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I finally found this thread! Lol So, my perspective is extremely different than many people here - in fact, when I am reading people describing an entrenched union as being an obstacle to organization my ears were, unfortunately, burning. I live in the UK and until very recently I was a steward in one of the largest public sector unions in the country, at first on release from my NHS role and then for a year full time until leaving to return to school. I’m going to try and talk from that perspective - I have leftist friends who consider my union or the Labour party as being the two biggest obstacles to actual left wing ideas in our country and I can understand that perspective. My union is an incredibly managerial union - it exists largely to ensure that members have someone in their corner at sickness staging meetings or disciplinaries and to corral our collective power towards our political goals, we routinely support court cases and such that have had very positive impacts. I have never withdrawn my labour as a strike nor have I been asked to. The closest I have come is asking members to chart their overtime and make sure it gets paid back rather than keeping at work until their unrealistic workloads are completed - management didn’t like it as poo poo wasn’t getting done and they finally looked at our workloads. “We are paid for our labor - if you want to give to charity I recommend doctors without borders. You work, you get paid for it.” But, even with the above negatives, I want to pitch unions like mine as still absolutely being a good avenue for some kinds of organizing, and bigger and entrenched unions at very least mean that management is obligated to pay attention. It’s a poo poo union but you do not have to be a poo poo representative. We have a concept called “localized membership density” - where, at any given location our objective is to ensure there are as many members of our union as possible as leverage when we sit down with management. A big and well resourced union will have extensive opportunities to develop your personal skills via training, conferences or even roles and it’s an incredible springboard to local politics if that is what you choose - one of my former branch secretary is running for some seat as a Labour representative right now and I wish her the best of luck. You will help people - I don’t know if I think myself a good steward, but it is what I was told by my members and my branch secretaries, and I know for sure that I have prevented several people, often disabled or otherwise vulnerable, from losing their jobs. I know for sure that I would have lost my job years ago were it not for my old rep, the person who inspired me to join up myself. (We’re still extremely close friends, people forget the social aspect of unions. She wrote my reference for my successful university application, bless her). I without hesitation echo - be a good employee and coworker first. Build relationships with people you work with and use those connections to help them when they’re getting grief from management. Here is a line I use a lot - your rep isn’t just the emergency room, we’re your GP too- we catch the little problems and they don’t grow into big ones. Be polite, be attentive and be precise - it’s funny, sometimes going through a 50 page final sickness staging meeting line by line with a highlighter to find the untruths and mistakes is weirdly reminiscent of a forums argument, lol. People skills are critical - people will come to you furious, weeping, antagonistic, frustrated beyond belief and unfortunately sometimes the only support you can give is listening. Network, build relations with Human Resources and whatever managers you work with and of course your union management structure. Always push the empowering angle with your members - you are there to make them powerful, not to use your own power (lol) to solve their problems. Learn to love to read policy, because there’s a lot of it. Learn to understand you will lose sometimes, and learn how to make the best out of those bad situations. I’d probably do it again, even for how burnt out I am right now. I did my absolute best and everything in my power to help members and still I sometimes wonder if I am advancing my personal political goals further by doing so. But not often. CoolCab has issued a correction as of 15:48 on Sep 18, 2020 |
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Sep 18, 2020 15:46
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bookmarking this thread, it's a good one
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Sep 18, 2020 15:51
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Lovelyn posted:Does anyone have experience with pushing an existing union farther left? Setting is healthcare, so think SEIU or WSNA. i don't know about experience about doing that specifically but generally if you want to influence a union's overall direction you need to engage more deeply. if you haven't already become a representative and put yourself up for roles or training or that come up, like disability coordinator for example, or branch secretary if you've been in the representative role for a while. turn up for meetings. build relationships with more left wing organizations and projects/campaigns and ask to represent your union in doing so - if there's a demo turn up, if there's a stall in town or say a pride event ask to participate. get your face out there - union management for sure notice. entrenched unions are essentially top down, for as much as they like to claim otherwise. if you want to influence it you need to accumulate power and climb that greasy pole like you would with any organization, start talking in your AGMs and conferences and generally campaign. i can't guarantee this will do it, but i absolutely have observed many left wing people choosing to leave our union (for compelling reasons tbh) and watched how that meant the only people left are centerists and conservatives who would vote against strikes with their dying breath.
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Sep 20, 2020 20:49
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congrats, 90% is as mentioned ridic, GJ!
