At the conceptual level, unionising is simply a group of workers gathering into a group and saying we want to negotiate as a group. Usually this is done by workers to improve conditions and to have a better say when they’ve been being ignored or worse, poorly treated.
Union recognition is then the company accepting that the union exists and then agreeing to meet and engage with it.
Not accepting it, is usually a crappy corporate move in an attempt to not have workers collaborating together.
Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.
The US has lower union involvement than in many countries.
> Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.
Do you have any non-partisan sources for this? Genuinely curious. When you say perform better what do you mean specifically? And does better work conditions include better pay or just on-site conditions or something similar?
The non partisan source is the history of the industrial revolution itself.
I am not saying that you are doing this, but I tend to find that people who think we don't need unions anymore are engaging with the status quo in the same way as people who say we don't need vaccines anymore.
The conceptual level breaks down in places where an open shop is illegal or disincentivized, which I suspect is the case in California where the Wikimedia Foundation is based. Europe usually has open shops, not closed shops, for example.
No, it doesn't. There is no such thing as an "open shop" in the US, even under right to freeload. Union membership is determined by job classification. If you are working in a unionized environment, and your job title is a union job title, you are in the union. You will be covered by the contract your union bargains with the employer. The only question, then, is whether you pay the dues to cover the costs of union membership. In a right to freeload state, you can choose not to pay the costs.
Is union recognition legally required to, say, organise a strike? Do workers who participate in a strike organised by a non-recognised union expose themselves to getting fired?
When strikes are legal is really complicated and depends on industry.
The thing to understand is that labor law in the US was created to "reduce labor strife." Unions existed before they were recognized as legal. What labor law tries to do is make an orderly process with the goal is no strikes and a mutually agreed-on contract.
The company recognizing the union is the first step towards a contract. Basically it's saying "I understand this organization represents these employees and I should negotiate with it."
There is no evidence of unions performing better for digital services at all. Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
> Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
> Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
Sure, the arguably most successful union in the history of the US, the Screen Actors Guild, is only useful because it kept all of those actors from being worked to death, and it has nothing to do with all of the millions of dollars that its members make yearly.
“No evidence” or “I haven’t looked for evidence”? Unions do more than just keeping people from dying in mining accidents — for example, I read this yesterday with what sure looks to be concrete benefits for the workers:
Luckily, desk workers can never get tired or experience physical or psychological stress, or be subjected to unreasonable demands from leadership; these are just laws of nature.
Is not what happened?
WWU announced on 28 July that they would file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The announcement also accused the Wikimedia Foundation of being disingenuous in their public communications:
Also on the communication by wales he says he wasn’t happy with the election because people knew who voted for, but he didn’t deny there was some kinda of election?
> This is incorrect. Voluntary recognition, which is what this article is about, means that an election is not done. Wikimedia Foundation is asking for an election to ensure everyone actually wants this.
Misinformation.
Voluntary recognition just means that there isn't a 120 hard fight against union elections to decide if there CAN BE a union.
Dark Horse comics just voluntarily acknowledged their union. After that is union elections, to decide who the union elected is.
At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
It’s quite common that that also extends to negotiation on salary bands, and it’s also quite common the company then applies the same salary bands to non union employees also, rather than the norm in tech of individual negotiation. Many people think they’re in the group that is negotiating outlier salaries and would lose from this. However, many people with that viewpoint are also wrong about their position in the salary scale.
Sometimes this extends to promotion criteria and some unions push for tenure or seniority based promotions. This may or may not be better than your individual companies specific combination of merit, nepotism, the political clout of your managers and the business criticality of your department.
One thing that happens in the US that is illegal here is some companies agree to becoming a union shop and make joining the union compulsory.
> At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is obviously fucked up. But this has been union law at the NLRB for a long time.
The fair response: a union should only legally be responsible for representing its members. But these sorts of terrible union laws are the consequence of attempting to destroy them since their creation.
