I posted about this a couple months ago:
“Hey did I get a raise this year?”
“No, you already make enough”
I work in the explosives industry on a tight knit team, in a sometimes dangerous and highly skilled job. Our position is chronically underpaid. I made $16/hour, and noticed I didn't get the usual $0.50 annual raise
I'm a really simple guy, I live in a tiny place in a small town and don't care about money that much, but I couldn't shake what my boss said to me. So I contacted a union crew and they set me up with a lawyer and a union organizer, who helped me organize for free.
Me and a couple others started asking how much people made, loudly and in front of everyone. This caused a RUCKUS and snowballed into a vote.
Our boss is considered to be especially evil and greedy. We worried he'd bring in a team of powerful union busters and fire us for unrelated reasons. The company owner forced us into a mandatory meeting and made a FOOL of himself. He had no idea what we did. Like… zero. My advisor told me this is “pretty much how it always goes.”
We won our union vote by 95%
UPDATE: The company fired their lawyer after we won by such a large margin. After two days of negotiations I now make $25/hour, the company pays for all of my tools, and my guaranteed annual raise is a lot more than $0.50