- You don't have to be a union member to get nearly all the benefits of the union -- including the pay scale from its collective bargaining, access to legal representation, health insurance benefits, and being able to attend regular union meetings. Basically, the only thing a non-member can't do is vote. (I see on our worker list today that fewer than half of our workforce today are actually union members.)
- Legally, they can't even require members to pay dues, though I imagine everyone here does, because it's inexpensive, and benefits all workers, including yourself. That's why one would vote to unionize in the first place!
These rules can and almost certainly do differ according to your union, local, contract, and state and federal law.
Unless someone responding here has specific knowledge of OPEIU, Local 153, their Kickstarter contract, or New York labor law, I would not place any trust in it. Many of these answers sound more like anti-union FUD than facts from the Kickstarter United contract.
* Carpenters & Joiners Union gave $38,366,262 with $37,822,215 to democrats and $529,000 to republicans.
* Service Employees International Union gave $28,224,658 with $28,219,509 to democrats and $132 to republicans.
* Laborers Union gave $27,538,080 with $26,810,870 to democrats and $708,100 to republicans.
Source: https://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/list.php?id=
As you can see, there's a massive amount of political spending by unions, and it's almost completely on one side. The "right to work" laws which are so demonized do at least provide one huge advantage: people are no longer forced to contribute to a political campaign which they do not wish to support. There has been court ruling around this area in the past few years, but it was a problem for a long time and, to an extent, remains one.
In both cases the answer to "how do I stop supporting this political action I don't like?" is "Quit. Hope your skills are marketable."
Well, in one scenario it's their money being spent. In the other, it's yours. You don't draw a pretty clear distinction there?
Switching jobs is harder: could you be working for a different company tomorrow, or would it take a few weeks to figure out. Switching unions is often impossible: the same union often covers everyone with the same skills.
It really isn't. I think we can all make arguments as to why we're justified in taking from others, but that doesn't change the reality of what is happening.
> may not be relevant anyway:
AFAIK this means only public sector non-union employees cannot be forced to pay for unions' political activities. Private sector employees are still on the hook. Unless there's something else you're trying to draw attention to.
I'll pick out the part I think's most relevant, since yeah, that's a big ol' wall of text.
"Under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), as amended by the Taft-Hartley Act, and held by the Supreme Court in Communications Workers of America v. Beck that in a union security agreement, unions are authorized by statute to collect from non-members only those fees and dues necessary to perform its duties as a collective bargaining representative known as agency fees.[12]"
Collect fees? Yes. Spend those fees on political activities, if you're a non-member? No. Unless I'm misreading this. The public unions bit comes next and says that public sector unions can't even collect the agency fees from non-union members, which is a step farther and into union-busting territory. The original point was that union fees amount to compelled political speech, though (again, so does your company spending on politics, assuming they're making money off you even in an abstract way, but whatever) and this seems to make that moot, best I can tell. If that's wrong I'd like to know—I don't get off on going around spreading incorrect info.
What do I do when there is an industry-wide closed-shop union, as some people seem to want?
As for closed shop:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_shop#United_States
It's illegal, so's the similar "union shop", and you can opt out such that you still pay dues but they may only go toward collective bargaining activities and services to members, which appears to solve this "I'm being forced to support the only viable political party that wants to make anything whatsoever better" problem. Maybe leaving others, sure, but this issue's... not an issue. Unlike employers. I can't sign a piece of paper banning them from using profit derived from my labor for political activity.
But the thousands of companies I could work for have healthy competition and diversity of approach to issues. An industry-wide union has no competition and no diversity.
> Maybe leaving others, sure, but this issue's... not an issue.
Say you were a Green supporter, and had a strong conviction against military intervention. How would you feel funding a union leadership that campaigns for Labour, following Iraq?
Wow, I can tell you evaluate statements in an unbiased manner. What happens when you realize the idea of "better" turns out to depend on some pretty big assumptions that you no longer believe are true? Additionally, if the only two "viable" political parties are abhorrent like the ones in the US, giving any money to either of them is still morally fucked up if you truly disagree with them and vote 3rd party.
At any rate, the two-party thing's how our (the US's) system's structured. It stabilizes there. A third party replacing one of the big two, as has happened occasionally in the past, would assuredly acquire a good bit of distasteful cruft along the way. Effective political action revolves around trying to help a 3rd party replace one of them despite that likely outcome (and accepting an even smaller voice in policy than most voters have, in the meantime); participation in one of the big two parties themselves (much, much large effect than just voting in elections, though still usually tiny); or working to reform our system to break the two-party stability point. Or some combination of those things.
It seems that some unions have shifted from representing employees in negotiations to representing a profession in all respects. I believe that's contrary to their original purpose and dilutes both their support and their credibility as simply advocating for the worker.
> If recognized, Kickstarter would be the first major tech company with union representation in the United States.
But that's not correct. Engineers at Hughes Aircraft, including programmers, were unionized and represented by Local 1553 of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners. I think Hughes counts as a major tech company. Local 1553 also represents electronics and space engineers at other aerospace companies.
How did a carpenter's union end up representing engineers whose work had nothing to do with wood? Briefly, in the 1940s when Hughes built the Spruce Goose, a huge plane built almost entirely out of wood, they hired a lot of union carpenters. After the Spruce Goose was cancelled, many of those carpenters stayed on doing other work at Hughes, and kept their union. More history of 1553 here [1].
https://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2015/08/26/not-just-in...
They _could_ require that _after_ joining Kickstarter either join the union or pay equivalent dues.
That sounds like exactly the same thing as a closed shop. How is that practically any different?
And to put another way: would it be reasonable for you to benefit from the work the union does for all employees without also contributing to that union?
All this is besides the point that requiring employees to join the union is a decision the _employer_ would have to make (although probably through union pressure).
If I never asked for the union or their collective bargaining, then yes. It's like cleaning my windows when I never asked you to and then demanding cash for it.
If you're in a right to work state neither fees or membership is required.
Kickstarter is in NY, which is not a right-to-work state. So you may as well join the union, because you have to pay dues.
I think it's more like you join a company, and there is a set RoE for both the company and the union to talk to you about the union, and joining the union as an individual is usually, politics aside, a strong option because of all the extra benefits and protections union workers receive.
In the case of single-developer projects as single contractors, in the case of multi-developer projects as worker cooperatives or collectives.