Suppose a coworker just brought you a union leaflet urging employees to sign an authorization card. What questions would you ask of the union supporter?
Discussion 1:
Question:
Suppose a coworker just brought you a union leaflet urging employees to sign an authorization card. What questions would you ask of the union supporter? What may happen from this point on?
In the United States, the unions follow the goals of increasing compensation, improving working conditions and influencing the workplace rules. An union determines the working conditions, pay and work rules through a collective bargaining and designated formal contracts. The questions that can be asked to the union supporter are: the process in which a union becomes my exclusive representative; How does the authorization card work; what does it mean if I sign the authorization card; the next steps after signing an authorization card; do I automatically become a member of the union; the difference between being a union member and just being represented; voting rules if an election place; the process if I need to revoke after signing the authorization card; the choices that will be present on the ballot; minimum number of employees that need to vote in an election and so on (Fulmer, 2012) . Therefore, the decision is totally on us, whether we want to sign an authorization card or if choose to decline the authorization card if I am not n=in favor of it. Thus, considering all the factors, whether the union might be in the favor or not in favor, an employee must carefully decide whether to sign an authorization card.
Discussion 2:
Question:
Suppose a coworker just brought you a union leaflet urging employees to sign an authorization card. What questions would you ask of the union supporter? What may happen from this point on?
When employees of a company form a union, they are entering into an agreement with each other. The agreement here is that “we” are more important that “me”. Thus, collective well-being is more important than an employee’s personal ambition. This includes benefits for the employees, but this also involves trade-offs (Pierce, 2019). An employees’ union takes care of the issues of the middle 80% of the employees in the bell curve. This means it usually deals with issues like salary increment, hiring process and employee lay-offs. Often union becomes an institution within an institution. For this institution to perform sustainably, it must have rules (Rose, Kumar & Ramasamy, 2011). For example, a certain amount of salary should go to the union from every paycheck whether employees like it or not. On the contrary, if an employee is fired, the same union pays for the employee’s expenses for a few months.
In the specific case where the employee union asks for an employee to sign an authorization card, the employee must make sure who is going to use this card and what kind of authorization is being provided to the card holder. If the employee feels that it is illegal to provide authorization to anyone then the employee must alert the security personnel. Even when the authorization is minimal it is important to know who is going to use the card. There should be checks and balances and shared responsibilities. When the employee feels everything is in order, he or she can sign the card and have a co-signee to sign the authorization card.