Union Recognition

Plan to Win: How Do Workers Collectively Bargain with Bosses?

We need to understand how our workplaces are structured and deeply and widely felt issues affecting us and our coworkers. Use tools like a private Google Drive and Airtable for data management, Slack for daily communication, and Send Grid for mass emailing.

The dedicated body of union worker organizers, which holds regular meetings to plan and strategize, and which seeks worker representation from most (ideally all) occupations, departments, programs, races, genders, nationalities, etc. in the workplace. OC members must build trust and solidarity together. An ideal OC ratio is 1-to-10 organizers-to-workers within the pool of union-eligible workers or bargaining unit.

We must have a strong majority (ideally a supermajority) of our fellow workers assessed to be pro-union (as our only strength comes from our numbers). One assessment is by signing a print or digital union card. Others include signing a public pro-union petition, taking a worker’s picture with a pro-union quote to be put on social media and our website, going to collective direct actions, or paying voluntary dues.

Once we have a majority, it is our right to ask for voluntary recognition, or if not, then for the bosses to be neutral toward our organizing drive. We should expect either no or no answer to both requests. If they do recognize our union, skip to step 7.

A third party (non-employer, non-employee), such as the federal government’s National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), the American Arbitration Association (AAA), or a state public labor relations board, shall certify that a majority of the workforce is in favor of the union through an election, through a simple majority of votes cast. We should expect a boss fight, where the administration will offer many threats to prevent the election and shrink our support, during this step. Additionally, we may have to apply pressure to come to a Pre-Election Agreement to hold a union certification vote similar to the grad worker unions at Brown University and Georgetown University.

The bosses may continue to refuse to recognize the now-certified union, as continues to happen to the unions at Loyola University Chicago, Boston College, UChicago, and Yale. Columbia, Harvard, and New York University administrators eventually did recognize their student worker unions because strong majority unions continued to pressure them for recognition, among other specific workplace issues.

Now the workers elect a bargaining committee. The bargaining committee and the bosses (likely their lawyers and maybe lower level administrators) will negotiate the first union contract/collective bargaining agreement about the issues that the workers care about (wages, benefits, hours, working conditions, vacation time, civil rights protections, etc). We should continue to expect resistance through unnecessary delays, rejections of our asks and demands (and we will ask for more than what we expect to get), and divide and conquer tactics. But if the majority sticks together, and uses tactics like open bargaining for all members and supporters to attend, we will win a tentative agreement. It likely will not be everything we want, but it is a new floor rather than a new ceiling.

The union contract will not become legally enforceable until the rank-and-file union members vote in favor of the contract. If it is voted down, the bargaining committee gets back to work until a contract is mutually agreed to by all parties, and then successfully ratified by the union’s membership. A union must only bargain and ratify successor contracts going forward.