I work for a small-ish company of laborers. We have ~100 full-time employees who work in labour, a small team of administrative employees, and very few managers all things considered. The reasons for this are part of the reason I need to be vague in public talking about this, because the details make the company very identifiable to anyone who knows anything about the industry.
Some previous employees tried and failed to unionize over a decade ago, but the vote was very close. Since then, wages have stagnated to a degree that make me laugh and cry, we are being pushed to work more and more overtime, and in general morale is very low. I am in contact with a small group of very well-connected employees who are 100% on board with unionizing, and I believe that we can successfully get the required signatures this time if we play our cards right.
- How does one go about choosing a union to work with? I have done some Googling but the results are useless. I need some kind of leftist search engine, please! I know of the major Canadian unions like Unifor and Teamsters, as well as the IWW, and then the very specific ones like the postal union or the teachers' union.
- Does the IWW even do workplace organizing? I was under the impression that it was more of a thing you joined solo.
- Are any of the bigger unions in Canada actually useful? We need a hard wage correction upfront and then guaranteed cost of living increases after that, and I don't want to do all this work to have some centrist 'union' let us down in negotiations.
- Do you know of any trade-specific unions for things in the realm of carpentry and space finishing? (Again sorry for being vague in public about industry) I know that my industry is largely unionized in the US, but here it rarely is. I have not found any info from my Google searches as to which unions those other companies work with.
- If we can't find anything that's a good fit, is it advisable to start an industry-specific union for us and others? Is that doomed to fail?
- I've found a few different groups that say "contact us if you want to organize your workplace" but basically
- Most of them seem US-centric and we are in Canada
- I worry that they're ops lol
- Not sure if this is the IWW's wheelhouse or not. I don't want to take help from them and then form a union under Teamsters or something, kind of feels like wasting their resources idk maybe this is fine??
- So uhhhh please recommend a good group to talk to about this in Canada! Or I mean a US group is fine so long as they have the knowledge about local rules and can help us.
- There is some complex stuff to explain about the company structure that make it hard to know how many people we'd have to get to sign cards and I would really appreciate someone knowledgeable messaging me privately so I can explain a bit, or point me to a good group where I can ask this question
Gosh sorry I am rather at a loss of where to start here so I'm someone could just give me a stick and point me in the right direction I would be exceptionally pleased, thank you!!
Edit: as a bonus I may have slam-dunk proof of wage theft by the company not paying certain employees overtime, would be great if we could also get some resources on how to retaliate for that in as big of a blow as possible. ✌️
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.
People really don't notice the brilliant evil of the canadian labor legislation. It is singular. In canada unions don't just lack power because of the general global class war thing. They are totally tangled up in the enforcement of capitalism, more than in other places.
The whole No Strike being required in every contract is an example. First, you guaranteed to have this devastating agreement in your contract. It really fucks over the workers. An agreement that in other places, like the US, strong unions do not enter into. But in Canada, there is no choice.
Who is responsible to make sure it's adhered to? The ministry? The employer? The police? The workers themselves? No: the Union. Not just the organization, but the officers of the Union as individuals. The officers of the Union are held to be personally liable if workers become too militant or disruptive. They can have their assets seized and become incarcerated. They and their families can lose their homes!! They can go to jail. For the actions of other people! It is a kind of accountability that basically doesn't exist anywhere else.
So think about it, over the decades, the workplace culture of the people who are employed at the Union. They do not want worker control over the Union. They do not want militancy. Not just because the status quo is kind of working for them, but because they are personally afraid of the consequences of it. Worker control, democracy etc immediately lead to militancy. Which they are on the hook for. We are taught that workers are meek and afraid, but it's not true. Workers are brave. It's probably already happened, but if not, you are soon going to start hearing about people's fantasies of doing a big strike. People love the idea of showing the boss who's boss. But the system in canada, really more than elsewhere is set up to scare unions away from this.