Unions 101 Webinar March 21, 2022

all right welcome everyone to unions 101 this is the first in a series of webinars that cooperation works will be offering over the next month or so i'm just covering the basics of unions uh how unions and co-ops interact what unionized co-ops are and what union co-ops are there's been a lot of discussion recently about how unions and co-ops should interact what their relationship is and how we might redefine support whatever the case may be with that so this is just an introduction to unions but i'm going to hand it over to margaret bao to provide a little more information on this particular webinar thanks so much margaret you can introduce if you oh she's still talking sir hello everyone uh we are fortunate to have frank sentera share with us his experiences about the basics about cooperatives frank is an advanced certified business advisor for over 10 years at the onondaga community college small business development center in syracuse new york as a cooperation works member he is an advocate for worker cooperatives and ownership ownership businesses he has become a bridge with the small business administration community and the cooperative community he has become an advocate for the main street employee ownership act of 2018 and helping the small business development centers understand uh the potential of cooperatives for ownership conversions so he also has a deep union experience and so we asked him to share a little bit about just the basics about what is what are unions with those of us that are in the co-op community so without further ado frank thanks margaret i love the um introduction about being a bridge i'm really happy to be able to be in that position not just between the small business administration and the co-op community but also now as a part of the union and co-op intersection i feel really fortunate in that case and i want to share a little bit about my story today which will intersect a little bit with the story of you know what unions are what they do and i'm really hoping that everyone on the call will be asking questions as well because we're starting at the union 101 level so that's a broad broad broad broad case of information and so i just kind of picked and chose for the slide deck that i'll be presenting and the topics that i'll be presenting today but if you've got something outside of that or want a little bit more extended explanation of anything then please feel free to jump in i think we'll be taking questions and comments directly in the chat function and then our moderators alex and margaret will be observing that and handling the the questions to me in a timely and organized way all right so i'm going to share my screen okay here we are uh unions 101 uh great graphic thanks alex uh happy to be a member of cooperation works now for a couple years and participating along with such a great group of developers and being that bridge with the sbdc that's a great great thing to be and i'm really happy to continue that work a little bit more about me and my union background um and my union connection so i grew up in a union household my father was a trainman on the monongahela railway which eventually uh over many years is now owned by the norfolk southern uh railway corporation and he worked as a brakeman and a conductor for over 40 years uh he returned from the vietnam war was lucky to get picked as a laborer and then one or two years later based upon his work became a trainman and all during that time he was a member lifetime member of the united transportation union the utu and um i knew uh that he was a member of the utu and i saw some of the work that he did while i was growing up he even served the term as president of the local during a contract negotiation and there was a short short strike that took place and i was quite young at the time so i don't remember a lot of the details but i recognize how i was how the sense of his union work and his solidarity uh with everyone he worked with was was important and i internalized that a bit at that stage since i've been working with the onondaga small business development center i've been a member of our union here so our union here is called the occfta the onondaga county excuse me the onondaga community college federation of teachers and administrators we are a local chapter number 1845 of nyset which is the new york state united teachers union and we are under the umbrella of aft american federation of teachers and afl cio as a part of my membership here i was elected to the executive committee as a professional administrator at large a steward delegate in 2014 so alongside being a member i've been a part of the executive committee decision making governance and other leadership for our local union and as a part of that attended the nice leadership institute in 2017 which was about a seven day course on on leadership in general union history as well and i've also served as a chair of our vote cope political action committee since 2007 and just a quick note on on that because one of the negative comments that you might hear sometimes from people who are anti-union or anti-dues paying is because they believe that their dues shouldn't have to go towards any political activities uh for uh one side or the other so to speak as we're in a very we have a very much a two-party system right now and and so when folks come to us we make it very clear that we have a separate political action committee for electoral and political activities and so the dues that you would pay for membership in the occ fta or for other locals who are set up similar to this are not used for any political activities you can choose to pay separately for vote cope activities which is the political arm of the work that we do as a union but in either case right you have a voice in the matter and what kind of activities might be undertaken either for the membership activities the governance and leadership activities or the political activities in whichever arm that you're involved in there's our really old logo that really needs updated in the blue circle there and hopefully that's going to get updated this year we've got plans for that historical connection i know that the rest of this webinar series on unions and co-ops is going to go into much more detail on things such as the history and how unions and co-ops can work together but i think that just as an introductory webinar that folks just should be sort of on the same page and understanding that there has been a long historical connection between unions and co-ops and one of the often cited sources of that is the goals of the knights of labor uh who were formed in i believe 1869 if i remember correctly by garment workers and these goals included two items that are just you know right off of the co-op playbook right uh workers cooperatives and worker owned factories and so all the other things on here obviously too are other things that uh you know mostly co-ops would be in