Just a few months before being appointed to city council in the Florida Keys’ tiniest city, former Michigander Jared Rodriguez had a different kind of job up in New Jersey. It lasted just one month and earned him a pretty penny — much more than his unpaid job leading Layton, a city on the island of Long Key with a population of just over 200 people.
Federal records show Rodriguez, a longtime anti-union advocate in Michigan state politics, was hired last November as a “union avoidance” consultant for Amazon. A federally mandated report, filed with the U.S. Department of Labor, lists Layton city council member Rodriguez as a contractor who was hired at a rate of $2,100 per day to “identify and assess work-related issues, problems, and concerns” of warehouse workers at an Amazon facility in Rutherford, New Jersey.
Records show Rodriguez was hired for the job through Russell “Russ” Brown, a longtime union avoidance professional and fellow Florida man who has run dozens of anti-union campaigns and lobbied for anti-union legislation. Brown’s labor consulting firm, RoadWarrior Productions, was reportedly paid more than $3 million by Amazon last year alone.
His firm, reportedly based out of Satellite Beach, Florida, and a virtual WeWork office in Washington, D.C., has been brought on by Amazon to counter a number of union drives launched by workers over the years, including a high-profile organizing effort in Bessemer, Alabama, in 2021.
It’s unclear, based on publicly available records, whether city councilman Rodriguez was hired to obstruct an active union organizing campaign at Amazon’s New Jersey facility, or if this was a preemptive job. In the space of his federal report where he’s required to disclose the union involved, Rodriguez simply wrote “unknown.”
Amazon has been the target of a wave of organizing activity in the U.S. in recent years, largely involving the Teamsters and smaller, independent unions like the Amazon Labor Union (which affiliated with the Teamsters last year) and Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment, or CAUSE.
The results of these organizing drives, spurred in part by low wages and health and safety issues, have been mixed. The Amazon Labor Union saw an initial landmark victory at a warehouse in New York in 2022, but this was followed by a loss for the ALU at another New York warehouse and a loss in North Carolina, involving CAUSE.
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The Seattle-based e-commerce giant, worth more than $2 trillion altogether, shelled out nearly $13 million last year alone on union avoidance consultants like Rodriguez, according to a financial disclosure report filed by Amazon in March. The company notes the spending was “in response to large scale union organizing efforts.”
Such reports are required by law to be filed with the labor department by employers and consultants to disclose any “persuader” activity — that is, any consultant who is hired by an employer to persuade their workers not to form a union. Usually, the gig involves holding “voluntary” or explicitly mandatory anti-union meetings with workers, passing out anti-union flyers, or even (illegally) claiming workers’ wages will drop or that workers’ benefits will be rescinded if they form a union.
Union avoidance work, or what critics call union-busting, isn’t strictly illegal in the U.S. In fact, it’s a lucrative industry, according to the Economic Policy Institute, with employers shelling out at least $400 million annually to prevent unionization.
But Bob Funk, founder of the union-buster watchdog group LaborLab, admitted this is the first time he’s come across a union avoidance consultant in federal filings who also happens to be an elected (or, in this case, appointed) official.
“I have never come across a persuader in an ‘elected’ position,” Funk, a former communications director for the Montana AFL-CIO, confirmed over email.
Rodriguez himself did not respond to emailed requests for comment for this story. However, the phone number listed in his federal report, signed under penalty of perjury, matches that listed for his City Council campaign. So does the P.O. box number and address.
A city clerk for Layton confirmed to Orlando Weekly that Rodriguez was appointed to his position as Layton city councilman by fellow council members in April to fill a vacancy. He was sworn in the following month.
“Rodriguez … commented on how much he is looking forward to working with city council,” meeting minutes from the city’s April 3 meeting, obtained by Orlando Weekly, read.
City council members in Layton serve two-year terms and are seemingly unpaid, aside from “reimbursement for costs incurred for carrying out their duties,” according to the city code. City clerk Mimi Young confirmed Rodriguez has already qualified for the upcoming election this November to retain his seat, and is currently facing zero competition, according to Monroe County’s Supervisor of Elections Office.
To qualify for the ballot, Layton City Council candidates must gather at least 14 petitions from city residents, or pay a qualifying fee of $50. Petitions were due July 7.
“I would be honored to continue serving as a City Council member for the beautiful community of Layton,” a candidate statement from Rodriguez reads. “Layton is not simply where I live — it is a close-knit, unique community to which I am deeply committed. Our future is important to me, and I believe the city must remain efficient, transparent, fiscally responsible, and responsive to the needs of its people.”
Rodriguez’s candidate photo, notably, is the same photo he has elsewhere for other professional endeavors. For instance, within his bio as executive director for the Center for Independent Employees, a South Carolina-based “legal defense” nonprofit that “provides legal guidance and support to employees who wish to eliminate unions from their workplace,” according to its website.
