On February 3, staffers at SHoP Architects organizing under the name Architectural Workers United (AWU) chose to withdraw their unionization bid. The decision was announced less than 24 hours before a vote was set to take place that would potentially have granted the staffers a union certificate from the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), signaling the start of a collective bargaining process. But the AWU unit had lost majority support from the firm’s 135 employees less than two months after the group made its actions public in The New York Times on December 21. AWU says management mounted a “powerful anti-union campaign” to break up the movement from within.
Shortly after the Times published its article, SHoP retained the services of Proskauer Rose LLP, a top-tier New York law firm with deep union-busting experience. (Last year, the firm represented MoMA after employees went on strike to protest the institution’s financial ties to Jeffrey Epstein, as it did Columbia University during a graduate student strike.) The move was confirmed by a spokesperson from Risa …