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!
Sounds like we are on the right path. I appreciate all the advice though. This is not something I have much experience in and it's going to be hard to get everyone on the same page. The culture of the workplace is we can't even talk about how bad things are. You can get a word in once in a while if you check the room and make sure you're alone with the person.
I've been asking people what they think about unionizing and it's been mostly positive with a few non committal responses. I think once the ball really gets rolling, people won't be afraid to stand up. Plus, watching all the white collars go mask off about this is certainly radicalizing
I'm glad you're getting positive responses! That's a good way to begin building your committee. Are you writing down who responded and how they responded? Be sure to do this.
At these early steps you want to build that committee, begin mapping out your workplace with lists and organizing tasks, and recruiting workers with social influence. For example, if there is a beloved longtimer, having them be explicitly pro-union and maybe even on the organizing committee is a serious boon. Those noncommital people may become pro-union just because they trust the longtimer.
Regarding the culture of not talking about these things, this is common. The remedy is to have meetings outsids of work. For some meetings you'll want a 1 on 1 meeting (or 2 on 1), like at a coffee shop. For others you'll want to invite a small group. I recommend starting with the 1 on 1s to identify people who would be good on an organizing committee and to ask the "if you could change 3 things" question. Build your list and a committee with one set of actions.