Being in an industry where everyone is unionized is great, the most important being that whenever there is a work issue you know exactly who to talk to for help.
Having unions should really become the norm for most industries.
I joined a union, but aside for legal help, they’re probably not ever gonna be of other help in my case. I work for a big international company (~5000 worldwide) and there’s only about 10 of us in the uk. Collective bargaining is going to get us nothing but fired. That’s assuming I can convince my 9 colleagues to do so, which is less than likely. In general I think it’s tough to get anything out of a union in international companies.
Also the other user seems to be in the UK which I believe already has stronger worker protections and better access to healthcare than the US; two major things a union in America would push for.
Fucking better than the situation I’m running full tilt from:
Company is based in one State in the U.S. ALL their regular employees are unionized in that State. They accrue vacation time faster, get paid more, etc etc than us, who work in a different State and who do the same work. Even their mental healthcare is different, with the company supplying mental health support and help and funds. We get a number which directs us to the healthcare we pay for through the company. Thaaanks.
I’m normally not this blunt a person though: “Lol fuck you guys. Byyye.” is basically my response once I found out.
Depends what you do at your international company, because they can’t really move anything like production or operations very easily and still expect tax benefits, but if they can move your job overseas where the cost of living is considerably less so employees make less money, they’ll do it in an instant whether your in a union or not.
I work in big tech, and you would be amazed at how many people will openly decry pure acts of malice against employees - laying off the day before their stocks vest, removing remote working, gaslighting, etc, but who will also openly decry forming a union.
Funny enough, even highly educated people have some weird notions about what a union would do for them. They think it’ll make the workforce weaker, will reduce their salary significantly, and will promote laziness and job losses throughout their teams, with absolutely zero evidence to back it up.
What these people are doing is literally paying for the benefits of a union, without the actual union aspect, and with very little power on their side. All a union needs to be is:
Collective bargaining for a minimum salary offered
Access to a union rep for disputes
Access to a union lawyer that specialises in conflict resolution
That’s it, and all for a small fee every month/year.
I’m in construction. The Union absolutely protects the old guard, and some of them are the laziest fucks you’ve ever seen. Guys will work at a snails pace and grieve any and every attempt to train or discipline.
I’m not in the Union, I’m generally in favor of it but there’s absolutely very poor performers being protected.
Because union lawyers are on the side of the employee and thier job is to make sure the dismissal was for cause and procedure was followed. It’s the same mentality that leads to people saying defense attorneys enable criminals. Like no, they’re there to ensure your rights and check the power of the state.
never understood the “promote laziness” thing. A union wouldn’t be able to protect a worker that can’t meet the requirements of the job.
Overachievers get told to stop being better than the lower-quality workers in poorly run unions because “it makes Bob look and feel bad when you do twice the work he can in a day”
It’s not a great reason but if you experience it once it leaves one hell of a sour taste in your mouth, especially since poorly run unions also usually aren’t doing good at protecting workers
Overachievers should be told to stop doing more than they’re paid to do lol. I get it, though. I get bored at work and often spend time building tools and things for myself to work smarter.
The company knows what I’m capable of doing, and are well aware that if they want more from me they could consider rotating me into a better team.
Also when people in the trades work extra hard and extra fast, it’s usually at the expense of their bodies, equipment, safety, and other factors. Just because one dude is sprinting back and forth between the parts window and the shop floor doesn’t mean he should be. Management doesn’t care though, and they say ‘see how Jim finished 3 work orders today? You all need to do that’
Jim gets mad because he is destroying his body to work faster, and others aren’t, everyone else is mad because now the managers think Jim’s behavior should be standard.
All the ‘fast’ mechanics I worked with were always doing dumb shit, like standing too far up on ladders because a taller one wasn’t available, loosening harnesses to get into tighter spots instead of working with a teammate, or carrying two way to heavy items instead of making two trips. Yes all this stuff gets jobs done quicker but at what cost.
So the union tells Jim to slow down, because he isn’t getting paid more for breaking his back, and his behavior will just shift to the new normal, meaning he will have to work even harder to be an ‘overachiver’. Jim construes this as compensating for lazy employees, get propagandized by the xompany and dismantles the union.
Six months later Jim falls off a ladder and can no longer work in that field. Meanwhile everyone else is still held to Jim’s ‘good work ethic’ standard. More injuries, more injuries, more mistakes, employees start to see problems with the company, they form a union, the cycle continues.
