I work for a small-ish company of laborers. We have ~100 full-time employees who work in labour, a small team of administrative employees, and very few managers all things considered. The reasons for this are part of the reason I need to be vague in public talking about this, because the details make the company very identifiable to anyone who knows anything about the industry.
Some previous employees tried and failed to unionize over a decade ago, but the vote was very close. Since then, wages have stagnated to a degree that make me laugh and cry, we are being pushed to work more and more overtime, and in general morale is very low. I am in contact with a small group of very well-connected employees who are 100% on board with unionizing, and I believe that we can successfully get the required signatures this time if we play our cards right.
- How does one go about choosing a union to work with? I have done some Googling but the results are useless. I need some kind of leftist search engine, please! I know of the major Canadian unions like Unifor and Teamsters, as well as the IWW, and then the very specific ones like the postal union or the teachers’ union.
- Does the IWW even do workplace organizing? I was under the impression that it was more of a thing you joined solo.
- Are any of the bigger unions in Canada actually useful? We need a hard wage correction upfront and then guaranteed cost of living increases after that, and I don’t want to do all this work to have some centrist ‘union’ let us down in negotiations.
- Do you know of any trade-specific unions for things in the realm of carpentry and space finishing? (Again sorry for being vague in public about industry) I know that my industry is largely unionized in the US, but here it rarely is. I have not found any info from my Google searches as to which unions those other companies work with.
- If we can’t find anything that’s a good fit, is it advisable to start an industry-specific union for us and others? Is that doomed to fail?
- I’ve found a few different groups that say “contact us if you want to organize your workplace” but basically
- Most of them seem US-centric and we are in Canada
- I worry that they’re ops lol
- Not sure if this is the IWW’s wheelhouse or not. I don’t want to take help from them and then form a union under Teamsters or something, kind of feels like wasting their resources idk maybe this is fine??
- So uhhhh please recommend a good group to talk to about this in Canada! Or I mean a US group is fine so long as they have the knowledge about local rules and can help us.
- There is some complex stuff to explain about the company structure that make it hard to know how many people we’d have to get to sign cards and I would really appreciate someone knowledgeable messaging me privately so I can explain a bit, or point me to a good group where I can ask this question
Gosh sorry I am rather at a loss of where to start here so I’m someone could just give me a stick and point me in the right direction I would be exceptionally pleased, thank you!!
Edit: as a bonus I may have slam-dunk proof of wage theft by the company not paying certain employees overtime, would be great if we could also get some resources on how to retaliate for that in as big of a blow as possible. ✌️
60% maybe 70%
And who are the remainders? Hard line anti union or just don’t care? It makes a difference. You will need to know. Will the run a decert campaign? They will end up being in the Bargaining Unit. Will they obstruct the democratic process of the union?
Do you actually have the list? Or do you just think you could get it any moment? Get it now. The very first thing your employer will do when they hear about this could be pull the contact list.
Create and populate a spreadsheet. Verify for changes on a regular basis.
As the saying goes:
I 100% have the employee list on my own computer, with phone numbers for all the key people who run teams. Through my own contacts list and those of the people working with me, we can fill in a lot of the rest. I need to verify if 3 employees still work for us or not. The recent arrivals are added already. We have a lot of employee churn on the entry level but they send out an email every month welcoming the newbies, so adding them is no problem. Removing them as they go is.
We have a couple old reactionary dudes who are definitely anti-union, but basically just because conservatives have told them “union bad! 😠” We know to avoid them. We also know to avoid a couple key people who are buddies with the owner, although some of them are technically managers so I don’t even know if they qualify for being part of the union? It gets complicated because of how horizontal our company structure is overall. Barely anyone actually manages people. (Part of the reason why we never get reviews or raises!)
Luckily the worst reactionaries that I knew of who would’ve fought tooth and nail against a union are gone. One of the old guys might complain about it, but he’s far too lazy to do anything but mouth off, and his influence is limited to a small satellite facility with like 3 coworkers.
Good stuff!
I would discourage you from making assumptions one way or another about how people will act based on their political orientation or even stated beliefs about unions. People who area “anti union” and “pro capitalist” are general also “pro job security”, appreciate regular raises, want health benefits. They can be turned around by participating in and benefiting from solidarity. And like, they can be fundamentally changed as people.
Of the other hand, the most rad communist, ML, anarchist, syndicalist, maoist… any of these can be useless or even turncoats in a union drive. Don’t trust based on memes or music or readings or tattoos or having the correct line.
this is the right way to assess. What do people do? Will they take a risk one way or another? Will they call someone up and try to influence their behaviour? Will they snitch?
Sounds like you are already doing mapping? Make sure that every person who joins your committee does mapping, even if you think you have no new information to gain. It’s a really good way to start thinking like an organizer.