favor of and and would be supporting but the knights of labor were very specific about the need to um move beyond the simple wage labor system right supersede the wage labor system and move also into ownership of the of the capital right and the active uh workplace i'll say that another historical connection for me between co-ops and unions is that the first co-op i ever remember recognizing is that of the credit union from my father's workplace so there's another connection right dating back to how different types of cooperatives interact with unions in different ways there's no simple line there's no linear line that we can put together as we know when we work with co-ops as developers lots of different models lots of emerging models and information can come to play the relationships between people and their unions and their cooperatives are also many faceted i was really happy to be a union in a union household and have that credit union membership growing up and that was something that also sort of fanned the flames in me and that historical relationship and then just briefly again here the union co-op model right people say well why do you need the union and the co-op together well in a sense you're they're twice as strong and twice as nice to have both in your workplace uh i'm not sure why you wouldn't want to have both if that was an option for you um this great model graphic is really clear in my estimation it shows you exactly how the format for the model is is laid out starting on the left of your screen in the blue shirts which are the worker owners of the cooperative and then they essentially populate two subgroups one is the board of directors which manages the cooperative ownership of the organization and the other subgroup is the union committee right we move one step further to the right the board of directors it points to management which runs the business and interacts with the union then if there is one present on negotiating contracts and resolving issues the union itself can work as sort of a watchdog right an extra watchdog on the management and the board when you see sometimes the traditional circle of how a general worker co-op is in operation between the worker owners and the board of directors and the management now we're adding another layer in there to make sure that um we're not just relying on good faith and contracts but we also have a party a union party a legal representative of the workers to be able to make sure that the working conditions are satisfactory and that you know they can even access other resources that the union organizations will be able to bring to bear and you see some other examples there at the bottom right such as potentially more cost-effective health and retirement plans and a platform for for solidarity so how do unions do i think that most people would not be surprised to understand that unions are an organization that is built upon democracy and democratic practice and having the common interests of members in mind so this is going to be like i'm almost describing a co-op right because it's very similar in a lot of ways membership is active not passive right we expect people to participate um because we want them to have a say we want them to have a voice and not to be feeling left out through participation and then leadership also plays special roles in creating opportunities for participation by setting up organizing committees special events etc those activities are governed initiated democratically by the members interests and needs we just finished having a survey a campus-wide survey here at our at our community college in which we asked questions about the campus climate culture okay not the weather but the atmosphere of the workplace right because we recognize that everybody is not always eager to speak up or or is willing to speak up because there's fear right there's fears of retribution in workplaces and this is one of the step one of the places where we can really ensure through grievance processes and legislation labor law and legal channels that a member will not be improperly fired or let go or acted against if they're speaking up and if they're voicing their interests and their needs yeah there's something called protected concerted activity which union members are given the explicit right to be able to talk about their workplace issues and to be able to talk about the needs that they have etc and then people interact in very similar ways other organizations would through meetings surveys one-on-ones service on an executive committee keeping touch to newsletters word of mouth email lists and reports now this has potentially many levels to it right because you saw earlier how we have a local and then we have a state union and then we have an umbrella union nationally as well and so participation in all of these is of course difficult for any one person so you know one of the parts that leadership plays in your local is coordinating sort of these different participatory levels and engagements um between the members as opportunities i was happy to go to the aft national conference a few years ago when it was held in pittsburgh pennsylvania because it's where i grew up near there and i was able to visit my family but it was really um amazing to see a large organization a large union level organization and how they went through their conference proceedings and their decision making at that high level and so forth and and to recognize right that you're part of a large movement that has member and worker rights at the forefront a little bit more detail on how our structure is set up at our union local here at occ we've got a pretty standard structure but a few details to point out about how this looks overall if you count them here there's uh 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 members of our executive committee i think i left one out because it should be an odd number maybe it's 13. but you've got the elected president and then you've got the elected vice president of three different bargaining units okay so i'm hoping that folks will uh participate and somebody will take a turn here and reading a definition for me i just put it in the chat can i can we have a volunteer maybe by raising your hand or saying me in the chat to read the definition of bargaining unit i can read it for you frank oh no mike mike said it great can you go for it mike oh i raised my hand okay i already did that hi guys um bargain you need unemployed group that on the basis of related skills or common interest in working condition is an appropriate unit for collective bargaining the bargaining unit is a specified group of employees in a union empowered to bargain collectively with their employer thank you mike so we have three bargaining units uh we have the faculty the adjuncts and the professional administrators professional administrators might sound a little bit like a misnomer because we do call the bosses on campus administrators but they have