stoy@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
A workers union is an organization made up of workers who have decided to work together to try and force a company/employer to give in to the demands of the workers.
The reason why it works is that the union have several actions they can take if the demands are not met.
First of all, all union members pay a membership fee, most of that money goes into a fund to enable the workers to actually take the actions required.
So what actions can a union take against the employer?
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Striking, all workers down tools and stop working, this harms the employer as no money is being made from their workers, the buildings still costs money for upkeep and power, naturally an epmloyer wont pay their employees on strike, this is when the union themselves pay ther members from the fund set up.
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Lockout, a union can prevent other workers from entering a place of work when they are striking, this stops the employer from hiring strike breakers.
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Legal action can also be taken.
BallsInTheShredder@lemmy.world 8 months ago
Oh wow, so during a strike the union pays employees? Never realized this happened but it makes so much sense now, so the employees can strike without having to worry about going broke. Would be cool if that funding were extended so that if an employer decides to give strikers the middle finger, those people can ride that funding until another job is found. Reducing the hold companies have on employees.
stoy@lemmy.zip 8 months ago
Well, depending on the union, you may not get the full ammount, but they have money to give to members while on strike.
Also yes, here in Sweden all Unions have a separate fund, called Arbetslöshetskassa, it is ment to supplement your income when you get let go from a job and are looking for a new job.
Finally, here in Sweden, there are very few Unions that are workplace dependant, they are industry dependant.
You have a union for normal laborers, a union for civil engineers, transport workers, nurses, builders, IT workers and more.
They are large and it is very common to be a member of one of them.
Right now, Tesls is trying to skip out on signing a collective bargning agreement with IF Metall, the metal workers union, who’s members are doing servicing of Tesla cars, so they are on strike, not every union worker is on strike, just the ones working for Tesla.
Tesla has brought in scabs as a counter to the strike, but what they probably have not considered is that sympathy strikes are legal and used here, so the dockworkers union have stated that they will not unload Tesla cars arriving at the docks for deliver, unless a collective bargning agreement is signed on monday.
Toys ‘R’ Us tried this shit decades ago, and the trasport workers union refused their deliveries, the finance workers union regused to process their payments, the builders union refused to do any work to their stores.
They signed, as will Tesla.
aelwero@lemmy.world 8 months ago
You didn’t know unions pay employees during a strike because they almost never do…
Unions are funded by members. The money you’d get while striking would have to be money you yourself paid into union dues. In order for you to be paid while striking, you’d either have had to have been paying very steep dues, or had to have been paying in for a very long time into a very old and established union.
Further, said ancient union would have had to have been collecting dues for a considerable length of time and not been spending anything. Let’s say I make 50k/year and I pay 2%, or $1k/yr. In order to go on strike for a month, I need 6 years of dues stored up. If there’s 100 members, your talking about $100k/yr that goes completely untouched the entire time. What agency have you ever heard of that would sit on that amount of money? They would spend a large portion on something. Invariably.
It’s not the reality of unions. Its a fairy tale. Ask Google if a union pays workers wages when they strike… Don’t take people’s word on shit like that (including mine) when you can Google.