See update below with union vote.
Look, I get it.
You don’t want unions. And really, I don’t know too many business leaders that welcome them with open arms.
But let’s also not pretend that unionization drives happen to innocent businesses that are just trying to do good in this world. Most of the time, it isn’t just representation for representation’s sake. Especially now, unionization is almost completely reactive. A group of employees calls and the union responds.
When a unionization drive hits a major big box retailer though, you’ll hear about it. Of course, your mind probably immediately went to that big company based in Arkansas. In this case at least, you’re off target.
Late last month, word came out that the United Food and Commercial Workers union was aiming to organize 27 New York Target stores. The New York Times writes:
The union decided to focus on Target after employees in Valley Stream, on Long Island, asked for help in unionizing. Echoing longstanding complaints by some Wal-Mart workers, the store’s employees complained that many of them earned too little to support a family or afford health insurance, forcing some to rely on food stamps and Medicaid for their children.
“What we want from Target is simply this: we need a living wage where we can get by,” said Sonia Williams, a logistics employee in Valley Stream who said she earns $11.71 an hour, plus a $1-an-hour night differential.”
The main issue of pay stems not just from the hourly wage but from the fact that many retailers (including Target) have higher than necessary staffing levels to deal with fluctuations in schedule and demand. Having been on the scheduling end in retail, I get it. Finding the perfect balance isn’t easy. Either you’re asking people to come in and work more hours than they want (and sometimes overtime) or you have too few hours to shuffle to too many employees.
There isn’t an easy solution to this.
What isn’t a solution is a low quality, anti-union video that was recently posted on Gawker. I’ve done the anti-union talk with employees, I’ve crafted open door policies and coached supervisors on how to deal with possible organization discussions. It wasn’t necessarily the most fun part of any HR job I’ve had, but it was needed.
This anti-union video doesn’t work on two levels. The first is that it is just poorly produced. It reminded me of videos I would watch in class in high school.
The second problem is that ineffective videos like this tend to leave more questions about unionization than answers. After the mandatory viewing, people not closely involved in the unionization wonder what’s going on.
Who will employees turn to if they want to ask about these issues? Probably a union rep or a co-worker familiar with the issues, not management.
There seem to be several schools of thought when it comes to dealing with unionization:
Of course, my preference is the last one. Don’t waste your budget on bad films and flimsy defenses (that could ultimately fail anyway) and instead focus on fixing issues so that employees don’t feel the need to pay a union to represent themselves. It seems so easy, but for so many, it is far from it.
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UPDATE: Target workers voted to reject the union by a vote of 137-85 on Friday June 17. As The New York Times reported:
The nation’s main union for retail workers lost a unionization vote on Friday at a Target store in Valley Stream, N.Y., in what was an effort to make it the first of Target’s 1,750 stores in the United States to be unionized…
In a statement, the union’s president, Bruce W. Both, said that the workers at the Valley Stream store endured a “campaign of threats, intimidation and illegal acts by Target management,” and that the union would contest the results.”
