[ul]
[li]Cannot negotiate your own employment terms[/li][li]Seniority promotion, raises, firing[/li][li]Extra work rules[/li][li]Union thuggery[/li][li]Management thuggery[/li][li]“Us vs them” relationship[/li][li]Impeded promotion from union to management[/li][li]Internal union politics and favoritism[/li][li]Scorched-earth anti-union behavior from company[/li][li]Added layers of management[/li][li]Have to pay union dues[/li][li]Decreased overall wages[/li][li]Can drive the company or that location out of business[/li][li]Dues not used locally[/li][li]Extra licensing/training requirements[/li][li]Seniority rules may keep you unemployed[/li][/ul]
Since we’ve been getting some repeats. I miss anything?
I have a friend who is an electrical lineman - and this is what makes him most upset about the union he is in. He works with guys who sleep in their trucks - drink beer on the job - and screw around - around down electrical lines. And there isn’t anything that can be done for his safety. He knows some of these guys are fuck ups - but they can’t get fired unless they actually manage to kill or maim one of their coworkers. So every time he goes to work, he puts his life in the hands of someone who drinks a sixpack on the job - has been reported for it multiple times - but keeps his job.
Perhaps related.
I was once offered a union job - at that point I was a systems administrator. In the wisdom on the union, systems administrators were classed with secretaries by contract. This meant that in terms of competitive pay, secretaries were very well paid by outside standards - but my offer was 30% below market.
Really, it comes down to this. If you think you can walk into your boss’ office and ask for a raise or promotion, have an opportunity to state your case and be considered based on your own merits and performance, then you may not need a union.
If your boss says, “I’d like to pay you more, but you’re at the top end for your job,” then you’re being treated as simply one of a more or less interchangable class of workers, and you might as well unionize to get some clout.
If your boss says, “You’re lucky to have a job,” either the company is already going down the drain or management will likely adopt a scorched-earth approach to labor relations.
I have a friend who was a union worker for a long time (automotive-related industry), and now is a senior manager. His perspective (seen from both sides) is that a big issue with unions is productivity: a union will pretty much always resist anything that leads to productivity gains, for the obvious reason that it tends to imply fewer workers and thus fewer people paying union dues.
In the sort term this can work; in the longer term, it can cripple the company.
I worked in non union shops and union shops. In union shops, I made a lot more money, and had better bennies. My friends that stayed in non union shops have gone thru numerous downsizing, job changes, and pay cuts. I am comfortably retired, and they are still scratching out a meager living. No contest, IMHO.
Wow these are all very helpful comments, a couple of these scenarios have crossed my mind, but many of these things I did not even think of. It is a bit of an odd situation that brings me to this topic. I like the management, I get along with my coworkers. My boss (beyond his superficial gruffness) is really solid and reliable, runs the department very well. Unfortunately it seems all good things come to an end, it appears that the company is looking for investors, in other words VC. I am not an expert in the area, but I think VC cash infusions usually come with a lot of strings attached.
I found the couple comments about management not being anti-union interesting. I think that may actually be the instance here to some extent. The corporation has divisions in several different cities each with their own management. I think in my city the management may favor the workers unionizing but I can’t really say. Really the fact that we may be getting bought has led to this; for a lot of employees think that means nothing other than a Bain style gutting. Also there was another division in another city that went union.
If we were not likely to be getting bought out, I would be a little leery of unionizing; but with this certainty on the horizon, I think it is the best option.
If your new owner is like EVERY other new owner I’ve ever heard of, they will demand some amount of cost-cutting. This may actually impact your bosses worse than the rank and file, meaning your reliable boss may get tossed in the first round of layoffs, or decide to take that early retirement package or just go to a competitor.
In other words, don’t expect any type of support from management, because management may change at any moment.
On the other hand, a union can’t protect from mass layoffs, either.
You need to watch out for yourself any way you can. You also need to put together a resume and see what other opportunities exist, just in case.
Boy howdy do they ever.
I can’t really speak to your specific situation. There are a lot of relevant details that would be difficult to hash out, and even then the answer is likely “it depends.”
What’s your business, and what’s your job?
Some idiot invited the UAW into my workplace about nine years ago. tl;dr I was one of the key members of the resistance and we finally won, but it took three years, multiple contract votes, multiple NLRB ULP’s, multiple seemingly-successful decertification attempts, but we finally kicked them out.
Note that we have excellent relations with the UAW in hourly contexts. However we were salaried engineers. The local and the bargaining committee insisted on only ever delivering an hourly-quality contract (which the bargaining group always rejected during votes).
We would have sacrificed talent for seniority. And seniority would only have counted within our bargaining group, regardless of your time in service in other parts of the company. The contract would have guaranteed a safe parking spot!!! (there was nothing unsafe as it was). It would have guaranteed we kept our airline miles (something we already had). Oh, and it would have guaranteed overtime equalization! How the hell do you do that when everything comes in ebbs and flows and everyone is working on a different project? We weren’t hourly electricians.
Unlike in my youth I’m no longer vehemently anti-union, but in this case, it was wrong. It was stupid. The salter who brought this in can still rot in hell as far as I’m concerned. There’s a time and place for unions, and this wasn’t it.
I go into a little more detail about that upthread; but I do not want to disclose enough detail for the types of reasons Boogly pointed out, and also I agreed not to disclose the kind of information that would make any of this public.
