So as of about a week ago I have joined my local union at my factory. I spent a bit of time scoping out the union itself because while originally I wanted to join as soon as possible despite searching so many places I could not find a single person who is part of it. That was like 6 months ago and I kept trying to figure it out in between a whole bunch of times.
Well, I joined first shift and found out that the union was only comprised of first shift, this made me incredibly hesitant. So I approached it cautiously because my fear was that it was a 20-year-old union stuck in its ways and pretty much dying, I don't think I could help that. Thankfully, they're new. Like a year and a half old. When I found this out I was so relieved because I can work with that. I can work with inexperience so much better than I can work with stagnancy.
I went to a meeting and a lot of it was spent complaining about how no one wants to join. After about like 20 minutes of this I spoke up and went “You can't spend this long complaining, yeah it sucks that people aren't joining but if you spend all this time in a shitty head space, you aren't going to enjoy being part of the union. If you aren't enjoying being part of the union that's going to translate into your recruitment, rather than spending this time being annoyed by the fact no one's joining we need to focus on how we can get people to join because how you guys are approaching it right now is obviously not working.
I for all intents and purposes should have been the easiest person to recruit. I was motivated to join, I have positive history with unions through my grandma who was a union steward herself for decades. I chose this company specifically because it had a union. All of this and yet I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to join. To be honest I don't know anything about this union, I just learned The names of the people running it, I don't know how much dues are, I've been looking for meeting times the last couple months but I haven't been seeing them, hell I was convinced that there was maybe 5 to 10 people in this union.
This should be our first priority making sure that people are making informed decisions because if you leave all of this in obscurity It makes it extremely easy for the company to skew the information to whatever it wants without anybody having the ability to fact check.”
The bright side of all of this is they seem very open to new ideas, like throughout that they were actually listening which is fantastic because if I had to talk over them the whole time that would have sucked.
So currently where I'm at is I'm in the works of designing a brochure that we can give away at certain events and we've been beginning to talk about things Like employee outreach. On the first I'll be going with them to a larger union meeting thing, I'm not 100% sure what this is but we're just carpooling to nearby town to talk with other union people.
Some of the focuses I think we should prioritize are:
-there's a weird ass rift between first and second shift, that needs to start being mended. Thankfully I know a lot of people on both shifts so hopefully I can get the ball rolling there but it cannot be just me.
-We need to get some second shifters in the union so we can more effectively recruit there
-We need to have something that people can reference for information that they are going to want to know, Like how much dues are
-This information should be immediately given to new people and again to people once 3 months are up and they can actually join the union.
-a fair number of old guard workers at this company feel like The union has forgotten them because a lot of support has been going to getting new people in but they are not seeing many benefits. Something we can do here is start a committee for the old guard to identify some of the issues that they're having and ways that we can resolve them with volunteers that are part of that old guard. After the problems have been identified and solutions have been talked about this should be then presented to the rest of the union for discussion (I've never done committees before I'm not 100% sure how they work or if this is the place for them but I feel like this may be a way to make sure they see the support.)
-The turnover at this company is huge and this makes it kind of difficult to hold on to members. Getting people involved in the union may help these numbers but also having the union feel more like a community than an organization may also help. Get people invested
-The union needs to embrace more tech solutions like using Google calendar to make sure everyone's schedules are up to date and online forms to submit grievances. They've been using paper specifically and this is definitely holding them back a little bit. It would be nice to be able to set up an email as well, apparently they have an email but it is through the company and the old manager would surveil it so they don't use it. Obviously this is a pretty easy fix with a burner email
Obviously this is a lot of “focuses”, But hopefully as we get bigger it'll be easier to divide and conquer with this. I've been having conversations with people who aren't part of the union but who've got grievances with the company that aren't being addressed by the company. I've been trying to figure out what people are looking for exactly from the union so we aren't just focusing on recruitment but what we can do for these people. It really does seem like we've got a shot recruiting people who previously wanted nothing to do with the union if we can increase our presence.
End of the update on the union specifically, I just am looking for a little guidance in this next section.
Admittedly I did not want to take on a leadership role here. I wanted to join and help out but I didn't want to lead. I've joined far too many things that were on the decline who's heydays were decades ago, having to try to fix them so I can experience at least a little of this golden age that's always described to me. It's exhausting, but if I can do something to help, something that benefits not only me but everyone else, isn't it my obligation to try?
I don't know nearly enough about how to run a union, the most I've done is clubs and stuff. I've been trying to learn but it's a lot. What if this doesn't go well and we aren't able to invigorate the other workers?
I know I've had a lot of good conversations with people that kind of center around the problems they've had with the company and I know that these should be things that we can use to recruit. I'm afraid that we're going to turn into all talk and no action though, like it's all well and good to ask around but if we can't get any changes through, if our recruiting isn't enough, then what?
We've got negotiations for the contract coming up in less than a year and we are roughly 20 people in a factory of 150ish, in that time there's so much to do and I don't know if there's enough time to do it.
The final thing I'm running into is I don't plan on being with this company forever is it shitty for me to come in join the union and try to build it up and then just leave? What are my obligations as far as staying goes?
Thank you for anyone who sat through My final ramblings, I really am excited about making my Union something more than it was and hopefully helping a lot of people out on the way I've just got a little bit of self-doubt to work through.
Any advice would be so helpful, if you know any sort of like video series to watch through for managing a union that would be amazing.
I'll update you guys as things progress, hopefully I'll have something by the 1st.