The anti-union organization, funded in the past by the billionaire Koch network, has engaged in Florida state politics before and has found Republican allies in the Florida legislature. The CIE, for instance, reportedly helped “craft” and lobbied in support of a union reform law (SB 256) approved in Florida in 2023 that has so far caused more than 69,000 public employees to lose their union representation.
While teachers’ unions, the target of the law, have largely managed to remain intact, the law has stripped union contracts from thousands of adjunct faculty, state nurses and public utility workers, among others.
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“It’s no surprise that a director from the Center for Independent Employees, an organization tied to the union-busting industry, is entering politics,” Funk told Orlando Weekly. “Mr. Rodriguez’s group is connected to the controversial State Policy Network and union-busting firms across the nation.”
Rodriguez, a former president of the business-friendly West Michigan Policy Forum, is also joined on the CIE’s leadership team by none other than fellow Amazon consultant Russell Brown and Keith Williams, a former teacher and anti-union advocate who has also disclosed persuader activity for Amazon.
‘Particularly suspicious’
According to property appraiser records, Rodriguez appears to own property both in Long Key and Portland, Michigan. Records show the city councilman bought his Florida property in 2022.
Under Layton’s municipal code, those eligible to hold local elected office include “any person who has been an elector of the city for a period of at least six months.” City council members are also required to “reside in the city at least six months in any 12-month period.”
Rodriguez reports in his disclosure to the federal labor department that he is affiliated with the Calder Group LLC, a consulting firm based in Layton, Florida. The problem is: There’s no record of a registered business in Florida by that name. There is, however, a Calder Group LLC that has been registered as a domestic limited liability company in Michigan since 2013.
Under federal persuader reporting requirements, disclosure reports submitted to the Department of Labor must contain information, including addresses, that are “true, correct, and complete” to the best of the signer’s knowledge and belief. They are signed “under penalty of perjury and other applicable penalties of law.”
But that’s not the only inconsistency in Rodriguez’s report. His report, for instance, was also filed in July — about seven months late — and doesn’t include his employment identification number, or EIN.
Under the Labor Management Relations Disclosure Act, third-party consultants like Rodriguez are required to file disclosure reports within 30 days of entering into an agreement with an employer to directly “persuade” or interact with employees. That would have made his report due this past December.
A new rule, finalized by the labor department earlier this year, also requires consultants to include EINs in their reports. This helps DOL staffers crossmatch reports filed by consultants to ensure they’re adhering to all reporting requirements. Especially since these consultants have been known to misspell their names, or others’ names, or use nicknames, in violation of reporting requirements.
When reached for comment, a DOL spokesperson confirmed over email that filing a late disclosure report, and filing a report that is incomplete (including a missing EIN) “constitutes a civil violation” of the LMRDA.
Civil violations are subject to investigation by the DOL’s Office of Labor-Management Standards and OLMS “will refer investigative findings to the Office of the Solicitor of Labor and the U.S. Attorney’s office, requesting that a civil enforcement be lodged in a U.S. District Court against the person in violation of the law,” the spokesperson explained.
Filing reports late, filing deficient reports or failing to file reports for reportable activity, however, isn’t uncommon. Brown himself hasn’t filed a report disclosing Rodriguez’s work for his firm last year, leaving the public (and federal officials) in the dark about whether Rodriguez was working alone on the job, or how much Amazon agreed to pay his firm for the job, total.
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Brown has similarly filed reports late in the past, has filed reports that are missing EINs, and in some cases, his reports have mistakenly identified his firm’s location as Satellite Beach, D.C. — a place that does not exist.
Funk argued that a deficient report “denies workers the transparency they are entitled to,” adding, “This is particularly suspicious for someone who claims to be an expert in labor relations.”
Rodriguez reportedly graduated from James Madison College at Michigan State University with a Bachelors degree in International Relations and Economics, and joined the CIE in 2014. In Michigan, he co-founded the West Michigan Policy Forum, a “nonprofit advocacy organization,” according to Crain’s Grand Rapids Business. Before that, Rodriguez served as “chief lobbyist” for the Grand Rapids Chamber of Commerce, responsible for lobbying at the local, state, and federal level.
“That was my break to get involved in helping the business community in West Michigan to succeed,” Rodriguez told Crain’s in 2014. “It allowed me to get into lobbying policy work and change the work environment, and opened my passion to shape public policy in West Michigan.”
According to the OLMS database, Rodriguez’s recent reports for Amazon are the first of their kind. That is, he hasn’t publicly disclosed any similar jobs in union avoidance before.
The Teamsters, a labor union that has an active Amazon organizing campaign, did not respond to multiple requests for comment about whether they were actively involved in organizing warehouse workers at Amazon’s DJR3, where Rodriguez reportedly interacted with to assess Amazon’s risk for unionization. Despite reaching agreements with or otherwise offering concessions to employees in other countries, Amazon has long avoided unionization in the U.S., and has been accused of multiple violations of workers’ rights under federal labor law.
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This article appears in Aug 6-12, 2025.