Know Your Rights

Although we firmly believe that the greatest way to affirm, protect, and expand our rights is by building collective worker power through union organizing, it is still well worth understanding some labor law basics!

On this page we'll cover some fundamentals including:

• The rights you get after winning union certification
• Your rights in union organizing
• Union-busting and the law
• Why our power as workers is more important than on-paper rights

Post-Union Certification Rights

Once a group of coworkers organize a strong majority and win a union certification process (typically through the National Labor Relations Board), they become CWA members and win brand new rights and protections that start immediately!

Collective Bargaining Rights

After winning a union certification process you have the right to negotiate a first union contract with the company over your working conditions. The priorities of bargaining are always shaped by the membership, and the union members in your unit will nominate and elect your peers to be on your Bargaining Committee to lead the process.

The goal of collective bargaining a union contract is always to protect what we love about our work in writing, and improve things that could be better. First contracts are never perfect, but they are a strong foundation to build on over time. 

Although it is common for many parts of a union contract to apply across the board because everyone stands to benefit from them, but special terms can be negotiated for smaller sub-groups of your unit based on different folks' needs. 

One example that nearly all workers want to (usually do) include in their union contracts would be Just Cause rights, which means the company has to demonstrate a "just cause" for firing or laying off a coworker, such as a financial need or performance reasons.
 

Status Quo Protections

After certification and during the process of bargaining your first union contract, the company can no longer make unilateral changes to your core working conditions without first collectively bargaining over the terms of those changes. 

Status Quo protections include subjects like layoffs, return to office, changes to pay, changes to healthcare, and so much more. 

If you believe status quo has been illegally modified, reach out to your union local, union staff, and/or coworkers involved in organizing!

Weingarten Rights

In the US, after certification, you have a right to union representation in anticipation of or during any meeting that might investigatory in nature and/or potentially lead to management taking disciplinary action against you.

Never wait until a crisis moment to invoke this right! Reach out to your union local, union staff, and/or coworkers involved in organizing as soon as you get even the slightest impression you might need help.

In a pinch, you can say something like this to your boss: “I reasonably believe that this meeting may lead to discipline or affect my working conditions, I respectfully request that my union representative be present at this meeting. I can participate in this investigatory interview when my union representative arrives.”

In the US, this right is codified in law from a Supreme Court case: NLRB v. J. Weingarten, Inc., 420 U.S. 251 (1975). This right doesn't exist in the same way in Canada by default upon union certification, but is commonly negotiated into union contracts.

Labor Law Basics for New Organizing

Through the 1935 National Labor Relations Act employees have the legal right to form a union in their workplace, engage in collective action around work issues, and it bars employers from anti-union and anti-organizing retaliation ranging from asking what your opinion on your union is all the way to threatening, harassing, disciplining, transferring, and a wide range of other behaviors intended to curb organizing.

Employees covered under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) have the legal right to form a union in their workplace. The NLRA States:

• Section 7: “Employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations to bargain collectively through representation of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining…”
• Section 8: “It shall be an unfair labor practice for an employer… to interfere with, restrain, or coerce employees in the exercise of the rights guaranteed in Section 7…”
• View the full  text of the NLRA at www.nlrb.gov.

We believe that the right to engage in "concerted collective activity" (labor law jargon for workplace organizing) covers not just organizing around wages, conditions, and hours, but also the ethical use of our labor, diversity and inclusion, and so much more.

It Is Illegal For Your Employer To

• Make promises, bribe, or favor employees to convince them not to form a union;
• Ask you what your opinion about the union is;
• Threaten to fire or fire you for supporting the union;
• Harass, discipline, transfer you to another location, call center, or other worksite for supporting the union.

About Strikes

• In 98% of first contracts, your union negotiates successfully without a strike.
• In CWA, the members only go out on strike during contract negotiations if a majority of these workers vote to strike.

For More Information On What Your Boss Will say, Visit:

UnionBustingPlaybook.com

Power Is More Important Than On-Paper Rights

Despite the vast majority of workers having the federally protected right to organize, we know that labor law in the US is far from perfect and it fails to cover independent contractors and others. Yet, we know through experience that our greatest protections stem from our collective strength and solidarity when we are organized together.

Take the Voltage video game writers who won the first successful game worker strike in history: they were independent contractors, had no rights under the law, and the boss could have immediately terminated them... Yet they won!

The writers knew that their greatest power and safety came through the fact that collectively they are the most valuable aspect of their company. Withholding or threatening to withhold their labor was the ultimate bargaining chip that enabled them to win their strike with an average 78% pay increase.

To think the origins of the modern North American labor law system starts with the passage of legislation in the early 1900s would be like walking into a movie during the final 10 minutes and thinking you saw the whole movie. Decades upon decades of union organizing pre-dated the establishment of legal processes for union certification and collective bargaining.  

In fact, union organizing was explicitly illegal for huge periods of time for nearly the entire working class, and yet workers organized, built their unions, and engaged in struggle all the same! 

It was only amidst a period of intense labor struggles and union power such that the ruling class was genuinely worried about worker uprisings that they finally "granted" workers bare minimum rights on the job and in organizing.

The point is this: struggle shapes the law, not the other way around.