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Feb 8, 2021 09:20
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as a further extension to "don't let your guard down", and something i would say to members a lot about HR - if they can fire you, they're your boss. they might lack a title, that's irrelevant - they're your boss because of what they can do, not because of what they call themselves. in the best case scenario you as a trade union representative can play management and HR against each other because HR loves to pretend to be neutral, but they. are. not.
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Feb 10, 2021 12:27
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apropos to nothing posted:can help the trade unions in myanmar by donating to the All Burma Federation Of Trade Unions strike fund as they continue to join in the protests against the military dictatorship https://www.gofundme.com/f/abftu aye, fair enough, my uni sent me an out of the blue stimmy on account of plague apocalypse, unexpected windfalls are an opportune time to express solidarity via material support. if you can spare it, it's good for your soul.
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Mar 12, 2021 20:21
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my little sister, a care worker at a homeless facility, is getting hosed over by management with a below inflation pay offering for frontline staff immediately following a global pandemic. i am so, so gushingly proud of her and happy i can provide any advice and support to help her organize and get her colleagues loving signed up  apparently they were at some kind of all hands meetings while people were furious and staff were already talking about unionizing. most of the managers were kind of clueless liberal types and were going "sure, why not sign up for a little union"? kind of attitude, while the CEO/owner, who apparently used to be a steward, immediately was visibly shaken and was hugely against the idea. smart lad.
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Apr 2, 2021 19:55
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fuckin lmao i came in here to post that man knows the gently caress he's doing
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Jul 24, 2021 01:09
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kingcobweb posted:union organizing jobs are hard to get i kind of fell into it and i wasn't paid by the union, a support role was funded as part of a merger of two trusts to deal with any issues that cropped up around there. when that finished and i went back to school the union were only able to offer me one day funded, which was sweet to offer but i didn't want because even in gigantic institutional unions the competition is typically quite fierce.
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Sep 17, 2021 12:06
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I applied for organizer in training at SEIU, and even with experience as a union steward and a job in political organizing, I didn’t make it past the “group interview” they had like twelve of us in
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also they don't call us "workers" because we enjoy working, it's because we have to. everybody has to eat.kingcobweb posted:
haha, mine was the same people who had been getting some things done, some of them for like 45 years? the culture in the north of england is so so different.
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Sep 17, 2021 12:10
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https://twitter.com/msainat1/status/1448369738288095234?t=BQRvWpuNkvpqs7BjKz1ZOQ&s=19
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Oct 14, 2021 19:39
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thought this was a no-scab thread
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Mar 26, 2022 13:47
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anyway trade union representation is not a privilege, it's not something you earn by getting into "good" work and it is most urgently needed for workers most exploited. someone will be flipping burgers so long as there are burgers. the relentless focus on self improvement and redefining low wage work as lesser is a painfully transparent trick to make sure the most talented and ambitious people irrationally hate their peers for keeping them down and on themselves for taking low status work to survive, and cripples solidarity. i support anyone's right to form a union, but if someone put a gun to my head and made me choose i'd pick making everyone making minimum wage or less to be unionized over any other group of people. there's more of them and they need it more and they actually make society run rather than running society.
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Mar 26, 2022 13:55
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"why does the NHS get a union, why should we allow our medical staff to strike?" and also "unions make sense at factories but we're all here to help people!" were two i heard from the same person on different occasions.
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Mar 26, 2022 16:40
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In Training posted:im on strike today so i shall post in the union thread. found a lot of great resources from this thread early in my workplace's unionization effort, and now my workplace is wall-to-wall unionized and striking for our first contract. collective action ftw. gently caress yes my dude. that is INCREDIBLY difficult to do. get that knowledge, get that crew, get that paper.
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Mar 31, 2022 16:41
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april fools you union busting scab scumbags and all power to the fuckin workers
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Apr 1, 2022 17:53
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 money well spent!
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Apr 1, 2022 18:26
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“We want to thank Jeff Bezos for going to space, because while he was up there we were organizing a union,” said ALU President Chris Smalls after official results were announced. lol and also this line should be in history books. it so eloquently summarizes the morbid symptoms of the day
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Apr 1, 2022 22:40
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kingcobweb posted:https://twitter.com/VzwUnion/status/1544728595247075330 gently caress em up, bud 
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Jul 7, 2022 19:31
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kingcobweb posted:one of the reasons they fired me back in 2015(?) was they were worried i'd start a union. you can cut all the flowers but you cannot keep spring from coming
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Jul 27, 2022 17:35
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