And yet in this very comment thread there’s someone complaining about their union “protecting the old guard” who are “lazy”.
I am fully in support of doing the bare minimum, as long as you’re not making anyone else’s job harder. The only time you “should” be doing more than the minimum is when it’s your own personal company, or it’s work that actually betters society beyond making money.
That’s it, and all for a small fee every month/year.
My overly educated coworkers say the dumbest shit about unions and this one is typically leading the charge. You don’t want to pay a couple of hundred dollars every year for massively improved job security and benefits? Are you fucking stupid? It’s a trick question, they’re dumb as bricks.
Even just attempting to form a union results in better benefits.
The residents at my hospital started discussing forming a union and they even got some signatures and what not. Word got out to the dean and now we have
increased salary
fixed amount university contribution to 403b regardless of how much you contribute
free parking
more meal stipends
Obviously they are still planning to unionize but I’m finishing my residency so I won’t get to see it.
I appreciate unions, but I often feel like this website gets out of touch with them.
Many jobs simply do not lend themselves to having a union. They’re too niche, the employees are scattered around, there’s no willing union representation, etc. “These guys should just join a Union!! And if they have to - by golly, form one themselves!” Always comes off to me like such a reductive take on how complex a lot of working/employment systems are, and where unions can and cannot benefit.
It often pushes up on just being idealogical grandstanding rather than legitimately listening and understanding case by case problems in employment
There's a concept where I'm from of an employee committee, which is just an assembly of the workers in a particular workplace and a valid actor in collective bargaining. I've been a part of one to negotiate specific policies.
Still a collective bargaining agent, though. Whether or not it fits the US's specific legal categorization of a union, engaging in collective negotiations with employers in an organized manner is fairly universally applicable and positive. "Unions just don't fit this kind of work" sounds a heck of a lot like an excuse to avoid having collective bargaining altogether.
I get what you are saying, but I think they introduced sufficient nuance that it is not fair of you to say they are completely handwaving away unions and collective bargaining as an option
I’m not, I’m saying an individual is indulging themselves by simply hand-waiving any employment related problem as “just start collective bargaining and your problems are solved!!!”
Well, if they're handwaving and not organizing, then yeah. If they're actually organizing, then no.
In almost all circumstances, being organized for bargaining is going to be better than not being organized for bargaining. That holds whether you're hand-waving your problems before getting organized or not.
…. You understand that those are two different people, right? The person hand-waving how easy starting a union is and how easily beneficial it can be is not the same person as the worker who has to do the thing lol
Ah, gotcha. Well, my point stands. Unless your hypothetical hand-waver is unemployed or already in an union, I suppose.
I'm not American, so I don't know how hard it is to unionize in the US. Over here there are massive unions with country-wide presence that typically can set up where needed, as well as segment-specific unions. I'm pretty sure you can either start a new one with a handful of people or just... you know, call a preexisting one and sign up. I've heard about companies in the US having way more restrictive steps, having to agree company-wide to unionize and stuff like that. That's... not how we do it.
It’s very hard here, especially depending on your circumstances - and even when a union is formed they’re often unable to really… get any meaningful progress. Depending on your particular employment, it’s effectively impossible - and it gets harder the poorer you are.
It’s why it’s sometimes frustrating to hear Americans tell other Americans (often less well off than they are) to “just form a Union!”. The leftist version of “pull yourself up by the bootstraps”
You can organize, unionized or not, and it seems like organization is a gateway to unionization, regardless of how hard that may be. And it is a fact that organization and collective bargaining will help and is a key path to improvements, so even if it's hard, it's still the way to go.
And hey, ultimately the goal is to keep electing pro-unionization leaders so it becomes easier to it's more feasible. But you don't stop doing it or recommending it just because it's harder there.
Okay, so a bunch of people organize and then the boss fires all of them for doing so. That’s not exactly a perfect system leading towards better working conditions
A bunch of people organize and then the boss fires them. Then the boss has no employees to do the work. Ideally this outrages enough other employees to go on strike and in a semi-functional country it would also prompt some oversight on their practices.
The more people organize, then harder it is to just fire them. The more publicly they organize, the harder it is to just fire them.
If they don't organize, the boss just gets to say what they do and for how much money, so that's definitely not a better alternative to organizing long term in terms of "leading to better working conditions".
