I work at a non profit and we just won union recognition and are slowly moving towards first contract negotiations and I HAVE NO IDEA WHAT I’M DOING. Would love to chat with some folks about their experiences, especially if you’ve negotiated around contracts/grants/etc.
Your first contract can be harder than the union recognition fight itself. This is because it us in admin’s interest to stall:
Dragging their heels means they can try to let momentum die down and for your bargaining ability to be weaker due to disengagement.
Slower means they get to maintain the status quo longer, saving time and money.
If they’re particularly competent and assholes, they can eventually push to undo the union itself and will just avoid a contract until they think they’ll win decert.
I say all of this because you need a campaign just like you needed one for unionization and the exact same tactics apply:
You need an organizing committee/structure to ensure the work gets done and you can beat admin.
Keeping lists and using them. Always track who shows up to what and always contact and invite non-anti-union people first.
Build enthusiasm and lists by organizing meetings and actions. Both of these are also structure tests. If you get 90% turnout to a meeting and folks are on your side, you’re basically ready to strike and just need a forceful campaign to convince them it’s necessary.
A competent admin will force you to strike, but nobody actually wants to strike. When the time comes, your position is always, “we are trying in good faith but they’re screwing with us, it may be our only option”.
Do surveys / ask questions about what matters most to your membership for a contract. Track the results. Remember that pay is always important no matter what the answers say. Take the most important issues and turn them into initial demands. Your initial demsnds need to be more than you expect to get because bargaining will be about “compromise”, effectively by law. Be creative with your demands. Is childcare important? Demand a very large childcare fund based on projected cost of living in your area and frame it in equity terms. When admin balks, take note of it for when you need to organize a strike: “look what those bastards wouldn’t negotiate”.
Pay very close attention to bargaining time and scheduling. Demand to bargain any time, anywhere.
Expect to need a lawyer and to file ULP. This is mostly useful for convincing your members it’s time to strike. The state will not actually punish the employer.
Constantly give updates to membership. A feeling of participation is very important for your strength. Updates should tell this overall story over time: (1) it’s amazing that we won our union but the fight isn’t over! (2) take our surveys / come to meetings to share what’s important to you (3) here are our great demands in X issue that we presented to admin on [day], (4) here’s how bargaining is going (good things you achieve/TA and things about how admin is fucking around), (5) take part in X action!, (6) the bargaining committee needs your authorization to strike because admin isn’t bargaining fairly, (7) it’s time to strike, here’s all the info you need, here’s how you will survive during this time, and here’s our first action and picket.
If you are a small union without a good strike fund, begin making connections with other unions to build yours up. When it comes time yo strike you can leverage a strong network to bring in thousands of dollars.
You may not need all of this if you are already very powerful, i.e. have high engagement. You can stomp admin if you present your demands as articles, move ahead rapidly in the horrible bargaining process, and scare them with actions.
Basically… you just organize, same thing you’ve already been doing. Cross your Ts and dot your Is during negotiations, but otherwise treat this as the same fight. Be prepared to use direct action, particularly around when it is time to strike.
Feel free to ask questions and/or PM me.
Oh, and PS: always be professional/polite-ish during bargaining meetings. “[Not] bargaining in good faith” is a weapon to use against admin but it can also be used against you.
PS in case it’s helpful and/or enticing, I organize unions and have bargained as part of bargaining committees with successful strikes and 80-90% strike auth votes.
How do you manage ULPs in such a way that people don’t become focused on them?
I’ve seen so many organizing campaigns lose power because of some BS legal strategy. ULPs take like 2 years to go through the system so the fact that they are bound to fail won’t be clear for some time. But they kind of let people procrastinate doing challenging, scary organizing/action because that ULP is on the back burner.
It is the case especially with people who have some sort of deep down belief that that state will protect them. Even if you know in your brain that’s fake shit it is sooo tempting to relax into it. Because of how egregiously unfair the practices of the boss really are. This time even the pigs at the NLRB will see through the lies!!
Also I think union staffers like them because they have all the expertise so it kind of makes the workers reliant. The boss likes them because they know they will win.
With really good inoculation it’s possible. I’ve seen it too, once in a long while. Where ineffective tactics are pursued on purpose just to let people get it out of their systems and teach about power. Not easy to pull off and requires knowing the situation backwards and forwards.
A lot of times a ULP is just a legal justification to go on strike. That’s where they’re most useful imo
actual answer, upvote this shit, folks
guys its mao
This is such a based fucking response thank you so much
I’ve shared a ton of info in other responses, but basically I feel like my particular union is pretty weak, im convinced that my union rep is inept as hell. They are currently bargaining a first contract with another BU in my agency so hoping that can move things along for us in terms of boilerplate language but we will see. The agency hired some of the top union busting lawyers in the state, who in a news article, admitted that a tactic of theirs is to force impasse. It’s been one full year since they were recognized and they are getting down to the Financials of the contract, where management has attempted to cut benefits that exist already (sick time accrual specifically).
