Hey y'all!
I'm considering an attempt to unionize my workplace due to some recent changes in upper management (cough cough venture capitalist acquisition cough cough). I work for a company in the Video Advertising industry that has ~1500 employees across the united states and internationally. My office has approximately 60 employees that have their work location listed in my city according to our org chart, but I have several team members that work fully remote and report to my office's management.
We've all been remote for the past 3 years, but upper management recently called a Tue-Thurs RTO starting after labor day. In the same call they also announced that we wouldn't receive any sort of raise this year (merit or inflation based), despite increasing expectations and work loads. I haven't talked to enough people yet to get a grasp on union interest, but I know a lot of folks are unhappy and bracing for more negative changes to come. There are pretty large legacy related pay discrepancies between employees with similar titles, and we want either continued WFH flexibility or additional compensation for the reintroduction of a commute.
My office has a pretty wide range of employees from legal, HR, financial, treasury, video managers, payroll specialists, business affairs, and account managers. How do you decide who is included in Union Representation and the “employee roster”? Would it only be my specific department, or everyone in the office? Do the employees working from home that report to the management in my office all count?
The union I'm looking at is OPEIU, however I'm not finding much information online for my city's local and it appears that they only have ~20 members (decreasing every year) in one institution (a completely separate industry from mine). It looks like there are a lot more active OPEIU locals out there. Would we need to go with our closest local or could I reach out to a local in a different state?
It's also hard for me to believe that there are only 20 unionized office workers in the entirety of the large city I work in. Is it really that uncommon for office workers to unionize, or am I looking at the wrong union? Do you think trying to unionize in my situation would be worth it?
Any advice is welcome!