Yeah man, but these are real people and not hypothetical worker drones in an internet comment. If they all get fired and don’t have money for food and rent, that’s really fucking bad. You can’t say “it’s always good to organize! Just take the risk of getting evicted from your apartment! Don’t let them boss you around!” And not expect the working class Joe in the factory to look at you like you’re the dumbest guy around
Organizing isn't "taking the risk". Not organizing is taking the risk.
Organizing is your only defense against arbitrary dismissals and lacking the right to push back against abusive practices (along with voting for leaders who will enforce robust labor laws). If you want to get randomly fired in retaliation for exercising your rights the safest way to get there is to have nobody who can leverage the ability of workers to grind production to a halt.
But hey, here's the fun part about collective bargaining and worker action: "working class Joe" doesn't need to take that risk, you just need enough people to set up and fight for Joe's rights regardless. If Joe feels he has to scab because he can't take the risk that's what picket lines are for.
Gotta say, looking at the context of your feed it's quite baffling to see someone go "Biden is too far to the right to vote for him, can't compromise my leftist ideology that much, so I'll go third party" and "unions are fine on paper, but you gotta be realist and let your boss step all over you, because losing your job isn't an ideological hypothetical".
After a while one may think that one of those strong stances is disingenuous when both are held at once.
You have to remember that these are the same people who romanticize and call for general strikes without any consideration for what it does to families. Not to mention it doesn’t even acknowledge the fact that most general strikes in history have failed miserably. The reality is that successful union activity is generally small, difficult, and has to be sustained for years.
Precisely so. It can be grating to see Lemmy, a site full almost exclusively of well-paid computer programmers - preach “just unionize!” With the same oily lips as conservatives who tell millions to “just pull yourself up by the bootstraps!”.
In both cases it’s “talking down” to the end worker, pitching an ‘easy’, one sentence solution to all of their ills without any consideration for the vast amount of effort required in reality.
Nail on the head. It’s so wildly frustrating. I mean look at the SAG-AFTRA/WGA strike. I am a professional shooter/editor but not in the hollywood side anymore, so I had the luxury of working as an editor at a salaried job while my friends suffered during the strike. Their near-unanimous approval of the strike still made it incredibly difficult and they’re already terrified of IATSE/Teamsters striking this summer.
Was it worth it? Yes. Absolutely. But my god it was hard. I don’t think people realize the strain it put on folks. I saw $800/day crew members at coffee shops pulling shifts. I saw veteran cam ops lamenting the unemployment process as they basically begged anyone they knew for a corporate gig. Folks who leaned on their parents to financially support them in their 30’s as the strike played out. It wasn’t picket lines and signs and high spirits all day every day. It was hunger and fear of losing the roof of their heads. All for the chance to maybe have a better work situation moving forward, to be determined at an unknown date.
Absolutely. It’s really good to hear your perspective on the matter, because yeah - that shit is brutal and SAG-AFTRA was a ‘good outcome’. Many - especially those without the benefit of millions and millions of dollars, celebrity backers, and mass public support, do not have good outcomes.
If you’re interested in this kind of thing, “Germinal” by Zola is what I find to be the best depiction of a real strike. Because it has genuinely good intentions, but it’s also fucking terrible, and essentially everyone involved ends up worse for wear after it’s done.
If anybody wants help navigating this send me a PM. We can setup an email chain, or encrypted comms, or whatever you need.
If you’re a Pinkerton/Securitas/Strike Breaker feel free to contact me as well, I’m always happy to direct scabs to where they can happily fuck themselves.
I remember trying to do this when I still worked at jimmy John’s, cause I’m not exactly a charismatic individual and I have no leadership skills to form a union… 🥲 They never replied to my email
I never understood how this was supposed to work. My job isn’t a “union shop” so I have to quit? There’s no way in hell this factory in Trumpville NY is going to get behind the idea of unionizing.
I didn’t want to be too specific, just to say everyone here is super conservative so I’m assuming my only option if I wanted to be part of a union that could do anything for me would be to leave this job for one where the workers are on board with having a union.
I’m completely ignorant to the process though which was why I asked.
Google AFL/CIO and your local town. Reach out to them with what your industry is, and anyone who is also interested in a union. They’ll get back to you with either materials or a local rep that can guide you through the process. If after you’ve emailed you get a response feel free to reach out to me here and I can show you how to take the next steps, it’s usually a communication network for your co workers. I can help out with some pointers if you like, after you get an email chain going.
