Fighting a Union

Great Debates
1

Someone I know is a salaried professional. Due to economic circumstances, the company’s stopped paying significant overtime to exempt employees some time ago, but still requires that work gets done – no requirement that, e.g., 60 hours be worked, but that the work get done.

So, some of the older salaried folks decided to get with the union that represents the hourly folks, and want to join the union.

It’s an evil union. Even a benevolent union in this circumstance is a bad, bad idea. Seniority then trumphs virtue. Everyone’s equal. It’s communism. These are professional people who make excellent money, not laborers nor tradesmen.

So, how can this be fought? What are the rights of the people that don’t want to participate in the stinking union? It’s not a right to work state. Can certain sub-departments who don’t want to participate exclude themselves?

Right now this movement’s supposed to be a secret, and my friend found out about this crappy movement through pure coincidence. Should he or she try to find out who’s pushing this crap and report them to management and hope they get fired? Or at least try to take steps to exclude my friend’s own workgroup from this crap (e.g., assign the group to a non-organizing department before it’s too late)?

2

I presume your friend doesn’t want to join the union. So why don’t they just not join, and let the others do whatever the hell they want? At least the union might stand a better chance of getting him the overtime pay you believe was unfairly taken away.

3

titter

4

They have the right not to join.

They have the right to collectively bargain. They have the right to accept whatever terms the employer deigns to fork out, or decides to take away. They have the right to work elsewhere. They have the right to organize, although if it’s a “management” position, they may be required by law to belong to a different union.

Sounds like sour grapes to me.

5

Okay, I got more information today.

I don’t think it’s sour grapes, though – wouldn’t that mean he’d be jealous of not being able to join a union? If it were me, I’d definitely say no sour grapes – I’d just pick up and go to a competitor that has unionized engineers (even though it costs this competitor a hell of a lot of money and they have had and still have horrible, horrible quality. Hmmm…)

In his company (as in mine and most I’ve ever dealt with) the common parlance is those that aren’t hourly are management, although this obviously isn’t truly true – tech workers aren’t management; they’re just cogs under management, too.

Here are the details – supposedly the malcontents have gathered enough signature cards to force a vote, which I guess would make the union official. But what we don’t know is how they can unionize just a single department in an entire organization.

I’ll leave the snide union comments out, because it’d give the impression that I’m anti-union, which I’m not in general, just in an awful lot of occassions. Plus it doesn’t concern me directly. His worry, though, is that things like performance reports will no longer matter, and all raises will be on some dictated scale, and overtime will be equalized, and that, essentially, communist worked attitudes will become the norm. I don’t understand the titter above – I used to see it among skilled trades all the time. The old, less capable people (or the young, lazy people) would harrass the young, capable ones so they wouldn’t perform as well. That’s the opposite of the capitalist spirit to me.

6

Once upon a time, I worked in an office which was, for various reasons, trying to give me and other people in our particular slot a significant raise. The union opposed this, fought it, and eventually won. We never got our raises.

I’m not a big fan of unions.

7

You know, just because most unions negotiate contracts where promotions are based on seniority doesn’t mean that unions are required to do so. A union is perfectly free to negotiate a contract that doesn’t mention seniority at all. And, since unions are required to do whatever a majority of members want to do, it shouldn’t be overwhelmingly difficult to instruct the negotiating team to do just that. It’s not like management is likely to be opposed, after all.

8

But what we don’t know is how they can unionize just a single department in an entire organization.

A while back I read of a Wal-Mart bakery department successfully joining a union (I can’t remember HOW exactly the WM brass let it happen or what state this was in). They’re apparently the only WM employees that are union, but apparently unionizing just one department can be done.

9

Could they form their own union which would tackle this issue only, and not rape them for dues to pay the salary of someone they’d never met who’s only purpose in life would be to reperesent them badly? It could campaign for promotion based on merit if that’s what all it’s members wanted.

10

Heck, sometimes there are different unions in the same business. There’s no reason why only one department could be unionized or why only some employees could be unionized (like all of the secretaries, even though they’re in different departments).

11

All of this is based on what I can remember of my Human Resource Administration course from last semester, but I’m pretty sure it is all right.