another specific term in in regards to how we refer to them when it comes to union contract and bosses versus workers and that is as management confidential but the professional administrators bargaining unit that i'm a part of is one that entails all of the support staff on campus um it includes the direct one-on-one services that come from different departments uh includes things such as recruiting and counseling and other lifelong learning departments that we may have as well so pretty much all the programming on campus that's not directly classroom teaching and professorships and of course there's also two positions the treasurer and secretary that are elected for the executive committee and they handle just the basic business that you would expect and then below that there's two at-large stewards for each of those bargaining units and so i am one of the at-large stewards for our professional administrators bargaining unit what does that mean that means that i'm somebody who is in the campus community that is representing the union and that is able to help regular members with understanding the contract with finding the right pathways for answers that they need for listening potentially to that folks who reach out about grievances or issues that they're having with their supervisors or with their administrative management confidential folk we sort of act as an intermediary between the union and the members and the leadership of the union so uh in addition to that since we sit on the executive committee we participate in the regular decision making um that gets undertaken at that level as well and so as i mentioned earlier we did the campus climate survey recently that was something that we as the executive committee discussed and decided to do and undertook and now we'll be moving on to the next phase of how do we take that information we garnered and how do we create special resources or opportunities for our members to gain something from that right and and in this regard we want them to gain understanding a better understanding of their rights i see john gave a wink in the chat there about active membership which yeah just like with any organization right you have some folks who are active and and many people who are not active we're undertaking a brand new campaign on our campus this year to try to move that needle a little bit we'll be doing more outreach on campus with some t-shirt giveaways and some coffee mug giveaways we'll be doing a solidarity walk across campus which hasn't been something that has been done recently here but the idea is to allow the uh management confidential and the bosses on campus to just you know recognize that we're still here um we're still doing our work but also for the members right to understand that that we're here and that we're working for them because one of the things that members often um struggle with is you know what exactly do our union do's pay for right what exactly are you doing for us and we'll talk about that in a little bit as well the all right move on to the next one so who joins unions you know this is just kind of a general sense of what people in an organization or in a working work in a workplace might be looking for in regards to you know union support and union participation so they want to make sure that there's some sort of democrat democracy being practiced within the workplace and some ability to engage in collective action i don't know about you but if you've ever been the person who is trying to make a change by themselves it's a struggle and you want the ability to have a collective activity around changes and and efforts and campaigns you want a fair work contract and fair working conditions right you want some sort of a platform to be able to engage in those discussions with the bosses or with the managers of an organization as well i'm going to put another definition here in the chat our next volunteer who would like to read that one for us on collective bargaining well heck i'll volunteer if nobody else does thank you all right collective bargaining a method of determining hours wages and working conditions by direct negotiations between representatives of the employer and union representatives of the employees the results of a bargaining are set forth in a collective bargaining agreement or cba sometimes referred to as a contract which determines terms and conditions of of employment for all workers in a bargaining unit super so i mentioned earlier that we have three different bargaining units in our local however we negotiate and collectively bargain all together because we want the contracts for those three units to be as close to each other and as consistent with each other as possible now it's hard to do right because there's different expectations rights and responsibilities especially for different types of workers in a workplace obvious difference here right faculty usually have summers off professional administrators don't but how could we bring those contracts closer together well some campuses for instance are doing summer hours for professional administrators maybe you've got uh an earlier start time and an earlier end time during the day so you can get out and enjoy the sunshine maybe you've got a slightly longer work day monday through thursday so you can have every other friday off maybe you just got an extra week off during the summer maybe around the midpoint of the summer right there's lots of things that can be worked in but the idea is that when you're collectively bargaining and you're doing so uh you're representing the sort of best intentions for all of your workers on campus and so it makes sense to try to keep those close together as you move forward through negotiations and sort of that rising ship right who else would enjoy being in a union well workers who enjoy camaraderie of their colleagues and do so without fear of retribution it's hard to imagine but it does happen in that if you speak about working conditions on campus or if you speak about things that are not necessarily favored to be publicly known by a boss then there's a lot of fear as to what might happen to you now you're protected of course by that contract and by that due process and that just cause that's included in that contract but that doesn't mean that there aren't other types of retribution sort of you know the social level um the lack of um the lack of promotion you know if selected and so forth that you might set your up that you might set a target on yourself for but if you're doing this together with others then it becomes less of an issue right uh workers who need help dealing with superiors right one of the main things that people look for is that representation and support if they're going into a situation where they're going to have a meeting with a superior that might be disciplinary in action for instance right and you do have the rights to you know in in those situations to have a union representative with you there in that