…And yet, if the company treats employees in a way that employees feel is fair and reasonable, then employees are extremely unlikely to choose to unionize.
For a short time I had the pleasure of working with a small site that treated the union as a partner and not an adversary. On the company side, it was an EH&S manager, not even the EH&S lead, who led annual negotiations with the union. There were disagreements and compromises, but both sides walked away every year feeling benefitted and ready to collaborate for another year.
Well, Corporate can do better than that. They sent in HR to run things this year. Everything is an aggressive conflict. EH&S dude was immediately recruited to a company down the road and left. Cue HR’s surprised Pikachu face when all goodwill with the union disappeared overnight and the union is just as ready to play hardball.
I am glad I got to see one example of a company and union working together for mutual benefit. I think there will be vanishingly few situations like this throughout the rest of my career
I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.
…And yet, if the company treats employees in a way that employees feel is fair and reasonable, then employees are extremely unlikely to choose to unionize.
For a short time I had the pleasure of working with a small site that treated the union as a partner and not an adversary. On the company side, it was an EH&S manager, not even the EH&S lead, who led annual negotiations with the union. There were disagreements and compromises, but both sides walked away every year feeling benefitted and ready to collaborate for another year.
Well, Corporate can do better than that. They sent in HR to run things this year. Everything is an aggressive conflict. EH&S dude was immediately recruited to a company down the road and left. Cue HR’s surprised Pikachu face when all goodwill with the union disappeared overnight and the union is just as ready to play hardball.
I am glad I got to see one example of a company and union working together for mutual benefit. I think there will be vanishingly few situations like this throughout the rest of my career
I think that there are probably a lot of small companies that run in a more collaborative way. I also think that the probability of labor abuses increases along with the size of a company; once the owner/president doesn’t personally know everyone that works there, the odds of shitty things goes up sharply. Not that small companies don’t also have shitty owners, but it’s usually hard to be an asshole directly to someone’s face, unless you’re a raging narcissist or sociopath.