Leonard Scott Union Prevention and Counter-Union Campaign Consulting Files, 1966-2013
Collection Number: 6474

Leonard C. Scott was a human resources professional and an anti-union advocate, based mostly in Illinois and later Texas. He had been a corporate human resources and labor relations executive, providing consulting services to a broad range of American and foreign owned companies. He also taught business and human resources management courses at several colleges. He appeared on a number of radio talk shows, wrote articles in various magazines and made presentations at national and international professional and trade associations.

Leonard C. Scott received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Illinois, a Master's degree in Economics from Northwestern University, and was a PhD candidate at Cornell University's ILR School. He served as a graduate student assistant to Prof. Milton R. Konvitz, in 1963, but he did not complete his doctoral program.

During his career, Mr. Scott worked in the field of human resources consulting and union prevention/counter-union services. He was the Labor Relations Manager at Union Carbide's Crystal Products Plant in East Chicago, Indiana, during the collective bargaining strike (1966-1967), against Union Carbide Corporation by the Chemical Workers Union, the United Steel Workers Union, and the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW). He developed an "Inclusive Capitalism" program at the PSN Corporation, a manufacturer of industrial fasteners, in Elk Grove, Illinois. In the 1970s, Mr. Scott worked for West Coast Industrial Relations Association (WCIRA), the second largest anti-union firm during the 1970s and 1980s. He was the head of its Mid-America Employee Relations Association (MERA) division in Oak Brook, Illinois, until WCIRA ceased operations and MERA went out of business. At that time, he continued to operate a consulting business under Leonard Scott & Company in the areas of union prevention, executive search, and human resource consulting for foreign companies starting up in the US. Domestically, he collaborated with a number of companies in various industries, such as healthcare, energy, and food. Several of his major foreign company clients were Arthur Young & Co. (UK), Marazzi Ceramica, (Italy), Ericsson Telecom (Sweden), Uddeholm Steel (Sweden), and Delta Daily Foods (Canada).

Mr. Scott believed that corporate human resources could help employees. However, in the 1980s, 1990s and beyond, he discovered that more and more manufacturers, who successfully blocked union organizing among their employees, eschewed the recommendations of their union avoidance campaign consultants. He also found that the in-house human resources managers failed to set up positive employee relations programs after they successfully defeated unionization attempts. Instead, manufacturing companies began to offshore their production operations, as well as to reduce the number of employees.

Mr. Scott's parents were union members in the 1920s and 30s in Chicago, IL. His mother, Lottie Czarnecki, was a member of Local 1031, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers A.F. of L. His father, Thaddes Czarnecki, was an organizer for the American Bakery & Confectionery Workers' International Union AFL-CIO in the 1930s.

Collection processed by intern Eirva Diamessis as part of the requirements for reciept of a Master of Library Science.

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Leonard Scott Union Prevention and Counter-Union Campaign Consulting Files #6474. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library.