situation i know that we do have that right as a public institution and as a public employees under the winegarden rulings that we can have a union representative with us in those meetings and it's really nice to have that support and also knowledge that somebody who is attending that meeting with you um is uh actively engaged with those superiors on a regular basis maybe has a a better relationship with them maybe understands more of the legal uh ramifications of what you're talking about and probably has a really good hold on the contract in the role that they're playing as well and then workers who want consistency and sustainability in the workplace most people value you know job consistency and a sustainable paycheck over time uh not needing to worry about if you know they're going to lose hours uh unfairly or if they're just going to be let go without just cause so that is something that the contract you know stipifies and people really get a lot of information from in regards to how to deal with that consistency and i see a comment from john there about the nlra protecting workers uh john you want to jump on and just uh mention that sure i mean yeah it's just that the national labor relations act with the wagner act passed in the 30s it protects certain rights to workers whether or not you're represented but trying to actually enforce those rights the power dynamics are really against you as an individual that's all really so you do have the right to gripe about work it's just whether you'll get fired for it or not probably depends if you have other people supporting you yeah absolutely right i mean if you're the you're you're the squeaky wheel uh you might get the grease but you might also just get the uh the junkyard and so having the the collective bargaining agreement and the union representation um can give you the confidence to to be able to speak up and to work towards those better um conditions um and fight against you know the situations that the bosses might be incorrectly acting on in defiance of the contract in the contractual language and that's when uh that's what we would call a grievance um and there's a definition yeah elizabeth's hand was up so if she wants to take on reading our next definition oh okay uh grievances a formal complaint usually lodged by an employee or the union alleging a misinterpretation or improper application of one or more terms in the collective bargaining contract i.e method of dealing with grievances is through a grievance procedure negotiated in the union contract thank you yeah so this is not just going in the grease or the junkyard to treat us on unions so yeah so this is not just going in to talk to your boss and and saying that you're unhappy right this is actually looking at the contract and interpreting the actions of the bosses on that contract and how they may have not held to their responsibilities within that contract and so that's where the collective bargaining contract comes into play and where your union represents representatives uh come into that as solidarity and eventually working through any legal action that might need to be taken so this is probably uh one of the most valuable parts of this slideshow if i do say so why do we pay union dues or why do we have to pay dues i mean it's one of those things that folks who are on the fence of joining the union the local or have decided not to pay in always ask right they're like well what do we have to pay dues for you know what it what are you doing for us and one of the most obvious things and the thing that takes the most money out of our local as a budget is our dues pass through uh to our umbrella union right or to to our higher level unions and for the work that they do so there's always a passage up of a large number of funds um to budget those activities which in return support us as local unions as well so that's probably the largest amount of dollars that come out of our local budget and i looked at my pay stubs uh leading up to today just to see exactly how much it is that i was paying in uh union dues throughout the year and it's about 650 and so you know it's not an insignificant amount but it's also not an amount that is likely to place undue burden on on people as well but there's always that question of an individual's needs and does that balance out their interest in paying for their dues versus not paying for their dues and still getting some protection from the union right i mean the union will still represent them and there are different kinds of shops union shops clothes shops open shops and different types of laws across the country um in different states uh you know right to work laws and so forth that don't require you to pay dues into your local and if that's the case you know it's it's a it's a individual's decision whether or not to do so what else do our dues pay for negotiating contracts so this is a significant amount every five years currently our local negotiates um we're hoping this to shorten that i believe maybe to four every four years and our next contract runs out and our current contract runs out in august 2024 so we'll probably be entering some sort of uh negotiation phase at least research oriented phase to talk about what we want to look for in that next contract one of the things that we did last contract was we integrated as we included integrative bargaining as the type of bargaining model that we wanted to engage with with our bosses we put that definition in and see uh who can read that for us and hands up uh integrative bargaining each party tries to benefit through integrated bargaining which is why it's so often referred to as a form of win-win bargaining each side tries to consider the other's position and bring issues to the table that aim to benefit both parties such as employees and employers both stand to lose and gain an integrated burglary so losing and gaining both sides that's kind of a balance you know a a dance delicate balance that people might be looking to obtain as a part of their their bargaining because everybody can't get everything all at the same time right um the matter in in our case uh is that even when you go to the table with integrative bargaining in mind that still doesn't necessarily mean that each side is acting according to good faith in regards to integrative bargaining i'm by far not an expert on negotiations although i did pick up an old textbook on negotiations from a little free library recently and i'm making my way through it as i do my 30 minutes of stationary exercise bike at home and i'm learning a whole lot about the different types of bargaining and negotiations um and what goes into the thinking behind them so it's something that is important to understand what your strategy is going into your negotiations legal support to enforce contracts also costs money right when you're going through the grievance process and you're trying to come to an understanding with the bosses it can start off you know informally