And for those of you who think unions are terrible (capitalists and ilk), what we had before was 'firebomb the business or the bosses house', and basically waging war between capitalists and labor. Unions and legal representation WAS the compromise.
Labor history has always been a bloody and murderous affair. Go look up the history of the pinkertons.
>By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is not true. There can be non-union job classes even if the employer has some unionized employees. Even in different geographic areas you can have one location have class X union and another non-union (eg Starbucks).
What you cannot do, is have a unionized location with union Software Engineer I and non-union Software Engineer I. Sometimes employers try to skirt this and have non-union jobs that are too close to union jobs, and then it's lawsuit time.
The problem there is that if it doesn't represent everyone, the company will simply give better conditions to nonmembers to pressure members to quit their membership. You do still have a way to change the union even if it's involuntarily representing you: just join it and then vote to disband it.
“Union recognition” means the employer acknowledges that the union is the bargaining representative for a subset of employees within the organization. This comes with additional legal duties on the part of the employer, such as exclusively bargaining with the union and not attempting to negotiate directly with individuals the union represents.
1. Mention some concrete facts. Or at least assert some claim.
2. Given the very low rate of unionization in the USA, I think the issue you need to be most concerned about is no-benefit gig work instead of a huge wave of unionization.
If you are capable of adding any substance to your various comments, you need to do so. Otherwise you’re just strengthening the view of the opposite as your comments read like someone is desparate to manipulate public opinion.
At the conceptual level, unionising is simply a group of workers gathering into a group and saying we want to negotiate as a group. Usually this is done by workers to improve conditions and to have a better say when they’ve been being ignored or worse, poorly treated.
Union recognition is then the company accepting that the union exists and then agreeing to meet and engage with it.
Not accepting it, is usually a crappy corporate move in an attempt to not have workers collaborating together.
Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.
The US has lower union involvement than in many countries.
> Lots of research shows that generally places where unions exist have better work conditions and perform better over the long term.
Do you have any non-partisan sources for this? Genuinely curious. When you say perform better what do you mean specifically? And does better work conditions include better pay or just on-site conditions or something similar?
https://www.nber.org/digest/202508/unpacking-union-wage-prem...
They earn more and are more productive. Here is one Canadian study but I’m sure you can find more if you’re interested.
1 reply →
The non partisan source is the history of the industrial revolution itself.
I am not saying that you are doing this, but I tend to find that people who think we don't need unions anymore are engaging with the status quo in the same way as people who say we don't need vaccines anymore.
37 replies →
The conceptual level breaks down in places where an open shop is illegal or disincentivized, which I suspect is the case in California where the Wikimedia Foundation is based. Europe usually has open shops, not closed shops, for example.
No, it doesn't. There is no such thing as an "open shop" in the US, even under right to freeload. Union membership is determined by job classification. If you are working in a unionized environment, and your job title is a union job title, you are in the union. You will be covered by the contract your union bargains with the employer. The only question, then, is whether you pay the dues to cover the costs of union membership. In a right to freeload state, you can choose not to pay the costs.
5 replies →
Is union recognition legally required to, say, organise a strike? Do workers who participate in a strike organised by a non-recognised union expose themselves to getting fired?
When strikes are legal is really complicated and depends on industry.
The thing to understand is that labor law in the US was created to "reduce labor strife." Unions existed before they were recognized as legal. What labor law tries to do is make an orderly process with the goal is no strikes and a mutually agreed-on contract.
The company recognizing the union is the first step towards a contract. Basically it's saying "I understand this organization represents these employees and I should negotiate with it."
5 replies →
There is no evidence of unions performing better for digital services at all. Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
> Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
You mean, like actors? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAG-AFTRA
Or teachers? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Education_Association
Or service employees? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Service_Employees_Internationa...
> Unions do make sense when physical labor and danger is involved because the demands of leadership contradict realities of human physiology like getting tired, leading to injury or death.