If the people in your bargaining unit have enough signature cards to call a vote (which is not necessarily a majority of your bargaining unit), then they can notify the union they wish to join who then notify the Department of Labor that they wish to call a vote on unionization. The Labor folks then will send some type of representative to oversee the process and rule on whether or not the union fits the bargaining unit, whether another union should step in to represent some or all of the previous group, etc.

The Labor reps will then assign a date for the vote to take place and monitor the campaigns on both sides to make sure they abide by fair play. Basically fair play, IIRC, breaks down to the following

Management may not threaten workers with harsh treatment or pay cuts if they decide to unionize

Management may hold captive audience meetings up to one (or maybe two) days before the vote itself.

Union reps may be banned from business sites during working hours.

Union materials may only be distributed according to management discretion in the working environment. Non-working environments on the site (cafeterias, etc.) are appropriate.

If the vote goes in favor of the union then they are granted the right to bargain collectively for your friend’s bargaining unit. If they choose to declare it a union “shop” then he has a certain number of days to apply for the union before they can take action against him with management. The last part does not necessarily flow from a pro-union vote, but rather stems from the contract agreed upon by union negotiators and your managers.

Does that regurgitation of an essay answer help at all?

12

Dang. Saw some posts expressing confusion on this point, so…

RE: Union bargaining units.

A bargaining unit is the collective that a specific union has been called in to represent. This unit can cross lines such as departments, so long as the Department of Labor rules that all those included in that unit had enough common cause with one another to warrant lumping their fates together in a collectively bargained contract. A blue collar department is not likely to be lumped into the same bargaining unit as a white collar department, for example, because their needs and demands to the management will be different. A collective contract for both of them would be unfair.

13

It’s not broken down by white collar/blue collar. My union represents everyone from the receptionist to the attorneys, but does nto represent anyone in management. The cummnity of interest needed to establish an approprate bargaining unit includes several factors such as whether they: perform similar types of work, have regular work contact, are subject to similar working conditions, have similar wage and benefit packages, are subject to common supervision, and the extent and form of organization, either with that employer or within that industry.

Supervisors and non-supervisors cannot be in the same unit, although there may be a unit of supervisors, as long as they are not management. Management is the level of people whose main tasks are organizational–they run the place, but are not directly or are only rarely or incidentally involved with the production/work product and or services of the organization.

A whole other concept is exempt and non-exempt. This applies the coverage under the Fair Labor Standards Acts–the law that brings us minimum wage and outlaws child labor. If you are covered by the FLSA (non-exempt), you must be paid overtime if you work over 40 hours a week. If you are not covered (exempt) you cannot be paid an hourly wage, non may your employer do anything that treats you as an hourly wage earner, therefore, no overtime (government employees can earn compensatory time). an employer can’t just declare a position exempt, it must meet certain criteria–in general, executive, administrative, professional, all of which include the concept that the person is more conconcerned with the running of the business than the product/service of the business.

A union contract (often called a collective bargaining agreement or CBA) cannot make someone exempt or non-exempt from the FLSA, although management often tries to use it to get a specific position out of the bargaining unit. A smart union rep will always look at the specific duties of the position to see if it fits a exempt category. If it does, it is not appropriate for ti to be in the bargaining unit.

The method of organizing one department at a time (or one retail store of a chain, or one nursing home of a chain, etc) is sometimes called retailing, and sometimes beach-heading. It established an example of a union within the business, and will therefore make it easier (if it is a good union and helps its members to gain better wages, benefits and workign conditions) to organize additional units (either as separate units with a wholely separate contract, or more likely, by accreating the new unit into the established unit and negotiating any provisions specific to the new unit into the existing contract). Obviously, going after the whole industry at one time (and under one contract with local side agreements) is called the going wholesale, and was much used in the early days of labor unions. Among some union activists, the idea of wholesale campaigns are again gaining popularity. Because so many companies (and therefore bosses) are national, and even international, unions may need to also become international in order to equalize the employment relationship and so promote reasoned capitalism.

14

Wow – you guys are great. The quality of your answers so far are going to make a mod kick this out of GD and get booted into GQ!

FWIW, everyone in the organization are exempt employees – that’s why the company felt able to demand the same workload but without paying extra. I’m only imagining that the drive is over money per working hours. It could be that there’s some other thing going on. I’ll see if I can talk to him after work today. (yeah, I see the irony that I’m here at work [not quite started] for “free” today :slight_smile: but I feel responsible and have no problems with it.)