in regards to direct discussions but at some point it may need to go into the legal halls of justice and it costs money for us to be able to pay legal staff for that there's release time payments for executive committee members in our case our president and our vice presidents us all get release time payments which essentially allows them to receive payment for some of their time and to do that outside of their regular campus responsibilities and so they can pull time out of their regular work and replace that with union work and still get paid for it because we provide those release time payments it's not a lot that's why there's only one dollar sign there you know it's a minimum but it's something and it really enables uh union executive uh committee members to be able to commit time to the work that needs to be done uh there's some fun stuff right like professional collegial development we've got a year-end party celebrating retirees every year there's a holiday social event every year there's conferences that you can go to and certifications and trainings that you can undertake all those things of course cost money again not a whole lot in the total budget um but there are important things um to keep the union um acting in in in terms of you know solidarity with each other advocates advocacy money so right buttons t-shirts traditional media social media however you're getting your message out and that's related to technical infrastructure such as the website printing insurance and bank fees everything that costs to keep an organization flowing direct assistance will oftentimes give donations to injured or sick members or to the campus food bank as examples oops there we go so uh the idea that there's lots of things to spend money on shouldn't surprise anyone but a lot of that work if you're not active in the union sort of takes place behind you know uh behind doors that you're not aware of so i think one of the things that we really need to work harder at is communications and transparency between the leadership uh in the union and the membership as well and i think that in any organization that you're in i think we would all agree that those are good goals um just a couple other uh mentions here so we've talked about some of the ways that we're able to act in accordance to the needs of the members and to do so in a way that is legally granted and permitted and you can look some of these things up on your own at a later time if you want to get more information about them i mentioned the the weingarten ruling the second bullet there as a public employee at unionized workplace the right to union representation i mentioned briefly the right to work laws that are currently in 28 states if i had the most up-to-date information which prohibits a union shop clause that requires employees to join the union and then most recently the supreme court decision janus states and public sector unions may not may no longer extract agency fees from non-consenting employees and so that was a big issue with us um a couple years back because uh you know we had to make sure that people were opting in um to to pay their union dues and we did lose some membership during that frank we have a request to see the last slide again let me go backwards right there that's what you wanted to see shelly yes thank you i'll just leave that up for for another minute i know that uh as i was coming into the office today i was listening to a podcast and they were talking about the numbers of uh people in favor of unions according to a most recent gallup poll that they had online and this is um freakonomics radio if you're interested in hearing that and even though uh according to what was reported on that blog we're down to about 10 of of folks in union membership right now compared to you know the highs back in the early mid century the number of people who actually are favorable toward unions is actually very high 70 plus percent for democrats who were polled and 40 plus uh for republicans that were polled so that's a good sign and all the activity that we're seeing in regards to uh union organizing and votes that are taking place is a great sign as well puts a smile on the face but also means that there's a lot of work still waiting to be done this is my contact information uh i'd love to hear from you if you have any other specific interests in you know as well so and we're just about to get to q a so hopefully he'll be back in a moment maybe i'll drop something in the chat are you there hopefully he'll be able to hop back on i see him all right i'm readmitting him frank are you back with us we missed you hi frank can you hear us so sorry about that our whole building power just flicked off and the whole building so computers went down all right uh well it seemed like we were about to get into q a is that uh is that your take on things as well frank yeah i'd love to hear any questions folks might have um so there were a couple that came up there's been actually a lot of great uh just chat uh conversation happening in the chat and some really great resources that have been shared um so i encourage folks to scroll through um and see sort of just what everyone is collectively bringing into this meeting um and i will try to pull the resources from the chat and share them out with folks afterward as well um but earlier frank we had a question come from mike um i believe it was a slide from from quite a bit earlier which i'm not sure you will be able to go back to on your phone but um said co-op members form a union committee and only those in the union committee paying dues are getting wrapped by the union um and later folks were saying that you know other folks all workers benefit so i was just wondering if you could elaborate on that a little bit frank yeah and so in our case um that's how it works as well and you are not necessarily or you're not prevented from having your representation because you don't um pay uh your dues right um and you know you can call us folks freeloaders or whatever it might be the case that's why we have to work to educate and and and get people involved in the union right because it's not automatic it's not required and there has to be a reason for them to do so and one of the things that i always talk about right is is that last slide that i that i went down you know what do we spend our money on and what do we do um as a union um because you know we want you to join us because you you want to actively be a part of us you know yeah actually my question is about like so there is a co-op and it sounds seems like from your graphic it seems like when we part of the co-op forming a union committee and my question was like how big is that um union committee and so is it more like like is it like like more than fifty percent of coin members are getting into the union committee or like how how what's the proportion for that i think it depends a lot on the size of the co-op and the number of workers that there are on worker