We're Aria and Tristan, workplace organizers helping essential workers organize their workplaces, here to answer your questions about unions, your job, and how to win better conditions. Ask us anything!

A couple questions from me, sorry if they’re too basic. What is a union? Why do some people like unions and some people don’t? How are unions formed and what do they do?

A union is an organization of workers coming together to use their leverage on the job and solidarity to hold management accountable to what they need and what their community needs.

Unions have a long and storied history. It's hard to know exactly why one individual likes or dislikes a union. In the American context, unions were the formations that exploited workers found themselves grouped in to demand higher wages and better benefits (or simply survivable working conditions). These natural formations of workers hardened into formal craft guilds, trade unions, and industrial unions. These formal unions were some of the vehicles through which masses of working class people were able to win significant change in their local lives and nationally. They won changes like child labor laws, the 8 hour work week, and more. Many people have bad associations with unions because bosses have spent billions of dollars on propaganda for centuries trying to convince working people that these organizations are anti-american or "create friction". Many bosses also love to bring up the mob take over of the Teamsters to make it seem like all unions are corrupt. I'd respond with how many private business function like organized crime today?"

The classic union formation process is in several parts. All campaigns start in the same place,

Identify common issues with your coworkers

Build relationships with your coworkers

Make a list of your coworkers and their beliefs about their working conditions,

Identify natural leaders in the shop, "People with followers"

Persuade them to join your organizing team, build a team of leaders

Identify common demands with your team and go and assess whether or not your coworkers would be willing to take action on these demands and build a union to win change

At this point if you are pursuing a union drive election with the national labor relations board you would,

Contact a parent union and get union authorization cards

Go back to all your assessed coworkers and have them sign cards

Get to a super majority 70%+ of cards signed and plan an action where you demand voluntary recognition from the boss

If the boss refuses, file those cards with the NLRB and get a union election.

Organize your coworkers to win that election with a strong majority

Once you win your election, immediately pull together your bargaining team and start agitating the boss to come to the contract negotiation table.

Bargain your contract, taking escalating action with your coworkers to speed up the process and get better resolutions.

Finalize your contract and train a set of workers to be stewards who can continue organizing coworkers to defend the wins enshrined in the contract.

Typically one would start by identifying workplace issues that are commonly held among employees. From here, you want to map out your workplace by finding potential worker leaders, sorting out people's roles/attitudes in the workplace, deciding on concise goals, and developing tactics for potential collective action. The organizing conversation starts here, gathering coworkers either virtually or physically to collaborate and agitate one another around these collective goals (higher wages, PTO, hazard pay, etc.). At this point, the group coordinates and executes the collective action (petition delivery, walkout, etc.) and if their needs are not met, escalation including public campaigns/picket lines can occur to put pressure on the boss to meet worker needs. Finally, inoculation is necessary for inevitable counter-campaigns by the company itself. Keeping your coworkers prepared for the worst is necessary for going the distance. As early as possible in this process, it can be incredibly helpful to find supportive organizations for your collective actions (like EWOC!) and/or affiliate yourself with a union associated with your trade so you can overcome obstacles with the benefit of additional legal backing.

What are your views on a right to work state? Also, do you have any advice on how to stick up for your job in that situation?

Our view is that right-to-work laws are a holdover from Jim Crow era laws that were frequently used to discourage mostly black workers from joining unions and today, they're used to drain the coffers of unions by not requiring dues to be paid by all workers. The good news is, right-to-work laws don't change your ability to organize! It just means that if you do secure a union, you'll have to fight to maintain that contract but your right to organize is unaffected under the first amendment and the National Labor Relations Act.

At previous positions within the IT sector, I was part of an "on-call" rotation that required me to always have VPN access and an active connection to my workplace. It was also strongly expected that I have my remote workstation on and "listening" for emails and chat notifications from our clients. I was not getting paid for time I wasn't "working an issue" but I had almost no freedom when I was off the clock because of the possibility of something happening.

