What to Expect from Your Employer
Most employers don’t want their employees to be in a union. Think about it: employers go from having total control to having to share power with workers who stand together. Would you want someone to come to your house and tell you how to treat your dog? or how to set up your bedroom? From their perspective, workers with a union cost more money (due to better wages) and require that they follow a legally-binding agreement, when prior to they could do whatever they wanted.
Usually when employees show interest in organizing a Union, the company responds with an anti-union campaign. This campaign may come in a form of “mandatory group meetings” to scare workers out of signing authorization cards or talking to union representatives. Or your employer may suddenly become interested in workplace issues and “fix” them to pacify your efforts at organizing. Where does their new found concern come from? Beware: This is a tactic often used on a temporary basis until the organizing drive falls apart. Employers often times go back to their old ways in a matter of weeks or months.
BEWARE!
If you and your co-workers know what to expect, you will be able to spot your employer’s tactics from a mile away and see them for what they truly are: desperate attempts to keep things the way they are by dividing and conquering.
Once a Union Representation petition has been filed with the National Labor Relations Board, it is too late for employers to offer quick fix solutions to the issues the workers care about. Therefore, they oftentimes hire union-busting firms or consultants who specialize in misinforming workers and using scare tactics to deflect from the real issues. Below is a list of tactics that consultants will have your employer do:
“INFORMATIONAL” EMAILS/LETTERS: Consultants, better known as “Union Busters”, will bombard the workers with emails/letters during the campaign. Only, they will be signed not by the “Union busters,” but by the company president, facility/company administrators and even some well-liked managers and supervisors.
THE UGLY UNION LETTERS: These letters will paint an ugly picture of the Union. They will tell you what the union will force you to go out on strike, come up with a bogus amount of membership or initiations fees that you will have to pay or want you to think the Union has a lot to hide. They will never give the Union credit for anything it has achieved for their union members at other locations.
SUPERVISOR PRESSURE: Often”Union busters” will not talk to you directly, they will use your supervisors or department leads as messengers to carry their negative information against the Union to you — delivering letters, informal chats and even speeches prepared by the “Union busters.”
LOVE OFFERINGS: Union busters may tell management to hand out larger than expected wage increases and/or improved benefits or do away with discipline techniques they have in place (for example: an attendance point system). The purpose of this is to show you that you don’t need a Union to get things done and to convince you that the boss “cares” about your concerns and that you do not need an “outsider” to change things.
LET’S BE PALS: Administrators/Supervisors/Leads will be everywhere, walking the floors day and night, setting up spur-of-the-moment meetings so that they can fix what’s on your mind. You might even be invited to lunch or surprise you and your co-workers with pizza or lunch!
ONE-ON-ONES: Union busters will have supervisors call employees into their office for face-to-face discussions about the Union and/or their concerns. Supervisors will have a script given to them by the Union Busters with what to say and how to say it.
MANDATORY MEETINGS: Workers will be required; on paid time, to attend meetings where the administrators/Managers will talk about the union prepared by the Union busters. These meetings are not intended to be a free and open debate, instead it will be intended to confuse you or convince your co-workers that they do not need a union, and sometimes even to oust union supporters.
DIVIDE AND CONQUER: Union busters will try to play one group of employees against another – “disloyal” Union supporters against “loyal pro-company” Union opponents. One department against another, men versus women, etc.
“VOTE NO” COMMITTEE: A committee of “concerned” employees might be set up to “stand up for” the employer and “against the bullying” tactics of the Union. The committee members will want to save the company from the Union and give management another chance.
NOT THIS UNION: If all of the above has not worked, Union Busters will come out and try to convince you that you have picked the wrong union. They will tell you that “you guys need a union, but not this union.”
BYE BYE: If all else fails, the administrators, personnel director or some other big management type will be forced to resign or be fired. Then, the facility will try to persuade you to give the new administrator/Manager “another chance” to make things better.
Don’t be fooled by these union busting tactics.
The only way to change things at work is with a legally binding union agreement!