So, a few of us have been unhappy for a long time and we have been working toward figuring out what it would take to unionize.
Last Saturday, someone came to the bakery and put flyers under everyone's windshield wiper on their cars. Naturally, some of those cars were management, and more importantly the owner.
Today we had a meeting where they tried to do that "you don't need a union, we can talk if anyone has any issues" thing and a bunch of us laid into the owner about a bunch of things and called him out for trying to stop using organizing.
We have a contact with the local union rep and we are setting up a meeting with them next Friday.
I was wondering if anyone has any insights into what we can expect to happen in the next few weeks. The boss wants to sit down with us troublemakers, and we figure we might as well. It's not going to sway us from our goal, if anything, it will be another chance to slap the boss around again.
Here are some of our issues. I don't know what things fall under the scope of what a union can do for us.
We work long, unpredictable hours in a non-climate controlled baking facility. It's often over 100°f in there.
Our manager uses her weapons grade incompetence to micromanage us into a state of absolute chaos every day, often to the detriment of the product, which we get blamed for and have to remake.
We never know when we are getting a raise, and it's all vibes based numbers anyway. Lower than industry standard.
We recently got into a position where a huge company got majority shareholder status and they want us to double our output.
The facility is unsafe and a lot of our equipment doesn't work, making the job very hard to do.
There is more stuff that I will bring up if I can think of it. I'm writing this after a 13 hour shift of standing in front of the oven. My brain is melted.
Any advice or experiences you want to share would be great!
Are you in contact with any larger/established unions? I am only familiar with the IWW. They can help by putting you in contact with an External Organizer, who you can discuss strategies with. However, it sounds like you’re already very far along in the organizing process, so great job getting to where you are.
My main suggestion is to have your demands agreed upon before the meeting with management. You need something that the manager you’re talking to has the power to change, and you need to be unified. This can be your chance to get a win to reinvigorate the organizing process, but the committee has to be ready to use that win to recruit more of your fellow workers, and use it to keep striving for more. You know that the boss is going to do everything they can to undermine you, so you can’t just get a win and stop. (That last bit isn’t for you, I’m sure you know this, but for the other members of the organizing committee)
If you come in with a demand that they have the power to change, and they don’t, then that’s ammunition against the management.
Record every detail of the meeting you can, whether that’s with an audio recording (if you’re in a single party consent jurisdiction) or a union member taking accurate minutes. Cover your ass, because the NLRB isn’t going to fight for you.
After this, be ready for snitches to infiltrate. Only let people attend organizing meetings who have proven themselves loyal with actions.
I'm worried about snitches. More to the point, I'm worried that a few select people will run their mouth and go rogue. There's one person I used to be friends with there that is trying soooo hard to get into "the club" of the people who get all the fruits of our labor, but she will never be allowed in. She can't keep a secret for more than an hour or so and I've tested this. We also have a guy that is all piss and vinegar but he's not good at playing his cards close to his chest, and he's one of those "shoot for the moon" guys that is totally going to blow our credibility.
We plan on demanding a yearly sit down to renegotiate. Things change quick enough around here that we could make pretty substantial gains every year
I'm sorry for spamming, but I'm curious what you did. Did you feed her some made up story to see how long it took for one of your coworkers to hear about it?
I tell her things that I don't really care if it gets around and it always comes back to me. The other day I told her I have a job interview and she told a couple of my co workers who had been complaining to her that they wanted to quit.
Also, she tells me so much stuff that others tell her in confidence, that I can't believe anyone tells her anything.
She always tells me everything she hears coming down from the office most of which doesn't come to pass. Like "so and so is getting fired next week" turns into that person working there another six months