petition for a union election if they are presented with evidence that a majority of employees want to unionize. The employer has the opportunity to then voluntarily recognize the union , or otherwise file a petition for a union election.

Walt Howard, president of Teamsters Local 385 in Orlando, told Orlando Weekly over the phone that local drivers contacted the union in the hopes of addressing issues they were experiencing on the job such as lack of job security, insufficient pay, and poor or nonexistent benefits.

Jose Faneitty, a new organizer for the local who's been in close contact with the workers, confirmed Howard's account. He said that workers have also reported unsafe vans — one worker shared that his vehicle's windshield literally flew off while he was driving one day on the Florida Turnpike — and said benefits like healthcare are “so expensive, nobody can basically afford them.”

Faneitty specifically recalled one pregnant worker he spoke to who said she felt pressured to keep working as her pregnancy progressed, because the company didn't offer maternity leave. Another driver, according to Faneitty, had a death in the family. After requesting time off to go to the funeral, however, the driver was told that if he left to attend it, he would be fired.

“I don't even work for the company and I want to quit,” Faneitty quipped.

Both Howard and Faneitty said drivers for MBM Logistics are also concerned about what they perceive as a lack of transparency from their employer, especially when it comes to pay.

The company has been cited for wage theft in the past, reaching a settlement with the Berger Montague law firm in 2021 over a wage-and-hour lawsuit filed with the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida. The law firm reached a $292,000 settlement with MBM Logistics and DHL Express on behalf of over 300 hourly drivers who the firm says were not paid for all hours worked, including overtime pay.

MBM Logistics, registered with the state as MBM Delivery and Logistics LLC, is a service provider for DHL Express, a logistics company that employs over 7,300 workers who are unionized with the Teamsters. It also recently settled a racial discrimination lawsuit filed by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission on behalf of employees.

MBM Logistics itself has a muted presence online. However, the company's controller, Amir Danesh — who signed MBM’s agreement with the anti-union firm — is affiliated with VMW Express, a regional carrier based in Virginia with clients that include DHL and UPS.

Danesh’s name also appears on a permit agreement that MBM Logistics has with the Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, a governmental entity and operator of the Orlando International Airport that has entered into publicly funded contracts with union-busting employers in the past . The permit agreement essentially allows for the company to conduct business and make money from their use of the airport’s property.

Orlando Weekly reached out to Danesh and MBM for comment on the new agreement with Action Resources via email, but did not receive a response ahead of publication.

Brother of a former Teamster, now busting the Teamsters

Flores, one of the two union avoidance professionals hired to turn local drivers off the idea of organizing, has a messy history of alleged labor violations that some Teamsters, and members of other labor unions, know well.

Last year, Flores’ firm — GNE Consulting — led a union-busting effort at the private equity-owned Aspire Bakeries in California that was so aggressive the National Labor Relations Board ordered a re-do union election.

Workers in that case narrowly voted against unionizing with the Bakery, Confectionery, Tobacco Workers and Grain Millers union both times, after Flores' union-busting outfit was accused by the union of multiple violations of federal labor law, including unlawful intimidation tactics, harassment and surveillance.

Gustavo’s brother Carlos — a former Teamster who later joined the union avoidance industry — reportedly threatened undocumented workers at the Long Island-based Tate’s Bakeshop who were trying to unionize a few years ago up north. As reported by Gothamist, Carlos allegedly told the workers he would look into their immigration documents and have them deported if they voted in favor of the union.

Both Carlos and Gustavo also appear to be related to Abraham “Abe” Flores, another union avoidance professional from California who is allegedly a former Teamsters official who was kicked out of the union.

“He got terminated because of the use of political campaign funds for his reelection,” Teamsters Local 135 organizer Vance Smith told Orlando Weekly in December, after facing off with the Flores family and Wildine Pierre (a consultant based near Orlando) during an organizing drive in Indiana.

According to federal records, Gustavo has in the past also been hired to bust organizing efforts among employees of the Hershey Company (targeting production and maintenance workers), Portillo’s Hot Dogs, Williams-Sonoma and La Maestra Community Health Centers , a federally qualified health center that serves low-income and immigrant communities in San Diego, among others.

His partner on the new job here in Orlando — Fernando Rivera — also has a history of targeting Teamsters’ union drives. According to Vice, Rivera was hired by Amazon in 2022 to obstruct organizing efforts by contracted Amazon delivery drivers, who ultimately voted to join the union anyway.

As Vice reported at the time, Amazon’s hiring of anti-union consultants was notable due to the fact that Amazon had repeatedly argued that these drivers were contracted drivers technically employed by a third-party company, not Amazon itself.

The Teamsters claimed this was just Amazon’s way of evading responsibility for recognizing the drivers’ union — and said the company’s hiring of so-called “union busters” was proof of the ruse. Amazon has spent millions of dollars on anti-union consultants, including several that are reportedly based in Central Florida .