Because this is impacting my personal life, should I have pressed my employer for compensation in "at-the-ready" or "on-standby" rates? The requirements of the on-call were suffocating and one of the reasons I left the company. I'd like to extend the question for any other people in the "on-call" world that may not know their entitlement to fair compensation.

​

Thanks in advance! 🌮

EDIT: The SLA agreements for my response time was, in no uncertain terms, "immediately". If I got a call while driving, I was expected to pull over and VPN in from the mobile hotspot we were required to carry with us at all times. From the shoulder of an interstate.

In nursing, many of the contracts we negotiated were crystal clear that nurses needed to be paid some sort of bare minimum wage while being kept on call even if they are not at the workplace. For one contract I was on the negotiating team of nurses made four dollars an hour while they were on call and not at the workplace and then made a differential if they were called in of 125% of their normal hourly base wage.

I would say whenever workers lives are being controlled by the workplace they deserve to be getting compensated by that workplace. Best way to secure that standard is through a union contract that you bargain collectively with your coworkers.

Where are you based?

There is a distinction between 'waiting to be engaged' and 'engaged to be waiting'. On the face of the little information you provided, it sounds like you are the latter and should be compensated.

NAL and where you are will make a huge difference though

We are a national organization with volunteers in every corner of the U.S. Reach out to us anywhere

A union is an organization of workers coming together to use their leverage on the job and solidarity to hold management accountable to what they need and what their community needs.

Unions have a long and storied history. It's hard to know exactly why one individual likes or dislikes a union. In the American context, unions were the formations that exploited workers found themselves grouped in to demand higher wages and better benefits (or simply survivable working conditions). These natural formations of workers hardened into formal craft guilds, trade unions, and industrial unions. These formal unions were some of the vehicles through which masses of working class people were able to win significant change in their local lives and nationally. They won changes like child labor laws, the 8 hour work week, and more. Many people have bad associations with unions because bosses have spent billions of dollars on propaganda for centuries trying to convince working people that these organizations are anti-american or "create friction". Many bosses also love to bring up the mob take over of the Teamsters to make it seem like all unions are corrupt. I'd respond with how many private business function like organized crime today?"

The classic union formation process is in several parts. All campaigns start in the same place,

Identify common issues with your coworkers

Build relationships with your coworkers

Make a list of your coworkers and their beliefs about their working conditions,

Identify natural leaders in the shop, "People with followers"

Persuade them to join your organizing team, build a team of leaders

Identify common demands with your team and go and assess whether or not your coworkers would be willing to take action on these demands and build a union to win change

At this point if you are pursuing a union drive election with the national labor relations board you would,

Contact a parent union and get union authorization cards

Go back to all your assessed coworkers and have them sign cards

Get to a super majority 70%+ of cards signed and plan an action where you demand voluntary recognition from the boss

If the boss refuses, file those cards with the NLRB and get a union election.

Organize your coworkers to win that election with a strong majority

Once you win your election, immediately pull together your bargaining team and start agitating the boss to come to the contract negotiation table.

Bargain your contract, taking escalating action with your coworkers to speed up the process and get better resolutions.

Finalize your contract and train a set of workers to be stewards who can continue organizing coworkers to defend the wins enshrined in the contract.

I'm in Topeka where the Frito-Lay strike is in full effect. How much leverage do they really have in negotiating for higher wages, family leave, medical leave, and other labor-protection benefits?

This three week strike just concluded with workers voting in favor of an agreement for 4% raises and a reduction to only 6, 12 hour days. It ostensibly ended the "suicide shifts" or back to back 12 hour shifts with only 8 hours in between but these were technically already not company policy. Realistically, workers were waited out by the company who was hiring scabs and bribing workers in need of funds back across the picket line. Workers leverage comes from their ability to hold out against the onslaught of the boss and this was a situation where the boss was able to wait out and coerce enough workers to exhaust the effort. If we want to be able to hold the line against mega corporations, unions and organizations like DSA need to invest heavily in strike support and training!

