That being said, we're a smart group. We should easily be able to find some loophole just like all the big corps do. Couldn't we form a LLC, all become members, and use the fees as an investment loss each year? When it pays out a severance, pay taxes on the income as you would with employer provided disability insurance.
But yeah, even a $100 / month would be enough, I think, to start it off.
Let's get 1000 members * $100 * 12 and that's $1.2M a year. To start, hire two very good lawyers at $250K / year and a few other auxiliary staff, create a union-only forum that's easily searchable, and start populating it with anecdotes.
For GP's 70K per annum wage that is 73 dollars a month.
If you're on a lower income, you pay less.
How do you find the service/them generally?
I've been with them for about 15 years and very happy with their service, training, etc.
So unless you worked for a car wash and then go open a car wash across the street. Its not even worth thinking about.
Sane employers will pay lawyer costs if they know they’d lose in court.
But that’s Canada.
I'm now an employer of one, in Europe, and I can tell you I passed up on many candidates where the screening error bars should have been acceptable, but the error multipled by cost of firing were not.
I suspect this actually a negative pressure on diversity as well, since any unconscious uncertainty is multiplied by the risk, regardless of how hard we try to control for our internal biases.
A pooled legal team is probably a good idea to take care of the truely illegal stuff and provide advice based on industry standards.
For knowledge workers at least, I believe union style employee protections are going to reduce the opportunity of average and below workforce and not benefit the top either.
It may be more appropriate for you to join a union which is recognised in your workplace. You can find one at https://www.tuc.org.uk/join-union
Recongnition is where a union has a formal agreement to negotiate collectively either by mutual agreement or via the legal process (similar to the us system)
However unions will still represent members individually I have done so in the past.
The union that has the majority of technology workers who are union members is Prospect - this is tech in the widest sense.
Got handed my redundancy / compromise agreement and told not to return to the office. And, the kicker, told my non-compete meant I couldn't work for a competitor during the redundancy process.
It was devastating and emotionally wrecking. It was like being dumped, out of the blue, from a multi-year relationship. And being told you couldn't see anyone else. I went through all the classic stages of grief.
And then...
I contacted my Trade Union and explained the situation. They took a look at the contract I'd been given, passed it to a very expensive lawyer, who made a couple of phone calls.
The next week I was free to work for whoever I wanted and was paid ~7 months salary (tax free).
Join. A. Union.
Your employer has more lawyers than you do. Pay a couple of quid per month to have decent legal representation on hand when you need it.
That layoff was the best thing to happen to me. Shook me out of my cosy job, forced me into building my own consultancy, and taught me the power of solidarity.