The closest one is four provinces away, but I did bookmark the number yesterday.

I mean, there’s basically Teamsters. There was one potential fit in terms of labour type niche, but their website implies they only take new individual members who are looking to get a job via apprenticeship.

I was trying to get one of the other organizers to go to one of their 101 sessions since they used to have them all the time, but it looks like they no longer do in that area. I assume COVID killed it first, and then nobody ever really got it going again.

Hey now, I can’t remember that much stuff at one time! /hj

For real though, they should change the email response that promises someone will get back to you within 48 hours. That’s just misleading.

The company has already tried pizza and sports days for retention, and I’m proud to say that four people showed up to the last sports day they tried! Pizza is something that has historically been seen as “literally the least they can do” and “I’d rather have the $10 that they budgeted for this.” It’s very hard to sway workers as cynical as ours with cheap treats, because they are not just unable to afford luxuries like pizza from a restaurant: they’re unable to afford basic needs like rent. No amount of pizza can take the pain of that away.

As for days off, unless the company is paying them at time-and-a-half, most guys won’t be able to take them. They rely on overtime shifts to make ends meet. I don’t know anyone who takes vacation except the president and the salespeople.

I’m waiting to hear back from the IWW now before I get too gung ho on the committee. But I think it’s safe to say that the cost of living crisis is so acute right now that it will be an excellent tool for us: we can always show our coworkers the wage-to-rent graph, and talk about how we can actually enforce regular raises with collective power. All of these guys have asked for and been denied raises so many times, most of the ones I’ve talked to are just fucking tired and don’t want to have to be the one to advocate for themself anymore. They were always happy to hear that one of us was going to fight for something for them, even if it was unlikely we could actually get it.

It’s just extra weird because the industry normally doesn’t have low starting wages. The whole problem is that they get you with an appealing starting wage and never give you a raise despite record inflation. So to see the wage table at a place that’s unionized have worse starting wages is… something.

Me and the other guys on board so far are “lifers” and there’s been no event to get us riled up or anything. I’ve always wanted to do it but circumstances didn’t allow for it, but in recent discussions with coworkers I came to realize that we actually have several very good people willing to help out with this now. It’s been a boiling frogs situation at the company for decades. We all know there’s no point in listening to company platitudes because we’ve been around long enough to see the cycle. “Yeah we’ll totally look into it! Oh, we said we would last month? Well, I’ll move it to the top of my list!” Over and over. Can’t even get them to take a damaged piece of equipment out of rotation for repairs until it almost kills someone. Even when we tell them it’s gonna kill someone. So we’re on the same page in this: that the only way to get things to change is to force it, and that we can only do that if we all stand as one.

Can’t speak for anyone else, but I know that I tend to pursue goals relentlessly once I start. And pizza’s never worked before. 😛

It’s a fairly large one: UFCW

I found a contract for a similar company in a public access database and did notice the no-steike clause. But given that all strikes seem to happen after contracts expire anyway I wasn’t super worried about that.

Side note, the similar company that has a union has the saddest wage table I’ve ever seen. I know it’s a corporate chain but I legitimately don’t know how anyone survives at those rates! And they have a union!! The one good thing is that they have a regular raise schedule so people don’t fall behind with inflation, I guess.

I 100% have the employee list on my own computer, with phone numbers for all the key people who run teams. Through my own contacts list and those of the people working with me, we can fill in a lot of the rest. I need to verify if 3 employees still work for us or not. The recent arrivals are added already. We have a lot of employee churn on the entry level but they send out an email every month welcoming the newbies, so adding them is no problem. Removing them as they go is.

We have a couple old reactionary dudes who are definitely anti-union, but basically just because conservatives have told them “union bad! 😠” We know to avoid them. We also know to avoid a couple key people who are buddies with the owner, although some of them are technically managers so I don’t even know if they qualify for being part of the union? It gets complicated because of how horizontal our company structure is overall. Barely anyone actually manages people. (Part of the reason why we never get reviews or raises!)

Luckily the worst reactionaries that I knew of who would’ve fought tooth and nail against a union are gone. One of the old guys might complain about it, but he’s far too lazy to do anything but mouth off, and his influence is limited to a small satellite facility with like 3 coworkers.

Yeah, I think most of the public sector stuff is unionized already tbh. I’m going to look at the well-known unions like Teamsters etc, but it’s so hard to get a good overview of which ones suck the least. All the good stories I’ve seen recently in terms of won battles have been in Quebec which doesn’t really help us out.

I’m definitely in the phase 0 of this: research. Going to do as much as possible before I launch into phase 1: planning. But planning is my strong suit and I’ve already got a few ideas for as to how I could go about mapping out employee social connections etc. I plan to not let this attempt fizzle like the last one did. It was before my time but I’m told that they didn’t have the right people behind the effort. Marx give me strength

Anyway thanks for the info, I had entirely forgotten CUPE existed.

However, IWW organizing generally works to involve the legal system as little as possible, as the bureaucracy takes years to do anything and, when they do, it’s too little too late (at least the US NLRB).

Luckily, thanks to a new law, any union vote over 55% in favour doesn’t require certification anymore! 45-55% does. So obviously we’d be aiming for 55%+ if we could.

Getting an employee list is easy, I have full access to that. Phone numbers I can get for all the lead hands very easily. Beyond that some networking may be required. But my co-conspirators will have several and we can work from there. This part I was already aware of.

Also, don’t count on voting your way into a union. You should focus on direct action, starting at the lowest level, because you can escalate up from what business unions call “an IWW style march on the boss,” but you can’t escalate up from a strike.

I don’t think this will work in my kind of workplace, as none of the workers are ever anywhere near the bosses. Ever. They rarely even go to the location where the bosses are. Getting people to that place is hard enough even when the company incentivizes it with free food. :/

Basically we are all dispatched to different locations every day. You might work a week on the same jobsite, but then you’re off somewhere else. Getting people to commit to going to the office to talk to the boss is hard because 1) your jobsite might be super far away, and 2) the bosses are only at the office during the hours you’re supposed to be working. And when you’re working paycheque to paycheque, it’s hard to agree to skipping a few hours of paid work (even if it would get you a raise or something.) Additionally we do have an elected employee council (consolation prize after the failed union attempt) that we use to pressure management, but nothing ever comes from it. It’s a joke. I don’t think we have any leverage without having some kind of legal way to represent all of us without people having to come down and do the work themselves.

I think it will be easy to get most of the workers to sign onto the idea that some of their trusted coworkers (who they already elected to the council, in some cases) are going to try to negotiate a raise for everyone on their behalf, you know?