In your view, why are certain licensed professions (law, accounting, medicine, consulting, etc) resistant to collective labor organization? While pay and benefits for these are generally competitive, the work hours cause many to burn out.

Bosses have spent a lot of money over the last century to convince people that unions are third party organizations that insert themselves between workers and employers. In reality, unions are workers collectively taking action together for their own wellbeing. This characterization from bosses makes many highly educated workers feel like they do not want to risk someone speaking on their behalf, despite that not being the way any strong organizing union would function.

Additionally, their is a misunderstanding of unions that they are only for a certain sector of blue collar workers. This is an ahistorical understanding of the union movement. There have always been unions for workers of all kinds, even though the strongest ones with the most leverage were those crucial to industry (mining, auto workers, steel, rail), they have been unions for lawyers and doctors since the early 20th century.

Since a lot of people aren’t familiar with it, would it be possible to give a quick rundown of what the process of organizing a workplace typically looks like?

Typically one would start by identifying workplace issues that are commonly held among employees. From here, you want to map out your workplace by finding potential worker leaders, sorting out people's roles/attitudes in the workplace, deciding on concise goals, and developing tactics for potential collective action. The organizing conversation starts here, gathering coworkers either virtually or physically to collaborate and agitate one another around these collective goals (higher wages, PTO, hazard pay, etc.). At this point, the group coordinates and executes the collective action (petition delivery, walkout, etc.) and if their needs are not met, escalation including public campaigns/picket lines can occur to put pressure on the boss to meet worker needs. Finally, inoculation is necessary for inevitable counter-campaigns by the company itself. Keeping your coworkers prepared for the worst is necessary for going the distance. As early as possible in this process, it can be incredibly helpful to find supportive organizations for your collective actions (like EWOC!) and/or affiliate yourself with a union associated with your trade so you can overcome obstacles with the benefit of additional legal backing.

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We have resources with more info here: https://workerorganizing.org/resources/

I am a dental hygienist and I’m DYING for our profession to unionize. We are nearly identical to nurses but with ZERO benefits. Any ideas why dental hygienists wouldn’t unionize?

I once was organizing with a dental hygienist who wanted to unionize and we ran into some issues just based on the number of workers in the worksite (it was a very small shop) and the weak or unfriendly interpersonal relationships between the few workers there.

I think there is no GOOD reason to not organize as dental hygienists. Some difficulties you might run into are things like dental hygienists believing they are too professional for unions, or too educated. I think it would be good to educate your coworkers about the union for doctors in SEIU Committee for Interns and Residents and how many highly trained Nurse Practitioners are present in nurses unions like National Nurses United.

whoops accidentally deleted my last question. Do you any any advice on trying to organize apathetic coworkers? I've encountered a lot of general fatigue among my coworkers, and even though they hate the pay/working conditions as much as I do, it's been a challenge getting them involved.

This is why starting with identifying workplace issues is so important. It can be very hard to convince a bunch of exhausted coworkers to engage in a long, taxing strike for higher wages but it could be another entirely to fight for more paid time off and better staffing to actually address the exhaustion that the staff is feeling. Fighting against your coworkers' apathy is only going to alienate them further, it's all about empathizing with the tendency to put your head down and do your job (especially during a pandemic) while offering them something material that could let them actually enjoy/identify with their job. Each workplace is going to function differently but we need to have specific goals that provide people with a stability that isn't squarely in the hands of their boss. Also don't be discouraged by apathy! Keep agitating and keep developing those trusting relationships with your coworkers until workplace issues become a topic of casual conversation. Joining an org like EWOC can help keep you fighting that fight even when your coworkers don't seem willing to fight it with you.

Whats your advice for people in the fast food industry trying to unionize? Because I havent seen it going very well thus far, the most successful result Ive seen in the us so far was a union of employees of a specific burger chain in portland oregon that straight up refuses to meet any of the unions demands, granted I might have missed something in my admittedly cursery search though

edit: forgot to specify the state

Check out the Restaurant Organizing Project!

