My coworkers and I are in a fight with our bosses. It's been a year-long journey so far, and our efforts have gotten lost amidst Amazon and Starbucks. I get it. They're big names. But it's been leaving us high and dry for action from the NLRB, and boy, it's been getting me real pissed off. You know all those news reports about Amazon and Starbucks violating union law? Well, my company has:
-Coincidentally “discovered” that everyone who testified at our initial hearing were involved in a data breach, which they used as justification to fire them but did NOT report it to their clients.
-Fired people who asked for ADA accommodations.
-Demoted someone and completely changed their job duties (along with a pay cut) and then fired them when they asked what their job was now.
-Hired scabs. Like, lots of them. An entire other company's worth of scabs. But they didn't bother training the scabs because they also fired the guy in charge of training people (because he dared stand up to the bosses and say maybe they shouldn't be pulling all this BS) so the quality of work being churned out by these scabs is, to say the least, subpar.
-While hiring said scabs, stopped hiring actual full-time workers for this original company. You know, the ones who have to actually receive training and have quality standards for their work.
-Cut off bonuses, then reinstated them but changed the way bonuses are paid out so that we're effectively paid less per hour.
-Limited the amount of overtime no matter how much extra work we have to do. 10 hours' worth of extra work or 30 hours', doesn't matter, we can get it done in less than 7 hours overtime, right??
-Been found guilty of wage theft, ordered to pay out the stolen pay, tried not to, and then fired someone who kept asking for their backpay.
-Fired an entire department rather than give them accommodations for Covid.
-You know that fired department? They then got a bunch of scabs to do that department's jobs online (which, if that was possible, why the hell wasn't that an option to begin with??) and complained that these scabs were being overworked. Funny, it's almost as if you CANNED A DEPARTMENT OF PEOPLE WHO KNEW HOW TO DO THAT JOB.
-Changed workers' job titles unilaterally (no contracts, just “you're a different job with the same duties now”) then tried to claim that they shouldn't be in the union because “look, these jobs weren't listed when the union was formed.”
-Forbade us from mentioning the union at work, at all, even though they said nothing about us talking about derpy dogs and what we were going to drink this weekend.
-Pretty much walked up and ripped union identification/badges off of us (metaphorically).
-Had the bosses sit in on routine conversations between departments about issues that could be solved in under 5 minutes, but with their “help,” turned into half-hour convos in which the bosses acted extremely intimidating and made veiled threats of firing.
-Changed how overall monthly bonuses were calculated to reduce the number of bonuses they had to pay out.
-Targeted people who were known to be union supporters/ringleaders by falsifying complaints, harassing them in chat, manufacturing excuses to make them look bad (i.e., “You turned this in to the client a day late!” when they turned it in on the day or even the day before the proposal was meant to be submitted), and calling some people by their deadnames.
These are just the things that I can think of off the top of my head that directly violate labor law (or are just outright dickish). There are multiple instances of each bullet point. And the company itself is just toxic, with people from other departments (mostly new hires/scabs) being super aggressive with the more veteran workers and demanding answers for things that should have been addressed in training…except there is no training anymore. There's just a few powerpoint slides. They've also harassed union members with threats of lawsuits (good luck, it's not libel/slander if it's true), and while it hasn't been documented, the owners have made casual misogynistic, sexist, and racist comments, about both workers and clients. Back before Covid, they used to make people pay their own airfare out to headquarters for training. They'd reimburse them later, but that's super shitty practice, especially since they specialize in cannibalizing fresh graduates who wouldn't always have the money for it.
They also tried to claim that they “don't understand” how unions in the US because they're “immigrants” and don't understand the “culture,” but…c'mon. Seriously? I found US union/labor law in a 5-minute Google search, plus I seriously doubt you don't know how many laws you're breaking when you hired a big union-busting lawyer who previously worked for Amazon.
Anyways, I just needed to rant. This has been going on for too long and I needed to scream.