A new report is out on some of the top companies who have spent millions fighting their own workers.
And one Iowa company is high up on that list for trying to bust a new healthcare union in Des Moines.
If you want to form a union with your coworkers, your company can do one of three things:
- They can voluntarily recognize the union (like my bosses did, shoutout COURIER Newsroom!);
- They can agree to remain neutral leading up to the election, letting the vote of the workers decide;
- They can hire consultants and lawyers to try to break the union before it begins.
Most companies in the US do the latter.
Between 71 and 87% of companies faced with union drives hire outsiders to come in and stop them, according to the National Labor Relations Board, spending upwards of $1.7 billion annually, according to the Economic Policy Institute.
These are estimates because, even though companies are legally mandated to report their anti-union spending under the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act, more than half don’t even bother to do so.
Of those who do, it won’t surprise you to know that, according to EPI, Amazon tops that list.
But guess who is right below?
UnityPoint Health, a company headquartered in Iowa that has hundreds of hospitals, clinics, and home care services around the Midwest.
The company disclosed that it spent almost $2.14 million on union avoidance consultants in 2025 alone, according to Department of Labor reports.
And 1,776 workers who held a union drive at four UnityPoint Health hospitals in Des Moines last year say they estimate UnityPoint actually spent around three times that amount, if you include attorneys and consultants that did not interact with workers—just on their union drive alone.
And, though workers successfully voted for a union in December, UnityPoint is still challenging that ruling in court.
That means they’re likely spending millions more on lawyers and consultants in 2026—just to prevent workers from bargaining for a better workplace and a livable wage.
The headline and article was updated after publication to reflect that money spent on lawyers and consultants that do not interact with workers are not included in the amount. Thank you to Teke Wiggin with LaborLab, a coauthor of the report, for the correction.