How do I go about organizing a union at my workplace if I’m afraid my fellow employees will rat me out to the boss, getting me fired?

The importance of workplace mapping (plotting out the jobs, attitudes, and leanings of your coworkers) is exemplified here. You want to be developing relationships of solidarity well before you're approaching coworkers with the union question because even left-leaning workers CAN panic when it comes to loaded words like union, strike, or organize. My advice would be to map out your workplace, get to know the particular concerns that your coworkers have, and reach out to EWOC to be matched up with an organizer who can walk you through the logistics from start to finish. We even do a training series on how to organize your workplace taught by worker organizers like me!

more resources

Why do you think it's taken so long for the game development industry to unionize?

Including the headlines this week, it seems like there's plenty of reasons to unionize, and plenty of pro-union sentiment among the workers. What do you think the holdup is?

This isn't just the game industry. The tech industry broadly has been slower to unionize due to many of these jobs initially being much higher pay and good benefits jobs. As silicon valley has grown increasingly more exploitative people are starting recognize that no matter the frills, a job that works to death is a job that works you to death.

I don't know much about the gaming industry in particular but I would assume that industry has seen a similar pattern to what we're seeing with tech.

Are you planning to capitalize on the remote work sentiment now that companies are trying to force employees to return to office?

One telling thing that I overheard in a conference call discussing our plans, was that if enough critical people pushed back on the plans, they would reconsider. I was just thinking to myself, "Like collective bargaining?"

As of this moment, EWOC doesn't have any particular plans (though anybody is welcome to reach out to us for help organizing their workplace) and a big reason is that organizing remote workers can be very difficult! Developing relationships and solidarity among coworkers that you aren't physically interacting with can be particularly challenging, especially as many remote workers are being required to return to offices. It will be pivotal that employees either create a hybrid in-person/digital community with their coworkers or develop their collective technological literacy to have those watercooler-esque interactions online. These spaces will be necessary, whether they're centered around organizing or just getting to know one another (and in turn, one another's needs and concerns) better.

How does one start a Union? I'm in New Mexico.

Check out our organizing guide & talk to an organizer if you need guidance

Any chance you're pushing for a 6 or 4 hour work day?

We'd love to and when it comes up we will. Realistically, the reason why some european countries/industries have been able to negotiate and secure a 6 or 4 hour work day is because they have radically higher density in union membership in those countries or industries. If we want to be able to demand these standards in the US we should be figuring out how to aggressively increase union density in these same industries. That starts with talking to your coworkers about their issues and getting involved in an organization like EWOC that is strategizing about how to organize major companies with volunteer organizers across the country.

Is ewoc to reference Star Wars?

Accidentally yes! When our founders were discussing what to name what we were doing someone suggested the "Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee" or EWOC for short. Everyone was like, "that's ridiculous but...it kind of works."

This might not be a question y'all are expecting, but how did you two get your jobs working with EWOC? Working to unionize exploited laborers is a dream job for me, but I don't know how to get started or what kind of experience and training I would need

volunteer!

Just signed up :)

Excellent!

What have been some of the hurdles you've found in organising? Have you come across any major opposition (inteernally or externally) from left wing people? (And the actual left wing, not Neoliberals and the likes).

Also, good luck here, hope you don't get flamed too much, though things aren't looking good when I posted this.

Most of the hurdles that my coworkers and I experienced were getting enough bodies for the picket line day after day and resisting a boss campaign that consisted of heartfelt theatrics that looked to some like allyship all while they hired scabs and sweated us out for six weeks. It can be particularly difficult to oppose a company whose method of engagement is actually DISengagement, masquerading as diplomatic despite holding more than enough power to meet our demands. I think that one of the more poignant lessons to take away from our strike is that no workplace is inherently radical even if the workers who staff it are doing radical work and helping their community. It can be very easy for a business (and in turn a CEO) to justify their own existence at the expense of their workers by wielding well-tailored, "woke" branding.

