WorkplaceOrganizing

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.