No, in my understanding you basically convince as many co-workers as possible to join the union together. Ideally the majority, but essentially you just need enough that they can’t fire and replace you all overnight… Which means, it has to be enough that the rest of the staff can’t cover for the union members for a few weeks or months without drastically slowing things down
You could probably reach out to a relevant union rep to get more info- there’re legal processes to help with this, like protected voting if enough people want to join a union or not, that probably varies by where you live and I only know the basics
That’s cause you’re not going going form an “union”. You are going to form a “The True Patriots” or “The Fighters of Freedom” or “Drain the Swamp: Company Edition” or whatever conservative jargon that gets buy in.
It’s a weird circumstance that this organization does everything an union does.
I like this idea! “Hey guys sign here so we can create the Anti-Woke Group! We just have to have meetings that discuss business and nothing woke, that’s how we win against woke!”
“Don’t you all think it’s woke that we can’t get insurance? or a pension? I don’t know about you but I think it’s pretty DEI that the boss is making all this money and we’re down here busting our balls doing all work. Sounds like me the boss is living off the welfare that our labor provides.”
First you email them and let then know your industry, where your work is located and ask them if there are any local reps. Don’t pay dues until you contact the local rep.
Do you think it’s impossible that the IWW does not have representatives in every part of the country…? I live in an area where there aren’t most major organizations. I had to start my own DSA chapter.
Go on. You said you’d walk me through the process. They have no reps here. What do I do now?
I’m a caseworker. There are only 25 employees. I have never spoken to probably 15 of them. Of the 10 I know well, maybe half would actually go through with forming a union. What now?
Oh just planning ahead. If they respond (and there’s another user in this very thread saying they never responded to his emails), how exactly will the IWW help me form a Union? What’ll be involved? How can I form a Union when I don’t even have contact info for a lot of the employees here who don’t even know me?
Oh. So you don’t have any idea as to how they “build you a union” or even an inkling as to what that means. You can just send emails (and god bless you for that!)
Well, that sure is inspiring. I’ll have to pass that off to all of my clients too. Who knew they didn’t have to be poor! They could just contact the IWW, join or have some unions built for them, and that’s an easy peasy improvement on their quality of life. Makes you wonder why they haven’t all done that already! Guess they just plum never thought about it.
And oh boy, I’ll tell all my coworkers right away about that link you sent me! They’ll be so excited to find out that by switching to AT&T they can save up to $10/month.
Heck, with your knowledge maybe all of social services will start with a call to the IWW. Guess we just never thought of it either! But you know us workin’ class types, we just don’t have all that crawling out of poverty experience that you computer sciency types too.
I get it man. In your heart you want the best for people. Maybe you think you’re genuinely helping. But all this confident grandstanding about “just join a Union!” When you have no fucking clue, no experience, no knowledge about jack shit about past websites and links is embarrassing. And being embarrassed is okay, because that’s the only way you can develop as a person, but if you want to actually help people - real people in the world, you have to do better. This is just self-serving masturbation for yourself. You can be better than that. It starts by admitting where you don’t know things.
Nevermind. I don’t think you actually care at all. You just want the applause. Bring out the empty cloche, get the applause of the pencil necked nerds. You don’t need real results. Why would you? People better than you are doing all of the actual work.
I’ve got a good one for you. Why don’t you go down to your nearest children’s oncology ward and d you write a biiiiiig big big big check. Because people will see it, and they’ll think you’re so kind and cool! You might even think of yourself as a good person for a second there. Maybe they’ll throw you a party.
And then… you just let it bounce!! Who gives a shit! We both know you don’t give a fuck. You don’t gotta see any of this stuff through, just the vibes are good enough for ya. Hell, let the doctors or the kids or whoever the fuck do the nitty gritty, you did your part. 🫡
Any anger I have towards you is very well placed. lol. You’re a louse. I encounter five people like you a month. People who actually help people make jokes about people like you.
Nice to hear. Keep up your good work. Make sure to keep a good eye out for those louses. You’re so good at helping people by letting them know how helpless they are and how there’s nothing they can do.
No, I just help in meaningful ways instead of sending links and trying to get them to switch to AT&T. It’s very funny that you genuinely cannot picture actually helping people past “sending links”, lmfao.
Like even in the links you don’t understand inside works lmfao.
