Labor Campaigns

IRI has been a leader in guiding employers through complicated labor relations issues for nearly 40 years. Our holistic approach to positive employee relations focuses not only on our clients’ immediate challenges, but identifying and resolving issues that led to employee dissatisfaction so they don’t become a triggering incident again.

Healthcare is an industry that operates with a large and diverse employee base in an environment that is facing constant change. We have a history of partnering with some of the largest and best-known healthcare systems in the nation as well as many regional and local healthcare providers to improve the employer-employee relationship.

The Issue: A national healthcare company with more than 50,000 employees and operations in nearly every state was faced with multiple years of labor organizing activity that ranged from card signing and home visits to extensive legislative and public relations attacks.

The Task: We partnered with operations, human resources and communications leaders to create a comprehensive campaign focused on leadership and employee education regarding rights under the National Labor Relations Act while preserving the culture and reputation of the well-known healthcare provider.

The Effort: By training leaders about the impact of third-party representation and key elements of the law, the client was able to educate their employees about the importance of maintaining a direct relationship with the employer. The initiative successfully integrated leadership coaching, labor relations training, communications and media strategy development and employee issue resolution into a single campaign.

The Result: Despite dedicating millions of dollars to their organizing campaigns, the unions did not gain enough support to hold an NLRB-conducted election and were not able to organize any of the employees. We were also successful in creating in-house capabilities to support their long-term employee relations goals.