Sure, the arguably most successful union in the history of the US, the Screen Actors Guild, is only useful because it kept all of those actors from being worked to death, and it has nothing to do with all of the millions of dollars that its members make yearly.
“No evidence” or “I haven’t looked for evidence”? Unions do more than just keeping people from dying in mining accidents — for example, I read this yesterday with what sure looks to be concrete benefits for the workers:
https://www.propublicaguild.org/updates/propublica-guild-rat...
2 replies →
Luckily, desk workers can never get tired or experience physical or psychological stress, or be subjected to unreasonable demands from leadership; these are just laws of nature.
[flagged]
> Wikimedia Foundation is asking for an election to ensure everyone actually wants this.
Why? Does recognition entail that every worker is compelled to join the union?
2 replies →
Is not what happened? WWU announced on 28 July that they would file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board. The announcement also accused the Wikimedia Foundation of being disingenuous in their public communications:
Also on the communication by wales he says he wasn’t happy with the election because people knew who voted for, but he didn’t deny there was some kinda of election?
> This is incorrect. Voluntary recognition, which is what this article is about, means that an election is not done. Wikimedia Foundation is asking for an election to ensure everyone actually wants this.
Misinformation.
Voluntary recognition just means that there isn't a 120 hard fight against union elections to decide if there CAN BE a union.
Dark Horse comics just voluntarily acknowledged their union. After that is union elections, to decide who the union elected is.
2 replies →
At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
It’s quite common that that also extends to negotiation on salary bands, and it’s also quite common the company then applies the same salary bands to non union employees also, rather than the norm in tech of individual negotiation. Many people think they’re in the group that is negotiating outlier salaries and would lose from this. However, many people with that viewpoint are also wrong about their position in the salary scale.
Sometimes this extends to promotion criteria and some unions push for tenure or seniority based promotions. This may or may not be better than your individual companies specific combination of merit, nepotism, the political clout of your managers and the business criticality of your department.
One thing that happens in the US that is illegal here is some companies agree to becoming a union shop and make joining the union compulsory.
> At the very minimum, the company acknowledges the union and negotiates with the union for working conditions for union members.
By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is obviously fucked up. But this has been union law at the NLRB for a long time.
The fair response: a union should only legally be responsible for representing its members. But these sorts of terrible union laws are the consequence of attempting to destroy them since their creation.
And for those of you who think unions are terrible (capitalists and ilk), what we had before was 'firebomb the business or the bosses house', and basically waging war between capitalists and labor. Unions and legal representation WAS the compromise.
Labor history has always been a bloody and murderous affair. Go look up the history of the pinkertons.
>By federal law, if a company has a union, the union must represent ALL non-management workers, even those who do not pay dues.
This is not true. There can be non-union job classes even if the employer has some unionized employees. Even in different geographic areas you can have one location have class X union and another non-union (eg Starbucks).
What you cannot do, is have a unionized location with union Software Engineer I and non-union Software Engineer I. Sometimes employers try to skirt this and have non-union jobs that are too close to union jobs, and then it's lawsuit time.
The problem there is that if it doesn't represent everyone, the company will simply give better conditions to nonmembers to pressure members to quit their membership. You do still have a way to change the union even if it's involuntarily representing you: just join it and then vote to disband it.
“Union recognition” means the employer acknowledges that the union is the bargaining representative for a subset of employees within the organization. This comes with additional legal duties on the part of the employer, such as exclusively bargaining with the union and not attempting to negotiate directly with individuals the union represents.
[flagged]
1. Mention some concrete facts. Or at least assert some claim.
2. Given the very low rate of unionization in the USA, I think the issue you need to be most concerned about is no-benefit gig work instead of a huge wave of unionization.
If you are capable of adding any substance to your various comments, you need to do so. Otherwise you’re just strengthening the view of the opposite as your comments read like someone is desparate to manipulate public opinion.