For union dues, I’ll sometimes bring up strikes. People know that when unions strike, they aren’t working, and when they aren’t working, they aren’t getting paid. What they don’t realize is that most unions pay the employees during strikes, and that money has to come from somewhere.

It’s the same people that don’t get socialised healthcare. Union fees are like a tax that’s used to pay people to do work for you, in the case of worker unions, people that negotiate working conditions, benefits, and wages, in addition to lawyers that can both offer legal advice and representation should you be in need of it.

Here in Sweden we have lots of different unions. We have a tenants union that negotiate rent increases, ensure that landlords do their end of the contract, and will help you with legal proceedings should it be required.

There are also various “customer owned” institutions, like my bank, insurance company, and the grocery store I get most of my groceries from. The goal isn’t necessarily massive profits, but enough to sustain and develop the services, with surplus going back to the owners, that is the customers.

It just makes sense. We all make use of schools as children, so funding that with taxes makes sense. It ensures everyone gets a good education, and at least one good meal per day. Same thing applies to healthcare.

I will gladly pay a union.

Always worth it. Workers unite! ✊️

And if the US educational system continues the way its going then you all are going to get more people who turn their noses up at unions because they lack the intellectual capacity to release that the short term loss in revenue will lead to long term benefits.

Can you provide a link to the cards so we can print them too?

Did your union negotiate you a 15% raise?

I found the best comment on lemmy

My wife’s union costs her $8 a paycheck.

It also gave her 9 more PTO days, better healthcare, and negotiated to triple any outside-of-work calls because the company used to do a thing where they would send you home, and then call you back later. Wtf.

They suck at propaganda because the claims are unverifiable lies? That’s not really the point of propaganda. Did it scare a number of employees into voting no on a union? If yes, then they propaganda’d just fine.

I’m so glad Amazon guarantees I’m going to be cucked on wages and job security.

said no worker ever.

I’m not sure how you can spin to be convincing through your arguments… It’s a pretty indefensible position intellectually

This is actually part of a pretty valid strategy. The trick is to flood them with the conclusion - they don’t need to be able to recite talking points, they just need to think “a union could be troublesome”. I’d also spread stories about Union busting (not with a paper trail!) And have dozens of these posters with different, unmemorable arguments

If you convince someone “unions are bad because they have problems with corruption”, they can be sat down, shown the numbers, the transparency measures, and how members could democratically boot out leadership if things go wrong. Their concern is dispelled, and if they accept the argument they’re solidly on team union and distrustful of management.

If you flood them with weak arguments that make sense on the surface but fall apart if you think about them, they’re left with the impression of an argument against unions. They aren’t going to remember it, and if they do it’ll sound like it couldn’t be right to say it out loud, but they felt that way. And they’re smart, so they must have been convinced by a better argument they just can’t remember clearly.

This is what subliminal messaging actually looks like, this shit is evil

Are these morons suggesting that the union will take over for management?

That’d be a great reason to unionize

No the usual ‘argument’ that references is that it you have a complaint or preference or comment or whatever about your work or job duties, you have to bring it to your union rep, rather than talk directly with your employers management. Somehow that’s supposed to be an argument against unions.

Are these morons suggesting that the union will take over for management?

Some unions make disciplinary processes and who can be terminated under what conditions part of the contract. In the worst cases this creates a scenario where bad workers are functionally impossible to fire and the people there actually trying to get their work done have to deal with it, because the bad apple hasn’t been written up for identical violations on at least 3 different dates in the last 90 days, then been provided with explicit written directions of how not to do what they’ve been doing in a meeting with management and the union rep, then given another month before reevaluating if they’ve corrected the issue, then suspending them if they haven’t, then doing the whole process over again before being allowed to fire them. Passing the improvement plan evaluation resets the whole thing. Presuming what they’re doing isn’t an immediate risk of injury or death, that is (that has an expedited process).

People really out here thinking that if you’re a supervisor you just get like 20 years older lmao

Yup, if your employer is so dedicated to making sure you don’t join a union that they make posters about it, then you definitely need to join a union.

Yeah, the whole point is having a legally binding contract that sets wages, hours, and working conditions. Also the “going through your union instead of your manager” is super dumb. It’s like saying, “why talk to your lawyer when you can just confess to the police?”

