Miami airport car rental agency hired Orlando union busting firm to obstruct organizing effort

A car rental agency at Miami International Airport, Sixt Rent A Car , recently hired a local consulting firm that specializes in “union avoidance” to obstruct an organizing effort by sales agents, according to a disclosure report filed by Orlando-based Labor Pros with the federal Department of Labor earlier this month.

The goal of their agreement is to “educate” employees about unions, and in practice, persuade the company's car rental agents not to unionize with the Teamsters, a labor union with more than 1.3 million members, including tens of thousands in Florida.

The Labor Pros, headed by CEO Nekeya Nunn, markets itself as a union avoidance consulting firm that offers labor relations training for managers (to help them become anti-union “ gladiators ”), consultation on media strategy for companies facing militant unions, and education services during union drives that are explicitly intended for “preventing unionization.”

“A union threat is the fastest way to sever open lines of communication between management and employees,” a webpage on the Labor Pros' website reads. “Our firm educates employees to see past the union propaganda, enabling them to make conscious decisions at the ballot box.”

Under federal law, these anti-union labor consultants — described by critics as “union busters” — are required to file disclosure reports when they enter into agreements with employers. They’re also required to disclose how much they are being paid for the job, which often runs in the thousands, sometimes millions of dollars altogether.

Records show Sixt Rent A Car, a multi billion-dollar international vehicle rental company, was facing a union drive this summer, organized by their sales agents at the Miami airport in South Florida, one of the busiest air hubs in the U.S.

A majority of the workers asked the company to voluntarily recognize their desire to join the Teamsters Local 769, which represents just over 14,000 workers in Florida, including car rental workers for companies like Avis/Budget and Fox Rent-A-Car at the Miami and Fort Lauderdale airports.

Instead, Sixt requested a union election for its 32 employees in late June, denying the workers’ request to join the union without an election. Even so, the company — which faced an unsuccessful union drive at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport once before — wasn’t inclined to join the Teamsters at the bargaining table without a fight.

A disclosure report filed by CEO Nunn shows the company enlisted her firm’s services on June 16, 2024, just five days before the company filed its request with the National Labor Relations Board for a union election. Under the two parties’ agreement, the car rental agency reportedly agreed to pay the Labor Pros $425 per hour per working day, “plus travel expenses,” according to her report.

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Nunn, a long-time labor consultant who has been hired in the past by companies like Hilton Hotels and Guitar Center, reported her firm was enlisted by Sixt Rent-A-Car to “educate” the company’s sales agents on their union rights.

While Nunn did not return an emailed request for an explanation of this work, such language is generally code for one-on-one or group "captive audience" meetings . These third-party consultants hold these meetings with workers in an expensive and often-misleading ploy to frame unions as unnecessary, obsolete, and a third party offering false promises.

Records show the Labor Pros specifically enlisted one of their consultants based in Hollywood, Florida — Luis Alvarez — for the job down south, which lasted just over a month, from June 16 through the union election date on July 25.

According to the National Labor Relations Board, the car sales agents ultimately voted 12-19 against unionization with the Teamsters Local 769. Union officials with Local 769, including business agents, organizers, and the local's president, either declined comment or did not return multiple requests for comment.

A multi million-dollar industry

Union election filings from U.S. workers who want to unionize have surged in recent years, bolstered by a worker-friendly National Labor Relations Board under the Biden administration, and grassroots union drives at companies like Amazon and Starbucks. Public support for unions — and a desire by many nonunion workers to join one — is also higher than it’s been in decades, despite an overall decline in union density.

For employers who don’t want to see the “threat” of unionization reach them, that’s where the union avoidance industry — a shadowy network of anti-union consultants and employer-side law firms — comes in.

Union avoidance is a multi million-dollar industry, in which consultants present themselves to employers as a viable solution to union drives. Professional union busters — a number of whom are based in Florida — are paid upwards of $200 to $400 per hour, or thousands of dollars per day, depending on agreements with employers.

Some are former union organizers themselves who later switched sides so to speak, or were kicked out of their unions over allegations of corruption, embezzlement, or internal union election misconduct.

Alvarez, the consultant hired to “educate” Sixt’s employees down in Miami, is a longtime labor consultant who was similarly hired to bust an organizing drive involving Local 769 back in 2022. Ryder, a transportation and logistics company, hired Alvarez and former union organizer-turned-persuader Lupe Cruz to convince the company’s drivers that they didn’t need a union.

Both men appear to often be hired for organizing drives among Hispanic and Latino workers, participating in one facet of a documented effort by the union avoidance industry to diversify itself, and teach employers how to use diversity language to combat unionization — despite benefits that unions can have for people of color and women in the workforce.

Nunn has said she sees this focus on diversity as part of a broader strategy to depict unions as unnecessary.

“People unionize against bad managers, not bad companies,” Nunn told The Intercept in 2022. “People work for companies that make them feel valued and included, so if that’s a tactic to not have a union, then so be it.”

Unlike the recent union drive among Sixt employees, Alvarez and Cruz were unsuccessful in their job for Ryder, according to union election results. Workers in that case voted 17–12 in favor of unionizing with the Teamsters, and the company saw other union drives emerge in other parts of the country the following year. The company paid Alvarez and Cruz more than $93,000 for the failed effort, nonetheless.

The pro-labor media and organizing project Labor Notes documented another job the pair teamed up on last February, targeting an organizing drive among mostly Latino workers at Lodi, a popular Rockefeller Center restaurant in New York.

Alvarez reportedly introduced himself to workers there under a false name (“Luis Medina”), and one worker alleged in a press statement that the consultants had told Spanish-speaking workers that they “shouldn’t trust English-speakers in the union, as the English-speakers were trying to confuse us,” according to Labor Notes.

According to an unfair labor practice complaint filed with the NLRB and obtained by Orlando Weekly , consultants hired by the employer also “suggested” to restaurant workers that the unionization process could “have negative effects on their immigration status.” The consultants, whose names are redacted in the complaint, were also alleged to have “appealed to racial prejudice with [the] purpose of discouraging employees to join or support the Union.”

Workers at Lodi ultimately voted 21–26 against unionizing last March with the Restaurant Workers Union, but multiple unfair labor practice complaints filed with the NLRB against the restaurant remain open or under investigation.

Although hiring these consultants is not by itself illegal under federal law, threatening a loss of benefits, pay, or other consequences as a result of unionization is. So is promising favorable treatment or better pay for voting against unionization.

Sixt, the car rental agency that hired the Labor Pros in June, did not respond to a request for Orlando Weekly on their decision to hire the firm, which has historically lagged in filing its mandatory disclosure reports with the labor department, and has been involved in alleged cases of labor law violations .

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