Hello, I’m going to be vague for obvious reasons so please bear with me. I need some advice. I work for a specialized state (of Georgia) agency. The agency is run by a bigger organization (e.g., Department of ______.) There are only about 63 people within the agency, or classified as working for this “unit.”
The best comparison I can think of as to how to describe what we are is this: we are basically the same as what the State Troopers are to the Department of Public Safety. We are our own thing with our own hierarchy and higher ups, but still part of a bigger organization. We are severely understaffed due to the absolutely horrible pay, lack of overtime (they give us comp time and then never really approve any time off requests, as we are essential workers and have less than half of the staff we’re supposed to have.) Our job is incredibly dangerous, arguably one of if not THE most dangerous job the state has to offer, but the state is doing the absolute bare minimum required by federal law for us.
We are desperately in need of a union. One of the things that cemented this for me is that they listed the salary as $34xxx for the trainee position, and then promised a 10% salary increase once we completed training and moved on to the next role. In reality, the trainee salary is $29xxx with a $5000 bonus paid out incrementally that would equate to being the same as $34xxx per year if they paid us at that same rate for a full year. The bonus does not apply once we “graduate” and our actual salary will be less than the trainee position by nearly $3000. They tricked us all with this because they apparently can’t fathom paying us more, despite them paying tens of millions per year on having the latest equipment and maintaining the old equipment. Funny thing is, most of it just sits in lots rotting away, not having been used for years, because there aren’t enough of us to use it.
If we wanted to unionize, would we be able to unionize JUST this unit and collect the required signatures from JUST those within this unit, or would we have to unionize the entire Department of ______?
Thanks