The more you know

Under federal law, anti-union consultants — also known as “persuaders” — are required to file reports known as LM-20s with the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Labor Management Services when they enter into agreements with employers.

When filled out correctly, these reports offer a basic snapshot of what these consultants are being hired to do and how much they’re being paid for it.

According to the Economic Policy Institute, companies spend hundreds of millions of dollars on anti-union persuaders each year, although due to lackluster enforcement of reporting requirements, not all of it is publicly reported. Employers, by law, must also file reports, known as LM-10s, detailing how much they’ve spent on this persuader activity.

It's common for employers to report spending thousands, hundreds of thousands, or even millions of dollars on persuaders. As HuffPost reported in their five-part series on the union-busting industry last summer, it’s also not uncommon for former union officials who are spurned or ousted from office to later switch sides and make bank as professional union busters.

Joseph Brock, a self-described “ unabashed liberal union buster ” who may or may not work out of Apollo Beach, Florida, is one of them. Then there's the Flores brothers, former Unite Here organizer-turned-union-buster Lupe Cruz, and David Grima, who formerly served as president of a United Auto Workers local before he was ousted from his post for alleged internal election misconduct .

A spokesperson for the Teamsters told HuffPost last year that this kind of switch by a former union official “really brings into question what their [the persuaders'] values were, if they ever had any to begin with.”

Sometimes, persuaders will even use pseudonyms to hide their real identities from workers, or (unlawfully) report inaccurate or incomplete information in reports submitted to OLMS.

Once they’re hired on, persuaders will spread the employer’s anti-union message by, at times, training managers or supervisors (who aren’t eligible to join the union) to talk down the union without breaking federal law.

They are also known to hold one-on-one or so-called “captive audience” meetings with workers during work hours, featuring presentations on what they depict as the “truth about unions.” Workers for companies like Amazon, Trader Joe’s and Chipotle have described such meetings as manipulative, and several states — not including Florida — have even moved to ban them .

Faneitty, the local Teamsters organizer, said that a language barrier for drivers here makes it easier for the employer to exploit and take advantage of them. Many drivers, he explained, came from other countries, and don't know their legal rights as workers under U.S. law. As The Intercept has reported, the union avoidance industry has been diversifying itself in order to accommodate such changes in unionizing workforces.

Common messages from persuaders, who may depict themselves as a neutral third party, include that union staffers offer false promises or will force workers to go on strike whenever they feel like it. Another common talking point is that unions only serve to stuff the pockets of politicians and union leaders with members’ dues.

“The company hires these people to basically lie to them,” Faneitty said, with distaste. One driver he reached out to said he'd walked out of one of the company's recent captive-audience meetings because he was pro-union and “because he got tired of hearing the lies.”

A Barnes & Noble College Bookstore worker up in New Jersey told Orlando Weekly last year that a persuader hired through an Orlando-based firm subjected one of their Black co-workers to a comparison of union membership to “chattel slavery.”

Brothers Gustavo and Carlos Flores also found themselves in trouble for things they said during a counter-campaign they were hired to lead against a unionization effort at Alstyle Apparel in California in 2005.

Their conduct during the job was flagged in a complaint filed with the federal labor board, which later wrote in their decision that, according to multiple workers, Gus described “potential consequences” of unionizing that included “stymied bargaining and strikes with resultant plant closure and or job loss, drawing on recent, widespread grocery store strikes as illustrative examples.”

Flores reportedly shared a similar message with Colectivo Coffee workers who unionized their own shop in Milwaukee a few years ago, and was paid $29,104 to do so. Before their IBEW contract, that could've been a year's pay for some Colectivo workers.

Threatening job loss as a result of unionization is illegal under the National Labor Relations Act. So is firing workers, demoting them, or giving them less hours for supporting organizing efforts or for engaging in lawful strikes.

Former President Donald Trump doesn’t know this , apparently, and is now facing his own labor complaint over it. The United Auto Workers union, which has repeatedly called Trump a “scab,” filed a complaint against the Republican presidential nominee Tuesday, after Trump voiced support for (illegally) firing striking workers on X.

Trump has crossed a picket line before — during the filming of his show The Apprentice — and Trump-owned hotels have in the past also hired their own union busters, paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars in an effort to keep the hotels union-free. Even so, the former president has been courting the Teamsters in his bid to return to the White House.

Action Resources did not respond to a request from Orlando Weekly for an explanation of the work they've been hired to do in Florida, nor did the Teamsters international union, when asked for comment on the DHL Express service provider's agreement with the firm. More than 1,300 DHL workers in Kentucky officially joined the Teamsters this week.

Faneitty, the local organizer, however, expressed frustration over the company's hiring of professional union busters to trash-talk the union. Persuaders “build a narrative,” said Faneitty, that organizing collectively to better people's working conditions isn't the answer to their problems. “It's discouraging,” he said, that the law “allows them to hire these people.”