labor lawyers who know the limits to what the company can do to avoid unionization, closing facilities that vote for unionization, bringing in disgruntled current members of the union to talk to your workforce, and many other tactics. Is this process of union suppression ethical or unethical? Again, the answer has to be it depends. If the organization remains within the law and the NO TIPS guidelines, is management being ethical? Even here you need to look at fair, reasonable, and equitable treatment of employees in the organization and not just at whether or not the company is following the letter of the law. We have discussed the issue of ethics in several chapters of this text, and noted that just because something is legal it doesn't mean that it is necessarily ethical. Staying within the letter of the law may not provide the company with the kind of workforce it needs in order to compete with other firms in the 21st century. Here again, we return to the question of whether or not actions on the part of management will increase the satisfaction and engagement levels of the employees, or cause it to decrease. Unions suppression tactics that employ actions such as the Nonunion Employee Representation that we discussed earlier in the chapter can certainly be ethical methods of suppressing unions in some cases. Using these representatives can also increase employee satisfaction and engagement in the organization. So this tactic and other similar tactics would be considered by most to be ethical. On the flip side, planting rumors concerning the closing of facilities if the workers vote to unionize (whether true or not) would probably be unethical and in some cases could even violate the rule of No Threats in a unionization campaign. Each situation has to be looked at individually, and management needs to make a decision concerning what suppression tactics are ethical and legal, and which tactics might not be.