Anyway, I think in my situation, a union may not make things better, but I believe they will prevent things from getting worse for everyone involved if outside investors have excessive power to dictate department budgets among other things in a business they have insufficient knowledge and experience in to make adequate decisions.
I’m neutral and can only say, it depends. But let me tell some stories about unions in universities. We always arrange that our grad students get enough to pay their tuition and live (meagerly, to be sure). The money came from a mix of research grant money and TA-ships (marking, running problem sessions, and actual teaching). Often a student would get a mix: TA the first term, research grant the second or vice versa. Now they are unionized. The contract they negotiated provides that once a student gets a TA-ship, he has a right to insist on it subsequently. I mean they can be laid off if there is no work, but they cannot trade with a student who was on grant money the first term. You can give them grant money, but they have a right to insist on a TA-ship anyway. Disfunctional and not even in their interest.
About 20 years ago, I was one of a team of three that evaluated a math dept elsewhere. One thing that struck me was that the math dept was horribly underpaid. Not slightly, but like 60% of what they would be getting elsewhere. The dean explained to me that he was aware of this and would like to do something about it but the union did not permit it. They were hired by a chair who thought he could suck up to the administration by lowballing new hires and did so for 20 years. The union would not permit equalization payments but insisted that all raises had to be the same percentage across the board and just raising one dept was not in the cards.
The third story concerns a union in yet another university. The standard teaching load in research universities is 2 courses per term, with the rest of the time devoted–in theory at least–to research, administrative work, etc. When this university voted to unionize the new union hired experienced labor negotiators to negotiate their first contract. When the administrators offered to increase the pay if the standard teaching load was raised to 3 courses, the negotiators jumped at it. They are always interested in increasing overtime pay. The negotiators were astonished when the professors rejected this instantly and made them go back to the drawing boards. The negotiators simply had not spoken first to the people they were purportedly representing.
As a professor, I wanted to be judged simply on my merits.
Some other points: Do you want to be obliged to picket in Montreal in December and January? It took a court decision to force the union not to expel (and cost them their job since Quebec has closed shop) members who refused to participate in an illegal strike.
That said, I think both closed shop laws and right-to-work laws are evil and the union shop is the way to go. Not perfect, but the best of a bad choice. Actually, here you can opt out of the union, but still pay your dues.
Without starting a new thread, I was also like to ask, Is there any possible and plausible upside to being bought out for the current workers?
One of the American factories I had as a client was unionized, but the union didn’t cover only them - it covered other factories in the area.
There was one incident where a shift foreman who had been with that particular factory for almost twenty years did not appear and his replacement was a kid who hadn’t been born when the foreman started. No warning, no explanations. As one of the managers put it “not only do we not have anybody who can organize the shift, but if we call his house and ask ‘are you ok?’, the union will raise hell.”
If that union was as cavalier about sending people to a place or another as it was about sending one worker or another to a place, there’s many people who wouldn’t be happy to be their workers. A friend of mine used to have a union job, again for a union which didn’t cover a single place, and in his case they could indeed get shuffled around without any warning. He thought it was normal to get to work and be told “oh, you’re in the wrong place”, I don’t.
I wonder why it is that so many unions require everyone to join. I worked at a school district where the clerical staff was unionized and I was unable to not join (that is, pay dues to) the union. And when one of my co-workers was being harassed by her boss, the union did NOTHING. So we were paying for, what, again? I thought it was illegal to have a closed shop but evidently those days are gone. Oh, yes, I didn’t actually have to be a union member, I just had to give them the money for membership! So, that’s not a closed shop, huh? Sure feels like one.
Well, your current owner could be going broke, and selling control of the business would bring in a needed infusion of cash. Your current owner might not have a succession plan (in other words, if he dies or wants to retire, there’s no one to take over the business), or have the talent needed on-staff to do something, and getting new partners would ensure the business continues. Your current owner may not have the cash to perform necessary upgrades/expansion to keep the business competitive, or may want more cash to buy a competitor, and decided this was the best way to raise funds.
So there are enough possible benefits, but new money never comes without strings attached.
One of the reasons unions require membership is to avoid free riders. I don’t belong to a union- in fact i cant because i’m management. But i also work for a stste government which does not negotiate with individual workers. There is an organization that performs many of the functions of a union but in different ways- for example ,instead of negotiating raises in a collective bargaining agreement the organization persuades legislators to sponsor and pass legislation giving us a raise. Which will also be given to the non-members who didn’t finance any of the efforts and who often complain about the performance of this organization
The notion that any employer/employee relationship isn’t adversarial in nature is ridiculous. Would you like to double down on that and claim that there is no power disparity in the relationship?
Unions want everyone that they are legally obligated to represent to be members in order to avoid people utilizing the system without paying for it’s upkeep/infrastructure/existence. And I’d bet that you weren’t giving them money for membership, but merely compensating them for their administration of the contract you were working under (referral fees, arbitration, stewards, etc.).
The OP should note that the above isn’t a false-flag attack by union-haters in an attempt to make union-supporters look bad. There are people out there who actually believe this. And they think they’re helping to support their cause. Never mind that a power disparity does not inevitably breed adversary. And never mind that adversary is not a binary function.
Organizing may very well be your best option, but you should keep in mind the sorts of people and attitudes you’ll be dealing with.