I’ll cut you a buck, I don’t actually live in Dunkirk New York. I am, however, actually a caseworker. And the size of the office is actually accurate to mine. Why do you think I’m so annoyed with dolts like you? I get five cranks a month who call me saying “hey uhm actually I figured out how you can help the homeless… just get em unionized!” And I’ll say “okay, do you know how to do that?” And they bat their eyelashes and say “well, uh, no, but you could probably, like, do it”.
That or they have a cabin that they want to donate to the homeless, but aw shit it turns out it was actually their brothers and they were just hoping it would work out. Or they call and they tell me that a bake sale would raise money and I say “great, I’d be happy to attend” and they say “oh uhm no I don’t actually bake… I was just hoping you guys would do it and I would just have, like, the idea”.
Most of them are well-meaning. But they’re also mostly just kind of sad, single people who want to feel useful but don’t have the capacity or the will to actually help anyone.
I think you’re a very funny, very sad guy. It’s fun to really explore a type of person I see so much but can rarely grill like this. You’re all the same, really. All fluff, no will, no actual want to help people if it doesn’t jerk yourself off.
It’s like throwing peanuts at a monkey. Go ahead! Another link! 🥜 another link! 🥜
You’re not acting in good faith. You haven’t engaged with any union activities and are currently masturbating about it on Lemmy in a leftist meme thread. If anybody is dodging anything it’s you.
If you’re interested in joining or starting a union I’m very happy to help. But you’re not, you’re trolling.
The slightest opposition (not living in a major area) is enough to make you throw up your hands and go “this is impossible! It’s unrealistic!”. You can’t even entertain what forming a union is like for 5 seconds, you want to puff out your chest and tell everyone else to do it?
You haven’t even taken the first step by sending an email. And I’m throwing my hands up? The amount of effort you’re taking in engaging with me and you could’ve already started.
I just listened to the BtB: How Conservatism Won today. He breaks it all down and shows us how we got to where we are. Laid out in a nice chronological, easy to digest order connecting dot to dot; it’s very enlightening.
I highly recommend it to everyone interested in what’s happening in America right now. Robert Evans is a gem, the definition of an actual journalist, and the kind of people The Left in America needs.
Thank you for the reminder about BtB. I need to listen to those instead of random YouTube hobby stuff.
I have noticed YouTube has started to steer me into right wing spaces. I use it to watch fix-it guides, guitar videos, and video game reviews. Somehow the video two away is some Red Pill, incel, right wing bullshit. I bet they are paying a pretty penny to steer people their way.
The founder of the Pinkertons barely cheated death so many times that it all but proves time travel exists, and it’s being used in the same way that every other groundbreaking technology is: to make the rich richer.
There is a balance that needs to be struck. Back when we were peak union in the UK in the 70s their leaders would hold the country to randsom. They’d tell politicians that they want them gone and would instigate bi-weekly blackouts until they got what they wanted. Every household was well stocked with candles and wood logs due to the number of orchestrated blackouts.
The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction in recent years. Now professions with strong unions like train drivers are among the only people who have had their wages keep up with inflation over the past 10 years.
Some jobs don’t lend themselves to having unions but they are the minority. Even software developers probably should have unions these days - if people don’t want to be part of one they can always work as a contractor instead.
I’d agree with this generally. Again, my issue largely have this idea of unions as being this magical, fantasy like interpretation of collective bargaining that magically and suddenly solved almost all employment related issues.
I’ve been in several unions. Some were very good. Others I feel were genuinely bad to operations and employees. The vast majority of them simply didn’t really do anything
Unions are great in theory! But the mob of already well paid computer scientists who rush up on Lemmy and act like they’re this magical solution other workers simply didn’t think of is obnoxious.
Yeah would agree with that assessment. Every human organization is liable to dysfunction/corruption if run badly and organized labour is not immune to this.
My wife is a data analyst for what’s essentially a tech firm, she’s unionized and in her particular circumstances it’s amazing. Fully remote, 3 raises last year LoL, great benefits etc etc. I work with unions and many are not nearly as good for their members as others.
Let’s just all team up together, pool our issues and grievances as a group, and then have one person represent us to the compamy presenting our issues as some sort of united front. You know, so we could increase our bargaining power as some sort of collective.
We’re geniuses. No one has ever thought of this before.
I’ve found a lot of people are legitimately more interested when you sell stuff this way because terms like “union” or “socialism” have been heavily stigmatized “for some reason”
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