owners that there are um certainly 50 seems like it would be a lot if it was a larger scale you know it could be uh you know in in our in our case here at the at the college you know we have a 13-member executive committee board but we have you know 400 plus members um representing so i think it depends a lot on the scale of the of the co-op good thank you we had a question come in from john that said that asks uh which group makes what decisions in the union president steward's members is this similar to co-ops gm board members how is the voice of the different bargaining units in your union balanced yeah very good it is similar in a lot of ways um our voices are we try to balance our voices by having as much participation from the membership in each of those from each of those units as we can as you might imagine it's a challenge when it comes to the adjunct unit because adjuncts are in and out and spend less time on campus and are less you know committed to to the campus and to the community as as as a whole um so it's it's a challenge and we need to make sure that our leadership is of the mindset right of the common good the executive committee functions um in the same way that a board or a workers committee would and that we do make you know many of the decisions um that would that take place and we are of course elected to those positions by the full membership uh of of the union as well the contractual negotiations that take place also have to be ratified by the full membership um at the f as a final step the process though that which you went through the negotiation process can vary a lot and um honestly i'll say that i wasn't very happy with our last negotiations because a small negotiating committee sort of was in control of all of the steps of the negotiation and didn't sort of bring that back to the full membership until the very end when contract voting was was needed to take place to ratify it so i'm hoping we can make that change uh this next time around and have more iteration back and forth between the negotiation committee and the full membership we just had a question come in from kim asking what worker co-op size do you advise needs a union boy i don't know the answer to that i know the answer all worker cooperatives need to acknowledge that they are part of the labor movement and participate in the labor movement by becoming union members and by the way going up through the leadership of unions to represent worker cooperatives in the labor movement get your get into the union that's that sounds like a great that sounds like a great answer to me yeah absolutely probably by the time you know if you wait around until you wonder if you need to have a union or if you need union membership it will probably be too late because things will have already started to go south or you won't have that that connection that you need so yeah go for it right well and you know acknowledge ideologically that you are part of the labor movement start to understand how the labor movement works participate in the lobbying that your union does that you know combine your power with the power of the labor movement to get you know more power for uh for workers you know participate be part of the greater whole yeah i think there's a there's a group and a concept in in union organizing that's called bargaining for the common good right and that's where you know you're not just bargaining for yourself as workers you're bargaining for your community you're bargaining for the people in your community right and so those are that's a sort of the the mind frame that you want to be going into this as well as co-ops uh you know you're bargaining for workers everywhere um you're you know you're involved for workers everywhere not just in your co-op growing worker power that's what we do that's what unions do that's what worker cooperatives do just understand you're both part of the same thing i love it i have a related question with startups you know you got a small business that's not even fully fully profitable yet um but has interest in unionizing because they they're they were formerly with union employers in a startup process when do you think would be a good time for them to yeah unionize i guess and or how would that look if you had any recommendations well i mean i i think it would be similar to the last question and answer that we had right and they should probably start looking at it early on now um and and then the other thing that i mentioned right was the scale of it and and so one of the things that you're going to get probably better answers on this type of question um is from you know one of the future webinars in this series where we actually go into some case studies um and some true life examples of that union co-op relationship that are that are active or actively moving forward right now i wish i could answer that for you but i i welcome you to come back to future sessions sounds good thanks and i have a question in the chat and then i'll get to the folks who are raising their hands unless elizabeth you were responding to that last question and wanted to jump in uh so we had a question come in from margaret asking in your opinion what are the major differences between worker cooperatives and unions um the major difference well i would say that in in the case of that graphic that i showed early on as to how the structure of people within a unionized co-op can be is that you know the union is is very specifically looking at the maintaining the workers rights and one of the things that we've got to consider is that you know a co-op um represents not just the workers who are part of it but also other interests sometimes right there could be investor classes of shares there could be multi-stakeholders in which the board of directors is made up of representatives from different classes of shareholders and owners and so we want to ensure you know that the the union um is there to be focused on on those workers rights um as the as the baseline for everything and then whenever we talk about uh union representation and those different levels of membership as we go up to you know national membership and national organizations um that are working for our organization you know they're engaging in and working towards um legislative changes and and laws that can can assist um you know co-ops are growing uh in in size and are growing in scale and and ability to have those long-reaching relationships as well right through regional organizations and national apex organizations and so forth there's not as many co-op members yet uh but hopefully there will be someday and they can sort of balance uh you know stand side by side with the the union power that's out there as well i just wanted to add to that that you know unions are a form of cooperative so you know what is the definition of a cooperative cooperative this group of people that pull their resources to create benefits for their members that's exactly what a union is