Training & Practical Guide to Labor Relations: Understanding Stripping Campaigns & Protecting Your Merit Shop Business

This focused training webinar is designed to help merit shop contractors understand, anticipate, and effectively respond to “stripping campaigns” and related union organizing tactics that can disrupt operations and threaten business stability.

Participants will gain a clear, practical understanding of how stripping campaigns function—including salting/infiltration, workplace disruption strategies, “area standards” pressure, and public reputational tactics such as bannering. The session will go beyond definitions to examine real-world impacts on productivity, workforce morale, and contractor relationships with project owners.

Most importantly, this webinar serves as a hands-on guide for protection and preparedness. Attendees will learn how to identify early warning signs, implement proactive workplace policies, train supervisors appropriately, and respond to challenges in a lawful, effective manner. The training will emphasize maintaining compliance with labor laws while safeguarding company culture, performance standards, and operational continuity.

Grounded in the merit shop philosophy—where advancement is based on individual performance and skill—this session equips contractors with actionable strategies to protect their businesses, support their workforce, and confidently navigate complex labor relations scenarios.

Ideal for owners, executives, HR professionals, and field leaders, this webinar delivers practical tools and insights to strengthen resilience in today’s evolving labor environment.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS:

MARSHALL J. COLEMAN

Marshall Coleman is the President/CEO of M. J. Coleman and Associates, a construction labor relations consulting firm, dedicated to the merit shop contractor. Coleman, who is based in Greenville, SC, is the former head of labor relations for Fluor Daniel, the nation’s largest merit shop contractor, where he was employed for 25 years. He has successfully managed his own firm since 1995.

Coleman is a nationally recognized authority on preventive labor relations, work-place issues, and union avoidance who has experienced union interference at a level and intensity unimaginable by most contractors.

Coleman has managed over 200 union organizing campaigns in his 50+ year career and has won all of them.

Coleman believes, based on his own of "hands- on" experiences, that effective management is the key to the successful resolution or prevention of the vast majority of labor problems, union-related or not!

The tools Coleman uses to ensure a healthy labor relations climate in each company are tools developed while at Fluor Daniel and they are not seen anywhere else in the construction industry. Our primary tool is the Workforce Analysis which yields accurate and thorough insights into work force temperament and the overall state of labor relations within the company.

His clientele includes over 400 merit shop contractors, nationwide and he has been associated with IEC for many years.

ALEXANDER D. PATERRA

Alex Paterra was born in Kearney, Nebraska. He did not stay in the country’s breadbasket region for long, though. Growing up, he and his family moved every 5 years, tracking his father’s career. He’s lived in Texas, Virginia, and Illinois. He received his undergraduate degree at Butler University in Indianapolis, Indiana. After law school in Ohio, Alex aimed to return to the South and, in 2005, settled in Greenville, South Carolina. Alex started his legal career with two national prominent labor and employment law firms. In 2010, Alex started the Paterra Law Firm, LLC. In the Paterra Law Firm’s first year, Alex was named the pro bono attorney of the year by the South Carolina Bar. Additionally, he met Marshall in 2010 and began working with him to help solve labor issue around the United States.

In addition to founding his professional life in South Carolina, Alex has made Greenville his home. He met his wife, Emily, in Greenville. They married in 2015. In 2019, they welcomed a son. Alex and Emily keep busy raising their son and taking care of their house full of animals (two dogs, three cats, and a brood of chickens). Alex is an avid fisherman and outdoorsman. He and his family enjoy vacationing and traveling in their vintage camper, which Alex restored himself.

Alex enjoys working with his clients, problem-solving and problem-preventing with them, and figuring out unique ways to resolve their Labor needs. Alex prides himself in treating every client’s business needs as his own.