5  Steps: Getting Started on your Union & a majority sign-up:

 

To begin organizing a union at your workplace there’s a simple starting point before going through the steps listed below: quietly talk to a few of your co-workers who you think may be interested in organizing.                                                                              

This small group starts to privately discuss workplace issues, what is involved in organizing a union, and making plans to contact us. When you’re ready, contact us and a UFCW representative will meet with the small group to answer your questions and help you develop a comprehensive organizing plan.

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• Step 1:  Build and Organizing Committee

Leaders are identified and an organizing committee representing all major departments and all shifts and reflecting the racial, ethnic and gender diversity in the workforce is established. Committee members must be prepared to learn and know & educate their co-workers about the union and any impending management anti-union campaign. Also basic information about the workplace Including: 

  • Workplace structure: departments, work areas, jobs, shifts

  • Employee information: name, address, phone,  shift, title, and department for each worker (employee list)

  • Employer information: other locations, parent company,  product(s), customers, union history etc.

• Step 2: Adopt an Issues Program

The committee develops a program of union demands (the improvements you are are organizing to achieve) and a strategy for the union election campaign. A plan for highlighting the issues program in the workplace is carried out through various organizing campaign activities.

 

• Step 3: Sign-Up Majority on Union Cards

Your co-workers are asked to join U.F.C.W. and support the union program by signing membership cards. The goal is to sign-up a sizable majority.  This "card campaign" should proceed quickly once begun and is necessary to hold a union election. The card is asking union to represent them in collective bargaining. Otherwise know as "Majority sign up" or "Card Check".

 

• Step 4: Win the Union Election

The signed cards are used (and required) to petition the state or federal labor board to hold an election. It will take the labor board at least several weeks to determine who is eligible to vote and schedule the election. The union campaign must continue and intensify during the wait. If the union wins, the employer must recognize and bargain with the union. Winning a union election not only requires a strong, diverse organizing committee and a solid issues program, but there must also be a plan to fight the employer’s anti-union campaign.

 

• Step 5: Negotiate a Contract

The organizing campaign does not let up after an election victory. The real goal of the campaign, a union contract (the document the union and the employer negotiate and sign, covering everything from wages to how disputes will be handled), is still to be achieved. Workers must be mobilized to support the union’s contract demands (decided by you and your co-workers) and pressure the employer to meet them.

 

     

**  In California, public sector employees already have the right to majority sign-up; All workers should be able to organize under this fair and democratic system.