I just started disseminating our BU survey this week and are going to have a first kinda celebratory party/mixer in a couple of weeks, I’m really hoping we get some folks but I think everyone is so burnt out from the structural trauma going on and the everyday trauma of our jobs; my coworkers have been responding to overdoses at least 1-3 times a week for months (we work with people who are unhoused/use drugs/have mental health issues or some combo). I’m starting to get pretty upset and demoralized because the organizing committee seems to be totally checked out since we won recognition, like I’m still going to union presentations online and doing research on bargaining strategy and trying to gather info and it’s just crickets from nearly everyone else. So I dont think we have any other people who have a fully vested interest right now, but also I think are mostly just distracted by the work. That’s really what I’m struggling with right now. I want to build that momentum so we CAN win a good contract but I can’t force it and that sucks.
Of course, comrade! Happy to help any way I can.
Union staff is usually meant to fill in when full-time workers can’t (ideally you have high engagement and spread the work among workers instead). So you’re in a tough situation by having low engagement and presumably ineffectual staff. It’s not impossible, but the bad news is it’s usually a lot of work for the people still ready to fight.
How are you all doing in terms of lists and actions, and when was your last action? Members usually need three things: (1) to see activity and build solidarity with one another, (2) to see that collective actions create material movement (e.g. forced to bargain or TA an article), and (3) think that admin sucks and needs to be fought. I mention this because messaging and organizing has to strike a careful balance of not just stressing how much admin sucks in lieu of 1 and 2, otherwise people start to think, “what is the point of the union?”
Basically, I think you should consider doing a mild structure test and use that to build a more militant action to achieve your next goal (force to bargain, e.g.), and prepare to escalate to a strike given their tactics. You don’t want to go straight to a “big” action because it might look small and have the opposite effect.
For an idea: organize for an all-hands meeting to lay out what’s been happening, why it’s important to come together and act, and to get volunteers for planning the action. Emphasizing the importance is key, and ideally you could invite someone to speak about a successful contract campaign in your area (use that to get people interested in attending).
If you can confidently set a date a couple weeks out, do that and begin talking to every single person to get them to commit to going to the event. Make it easy to attend. If you can, have your most persuasive people do the talking/calling.
Attendance of the meeting is the structure test. If you get good attendance, you’re golden to do a real action. Here are some achievable options:
Show up en masse to management’s offices, demand to bargain, come with stories about why you need money/better working conditions, come with chants. Take pictures and videos (announce it if in a one-party state). If you have media connections, have them come to the action and write a story. If you don’t have those connections, start asking around and try to make them.
Do a picket in a small space. Exact same idea but it’s at a building entrance or something public.
Begin tabling for your campaign. Talk to the community and get signatures of people on a petition that says they support you. Get contact info so you can build a community support list. Make direct asks for your strike fund. You can get $100-$300 per hour in a busy area and a good location. Do farmer’s markets, storefronts, sports events - crowds (on a public sidewalk). Get a couple hundred or more signatures and present the numbers to your membership and to msnagement. Don’t tell anyone your exact fundraising, but say thousands if you get at least $2k (make that your target).
Target the funding. Whoever is the source of income to the org. If they are sympathetic, first contact them, then consider a mass action / demand session when they are present, phone banking them, getting them to agree to apply pressure, etc. If they are not sympathetic, print flyers that shame them and leave them all over a location where their funders go, put yourself on their radat. Keep going up the chain to get sympathetic pressure or a shaming campaign.
Obviously you can get creative based on your particular conditions. The idea is to make them pay attention and for your members to see some kind of win, even just carrying out the action.
Involve local politicians if any of them want union cred.
At a meta level, get local labor connections. Get other unions and socialists to show up to these things and do work with you.
Obviously the hard part is that initial piece: getting people to show up to 1 meeting. Do everything you can to make that a success. Get other unions to speak there. See if anyone can provide food in solidarity. If you have friends in a band, do a freeish concert. That kind of thing. Socialists, anarchists, etc can often help with this. And take attendance at the meeting.
All easier said than done, I know, but I hope this gives some inspiration or an angle you can latch onto.
In terms of the impasse angle, there are two common options. Tge first is rhetorical at the bargaining table (make sure someone is taking verbatim notes), i.e. finding ways to move (even small ways) and identifying when management is itself stonewalling when you have already countetred. The second is to use actions to make them move. The second is the important one and it’s why it’s all I’m focused on lol.
Solidarity and let’s keep chatting.
thanks for this again. Is it okay for me to message you about it a bit more?
Sure!