Can someone give me, a baby, a literal infant, a simple description of how to get from talking with your coworkers about unionization to having a recognized union?
What do you do with these cards? Where would you get them? Is there a vote at some point? What if there are distinct groups in the same workplace who are doing different jobs?
Talk to people about issues at work. Don't use the U word. Get an understanding of what things could be better, especially common ones. Safety, hours, harassment are common, but even just, "we need a new [appliance]" is good.
Get people on board to do that one small thing together as a friendly collective ask. In order to coordinate this, you will need to make a list of people and their contact info and maybe their sentiments. Keep track of who always shows up and who doesn't. This is your first metric for gauging how card signing and a union vote might go and will also identify others that could help you lead the effort. If they're left, you can bring up the U word and see what they think. Make sure they're cool so there's less chance you'll get ratted out.
Do (2) a few times until the company balks. Protect yourself by making this a collective and friendly action where there's no way you could be singled out as a critic of the company. You would now want to start getting people to sign authorization cards and by now be familiar with the various options provided by your state / the feds for forming the union. This assumes you're in the US.
Track your cards (more lists) and move fast. Get a small margin above what is needed and then file immediately. This creates a special phase where all the current employees at the time of filing get to vote, even if they leave the company. You'd want to lobby for them to vote in favor. More lists! Move early and fast!
You get a majority and you win. Now you do very similar things to get your first contract.
Unstated here is how to talk to people and get them interested. This is an extremely social task and one that involves, essentially, manipulation, albeit the obvious kind with a good reason. Obviously pretextual conversations. Having a normal conversation that's 90% about what they want to talk about 10% what you want to talk about. Commiserating even when you don't 100% empathize.
Can someone give me, a baby, a literal infant, a simple description of how to get from talking with your coworkers about unionization to having a recognized union?
What do you do with these cards? Where would you get them? Is there a vote at some point? What if there are distinct groups in the same workplace who are doing different jobs?
Talk to people about issues at work. Don't use the U word. Get an understanding of what things could be better, especially common ones. Safety, hours, harassment are common, but even just, "we need a new [appliance]" is good.
Get people on board to do that one small thing together as a friendly collective ask. In order to coordinate this, you will need to make a list of people and their contact info and maybe their sentiments. Keep track of who always shows up and who doesn't. This is your first metric for gauging how card signing and a union vote might go and will also identify others that could help you lead the effort. If they're left, you can bring up the U word and see what they think. Make sure they're cool so there's less chance you'll get ratted out.
Do (2) a few times until the company balks. Protect yourself by making this a collective and friendly action where there's no way you could be singled out as a critic of the company. You would now want to start getting people to sign authorization cards and by now be familiar with the various options provided by your state / the feds for forming the union. This assumes you're in the US.
Track your cards (more lists) and move fast. Get a small margin above what is needed and then file immediately. This creates a special phase where all the current employees at the time of filing get to vote, even if they leave the company. You'd want to lobby for them to vote in favor. More lists! Move early and fast!
You get a majority and you win. Now you do very similar things to get your first contract.
Unstated here is how to talk to people and get them interested. This is an extremely social task and one that involves, essentially, manipulation, albeit the obvious kind with a good reason. Obviously pretextual conversations. Having a normal conversation that's 90% about what they want to talk about 10% what you want to talk about. Commiserating even when you don't 100% empathize.
https://www.ufcw.org/start-a-union/
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