Employees who support trade unions are often harassed, intimidated, and isolated from other workers. Many employers use consultants, detectives, and security firms to help carry out their antiunion campaigns. In addition to trying to block union organising, many companies attempt to destroy unions where they exist. Unfortunately, enforcement of protections for worker rights that exist in the law is weak, both because penalties are light and because procedures are long and often difficult. Union representatives are often threatened with arrest when they try to help workers organise unions and are denied access to the workplace.
Union solidarity is restricted by a law that makes secondary boycotts and sympathy strikes illegal.
When workers vote to have a union, employers regularly challenge the results. An increasing number of employers deliberately provoke strikes to get rid of trade unions. In 1995, Detroit News and Knight Ridder unlawfully provoked a strike involving 2,600 employees. The newspapers were ordered to reinstate the striking workers by the NLRB, but have appealed against the decision and are still refusing to rehire most of them. Other companies have locked out workers as part of a strategy to destroy unions.