Why You Fear The Union

Lock your doors, and turn the signs off, the unions are on strike again. Does this sound familiar? Of course, owners and policy decision-makers do not appreciate your unions. Someone, to hold them accountable for all their missed opportunities, what a slap in the face right? Gosh, that sounds scary. "How dare those unions try to invade my privacy and challenge me to do better." Who are they to say what is right and what is wrong? WRONG MINDEST > HERE IS WHY.

I asked Google why unions do not work. What I want to ask you is, "Why do you fear them?"

Here is what Google came up with: "Make it harder to fire underperforming employees", "Increase long-term costs", and "Create tension in the workplace". Etc.

Let me share some perspective for a moment: You may feel or agree and I want you to ask yourself why. By definition, a union is, "a group of workers who join together to advocate for their interests in the workplace." - US Department of Labor

When a group of workers feels the need to join forces to advocate for themselves, to begin with, it's already trouble. Forget they form a union. Why do they feel the need to begin with? Solve that problem before you have to turn your signs off and lock your doors out of fear.

Let's start with "making it harder to fire underperforming employees". The union members do this in fear of leaving their jobs when the owners and or operators do not create job security, not just financially speaking. If this fear of "making it harder to fire underperforming employees" exists, ask yourself why you are attracting those types of employees to begin with. Build stronger teams and mitigate this fear.

If you fear that the union will increase long-term costs, it could mean that you look at what you value, and what your team values, and create a plan to pay their worth. Create a plan to have a sustainable business, one that could scale. Costs of doing business will exist always, but it doesn't have to include being driven by fear of paying what people are worth.

"Create tension in the workplace." Excuse my forwardness, but there must have been tension already in the workplace for them to form the union as a sense of security. The union formed could feel like a threat based on your insecurities about not being able to help either yourself or your team. Your staff knows this but aren't able to articulate this to you because you haven't created an inclusive environment for everyone to flourish in your workplace.