okay so really cooperatives are part of the cooperative unions are part of the cooperative movement uh and worker cooperative specifically not most other cooperatives but worker cooperative specifically are the realization of the goals all the objectives of the labor movement because because they return the means of production to the worker they return the control of their economic life to the worker so these are you know things which seem to have lost sight of the fact that they are really the part of the same movement okay the unions with democratic principles yet exactly one worker one vote uh was that yeah the comment or question you had for your hand up elizabeth yeah yeah um i saw quinn and then mike on stack so quinn if you want to unmute you muted thank you um all right thank you everyone for this event today this morning um my question is kind of like zooming out on like a larger like movement scale maybe um i know like uh the labor movement has this and unions have this like long history of partnering with many other movements and you know being part of this fabric of movement of movements and um co-ops have this too but i think maybe the labor union has maybe a bigger way or you know the union his uh union realm sorry i'm stumbling over my words here um what i'm getting at is um what opportunities for partnerships and for like weaving this new movement of movements do you see um that maybe cooperatives and uh unions combined can [Music] get to more effectively thank you thank you well i know a number of people on this call um are doing great work in that regard as part of you know union co-op coalitions um working together uh to you know um develop these ideas and and these uh or these relationships as well um you know back back historically right as if we talk about how these partnerships uh came to be oftentimes the the unions were encouraging co-ops not just for the workers i believe to own uh you know the means of production but also to um you know get the resources that they needed right through purchasing cooperatives and so forth right um and so i think unions uh unions should be recognizing also that cooperatives are an important part of uh you know that the democratic governance and democratic workplaces that we want to see and that you know we could have unions uh supporting local cooperatives as well you'll always see you know by union right if you're a union member you're always encouraged to buy union well what if there's not a union option well how about then buy co-op right for for union members to recognize that that is an option for them too that fits within the same same sensibilities i was more getting at like how can we um support by working together how can we support like maybe immigration movements for example student movements um how can we bring the idea of cooperation and you know the spirit behind unionization into churches into homes into schools how can i see with cooperatives they're so rooted in a community in a way that has maybe more diversity than the reach of labor and i'm sorry i'm wondering like how can we bring this ethic into like new spaces we're not into new spaces but partner in new stronger webs yeah i mean that that is a huge question right and and i think that uh everybody's gonna have a probably a little bit different answer to that depending on where you're at and where you're from and who you have in your community right how to take this on being actively involved with your local cooperative community right being a member in your local food co-op recognizing uh the worker co-ops that may exist uh supporting uh conversions of those of those worker co-ops and growing the community right growing uh the network and the same thing with uh with unions you know is there a strike happening go out and walk with them you know in solidarity i think that all of us are just in this process of expanding the public consciousness um of of unions and co-ops in a lot of sense as well expanding the public consciousness of co-ops here in the united states um you know as as far as unions go um i think it's you know trying to flip the negative connotations that that are associated with unions so that they become more favorable uh once again in in the united states and um yeah you being the actor right when you come to uh an organization that you want to get involved you know in these concepts you know bring it to them it's going to take each of us to do that and hopefully you'll be able to find support from you know our you know larger scale organizing that that's taking place um from you know groups like the united states federation work co-ops cooperation works developers the cooperative development centers throughout uh the country um and and on and on right there's also work related to um how to bring the sensibilities of co-ops and the idea of co-ops in regards to economic development uh to your local municipalities for instance right um and so there's lots of channels and lots of pathways um they could potentially take with this and so i would say look at yourself and where your relationships are um and then you know maybe identify the one that you want to try more for in in regards to creating that uh that that sensibility and and that consciousness and then talk with folks who have resources to bring to it but there's organizing being done at the local level regional state national and international level um so it kind of depends a lot on where you sit and and you know where you are interested in going thanks for that big question um we will go to mike hey so i um i have trouble like conceptualizing how the collective bargaining can be done for worker co-op so for like non-worker co-op so just like ordinary company union lab will go to the the non co-op company and do the collective bargaining with the employer for the employee who is the member of union but in case of worker co-op so union rep will meet the worker owner and do the bargaining with worker owner who is already kind of have some consensus with the other worker owners so yeah yeah i think this is one of the questions that you know we're trying to bring some light to with this webinar series is to understand how these relationships fit together and and how they work in the long term right i mean if you've got worker owners who are part of the management structure in an organization i would argue that you know they as much as any of us um have sort of some ingrained uh challenges uh you know having been raised in a capitalist society in which we have to be uh reminded and held to truth when it comes to the needs of the workers in the organization as opposed to the needs of the organization as a whole um and again depending on the type of co-op the the the intricacies of the bylaws and and how it's organized and set up i think that there's a really important place um for somebody to be at the table right who is a part of the whole that is also keeping the importance and interests of that singular component