No guarantee as in “theoretically, we could fold up our entire business instead of bothering to negotiate”. They won’t, of course, but it’s not liably false (IANAL) because there’s a valid weird hypothetical.

You have much fewer guarantees on pay, benefits, and work rules without a union on your side.

I disagree. Without a union, I CAN GUARANTEE you’re getting screwed.

My union dues are tax deductible too where I live

I’m very pro union. But not all unions are good. My father’s union is so bad he might actually be losing money. They just roll over for management to fuck them, barely negotiate anything at all. Last time, they ‘negotiated’ an increase in pay, and the increase was actually SMALLER than the increase in union dues.

Oh, and they only defend the worst of the worst. Litteral thief, stealing, caught on camera, multiple times ? Well defend you tooth and nails. 'Til the management litterally had to get police involved for them to back down.

Unions in general are good. But for some specific unions, ymmv.

My area of work doesn’t have unions.

That last paragraph is absolutely true. I’ve experienced it first hand.

I pay around £15 per month in membership fees at my Union. But if it weren’t for them, I’d have lost my house when the energy companies hiked their prices, end everyone else did the same to compensate.

Was it garaunteed that they’d win these negotiations? No.

Would I have been better off begging to my managers? Fuck no.

That’s because the manager is incentivized to not help you, while the union is incentivized to help you.

Unions are game-theoretically necessary.

The fact that they have it on this blatant of a propaganda poster means that unions work.

Not necessarily.

A poster this blatant means unions are bad for management.

It doesn’t prove that unions aren’t bad for both workers and management alike. Business isn’t a zero sum game. To show that something helps workers, you need to demonstrate that it helps workers.

Which is to say, this poster is a bad argument for unions. The success of the writers strike, on the other hand, is a good argument of how unions protect workers from the bad deals management offers.

As I said in another comment, my dues are automatically paid through my PTO account which in turn is paid into by my employer. So yeah, it’s still my money, but it’s not coming out of my paycheck at all and I honestly don’t even notice it.

At least in my area, most of your big trade unions have this as an option for members through the IBEW credit union.

I personally prefer going through the union instead of my supervisor. Less stressful for me.

It’s not always necessary to ‘go through the union’ instead of speaking with your manager. For pay, conditions and other disputes, yes, you’d want the collective bargaining of a union to get the best deal. For other things, it’s not always necessary.

I had a fall at work a couple of years ago. I fractured my ankle and was away from work until it healed and I could work again. When I returned, the problem area that lead to my fall hadn’t been looked at. I raised it with management myself and they dealt with my concerns and rectified the issue. I informed my health and safety union rep of what I was doing and he agreed to take it up if necessary. It wasn’t.

The company I work for has a long history of working with unions. They obviously have their motivations to improve efficiency and profitability but generally aren’t arseholes about it. The toxic culture I see in other companies only comes about when bosses can get away with murder because employees aren’t able to stand together.

Very major, especially because it goes both ways. Hey Manager, if you got a problem with me take it up with my union rep.

Obviously that image is of a manager, you can tell by its over confident and under qualified stance.

Also what’s the point of getting informed if the last step is saying no? xD

Can’t say if this particular one is real but this definitely tracks in the USA. I’ve worked for companies that have mandatory meetings where anti union consultants will play out this kind of propaganda in real time.

It’s real. Welcome to America! We rebrand the idea of slavery every 100 years or so to great success!

In Spain it’s mandatory to have unions for companies with at least 10 employees.

Dunno if this image specifically is real, but anti-union stuff is common in the US.

I worked this one job where a couple of the employees tried to unionize. It had gotten far enough where there was going to be a vote.

Well the company sent this snake woman around that personally gave almost everyone one on one talks to convince them that unions are bad and they should vote “no” on unionizing.

For some reason none of my coworkers took even a second to wonder why the company was so hell bent on getting everyone to vote “no” that they set up one on one personal meetings with some random anti-union lady.

Yeah, enough people voted “no” that we didn’t get to unionize…

The one other thing I will say that was a bit baffling was that at a prior job I was working minimum wage and it had a union where I had to pay union dues. Wtf was the union doing where I was making less than minimum wage?? Not much apparently.

Fellow French - wait until you realize their unions only apply to one company and not a whole industry so they can’t actually do anything on a large scale. This broke me.