We did not however meet resistance from the left wing. In fact, the particular political alignment of each worker and signholder on the picket line came up a lot less than did solidarity around each particular issue and the toll of the strike itself. Our city's online queer community in particular came out in full force to support us with very little backlash about particular demands/tactics. First and foremost, we were struggling, queer/trans workers who needed help and I think our community responded to that more than anything.

Would you ever think of doing an interview with the Valley Labor Report? I'm sure they would love to have you on their radio show.

Absolutely! Link us up!

How does EWOC incorporate political education into their organizing work?

We function off of the understanding that most working class people who want to organize may not initially or inherently see that process as a political one. However, organizing in your workplace with your coworkers to win demands is inherently political because it is the material process of taking absolute decision making power from the powerful.

EWOC has a political education program run by our internal organizing team and we invite workers organizing with us to all of these panels, calls, and discussions. We also incorporate the practical politics of taking power into all of the training that we do with workers. Workers in a workplace should have a say over their working conditions, this should be true for working people in all aspects of their lives. How do we as working class people take concrete power to have a truly democratic government and economy?

can you recommend some books about the history of unions? also where can i get current union/labor action news?

There is Power in a Union by Philip Dray

The Communist Party and the Auto Workers Union by Roger Keeran

American Trade Unionism by William Z. Foster

Current Union news, sign up for Jonah Furman's weekly round up of union news called Who Gets the Bird, https://whogetsthebird.substack.com/

"We're Aria and Tristan"

"Tristen is a workplace organizer"

I take it Aria is typing and doesn't know how to spell your name?

My mistake! Just a typo 🤦‍♂️

What is the best way to start to organize without putting a target on your back?

I know they can't punish you for unionizing, but as we all know, there are unofficial ways to punish people: moving you to a worse seat, changing schedules, etc

Take a look at our organizing Guide & talk to a workplace organizer to help guide you.

What are some suggestions you would give on how to organize anything from a food distribution to a union drive?

Take a look at our organizing Guide & talk to a workplace organizer to help guide you.

I work in insurance and our salaried adjusters are exploited entirely. The volume of work is unmanageable because they aren’t hiring enough people to share it (i.e., should be a team of 10 but there are only 3), and because of their salaried status, they are expected to and explicitly advised that they need to work as much as possible, cutting into the work life balance that our hourly adjusters enjoy. I’ve mentioned unionizing but everyone is concerned that they’ll get targets on their backs for even whispering the word.

The only thing is, we all work remotely because of the pandemic, so “getting together” is much more difficult and we definitely don’t want to set off the filter alter for using the word Union in work-chats.

Is there anything you can suggest?

Take a look at our organizing guide & talk to a workplace organizer to help guide you.

My workplace has 80,000 employees. How does one attempt to unionize a workforce that large?

Take a look at our organizing guide to get an idea of the process. You can talk to a workplace organizer to guide you through the process.

I live in a very anti-union stayed and I work in a low in service sector job how can we get started?

Take a look at our organizing Guide & talk to a workplace organizer to help guide you.

You don’t help non-essential worker ? I mean what is an essential worker and why would they need to get organized, if they don’t do they risk theirs life ?

We help workers from any industry! The essential worker label was developed by bosses to force many of the lowest-paid and least respected workers in the US to still go to work in the pandemic. This label however had the side effect of showing many workers that they should be higher paid and better treated considering how essential they are. We work with many people who were classified by the bosses as essential, especially grocery workers

How do you expect your business to survive now that we're nearing the end of the pandemic?

We're seeing a mass exodus of underpaid service workers right now with all of the, "Sorry, we all quit!" messages we're seeing on the doors of fast food joints. Many are panicking and imagining that these businesses are going to hit rock bottom and start to disappear but this fails to acknowledge the margins, cash reserves, and heavily padded wages of these company's corporate higher ups. Businesses can afford meaningful changes to match employee costs of living, but it needs to be pulled away from the profit margin rather than skimming from worker protections/accommodations or else nobody will stay at these jobs. When you say "your business," do you mean a specific business or just businesses in general?