of the workers rights and the workers uh you know workplace needs um at the forefront of negotiations right as well as everything else that might be related to it from the perspective of the consumer um or the customer or or the organization as a whole because you know an organization as a whole if it's a worker co-op has to make those economic and financial decisions as well and we want to make sure though that you know the workers are getting paid uh a wage uh that's appropriate in in the long term so it's a complicated question and you know thankfully we're seeing more and more case studies and examples of of this being brought to the forefront that we're gonna that we're learning from thank you uh and then i think our last question or comment for this webinar will be elizabeth um okay well so on the notion of case studies the union co-op council of the u.s federation of worker cooperatives of which i am a co-founder uh is doing has a whole task force on creating those case studies uh and we'll be producing them over the next few years you know because we've identified 30 or 40 um union worker cooperatives past and present including a los angeles cooperative bakery was created in 1930s by the baker's local number 37 here in los angeles i mean so some fairly older studies and how they came about out of a bagel bakery strike that kind of thing as well as current uh you know working cooperatives that are uh unionized but the comment i really want to make was that um the uh one of the roles of worker cooperatives in the labor movement because we have to see ourselves as we are part of the labor movement and what is our role in the labor movement his nlrb law was created you know in the 30s and in the 30s the way that nlib law is written in lra law uh is written is written for a way that work was organized you know back in the 30s which is you know everybody had full-time jobs and you know unions helped them get uh you know some securities things like pensions and health care you know got brought into those contexts of those full-time jobs since that time corporate lawyers by the way corporations can pay full time all the time every day to try to undermine these uh safeguards for workers have changed the landscape of work so that now we have temporary part-time seasonal a contract labor all these things are ways that corporations try to get around the traditional model of work right which is the full-time representations unions are constrained in various ways they buy those definitions that were created way back in the 30s now so you know unions have been eroded because of this constant pressure by corporate lawyers to get around nlrb law in the way that work is defined worker cooperatives give us an opportunity to organize the unorganized ebola um you're right now you know so things where it works you know work work is being redefined by corporations so that it no longer fits under nlp law worker cooperatives provide a way to organize those workers so and then also join their unions so that we can still pursue that uh that the the ultimate pursuit of unions which is to create greater worker power okay greater worker power to create laws like you know child labor laws to create laws like health safety laws to create laws like you know all the you know the whole array of labor laws that we have that help protect our health and safety of our communities our children ourselves all those things so do not be shy [Laughter] and your workers seek to become leadership within unions by the way i don't know if anybody's ever thought about that but once you get into the union you can seek office and become a leader within your union super yeah and and i think it's a it's a great um again mention of the valuable information that's going to come from the the rest of the series uh what rest of this webinar series i'm talking in a lot more detail about some of the specifics and the case studies and examples um that that we're learning from and and sharing with each other i'd like to add you know a pitch for the union council because anybody here can join not only are we doing case studies so if you're academically inclined and want to help write case studies please join our case study task force but we also have um the other committee our other task force which is the local labor outreach task force where we are going to the local uh you know the county feds all around the country afl-cio county feds which is where all the unions within one area meet so in los angeles where i'm from we've done a presentation to our local county fed which is 350 unions in la county okay one is the second largest county fed in the country so afl-cio county federation of labor where all the labor unions in the area come together we've done presentations on worker cooperatives and we're offering workshops to labor leaders and labor staff and labor activists to um to about worker cooperative so they know how to how to perceive worker cooperatives and worker cooperatives approach them as well because the ignorance is on both sides both the worker cooperative community and on the labor committee both have lost sight of their intimate a relationship but bust out of those styles yes yes let's get busy on worker power all right well thank you so much for that insight sounds uh yeah maybe we should have you on one of the webinars elizabeth um i i appreciate you sharing your your experience and your expertise uh and hopefully folks will uh follow up and go check out the union co-op council i know there are some other folks on this call who are also involved with that um so that's yeah they're a great resource to check out and obviously they're doing some really fantastic work um so we are just about out of time and i i just want to make sure folks know about some of the upcoming webinars and i i want to thank the various folks who made this call happen um so just so folks can put these on their calendar some of the other uh webinars in this series include a union co-op model co-op cincy at 10 years we're going to offer that on monday april 11th at 11 a.m pacific time uh then we have convergence to worker co-ops in the union setting a toolkit and that's with rebecca laurie that's going to be friday april 22nd also at 11 a.m pacific and then we have a multi-stakeholder co-op with a worker membership class and that's looking specifically at gem city food co-op in dayton ohio and we'll have a mahasalasi uh and the date is tbd but it should be again within the next month or so so keep an eye out um and i will certainly send reminders and if you signed up to get notifications you'll see something landing in your inbox soon um and i really just want to thank frank for giving such an informative in-depth presentation uh it's really great to have you as part of the cooperation works network and i'm just so thankful that you're you're bringing your experiences and expertise to uh this series uh i also want to thank margaret bau who has uh been the person who really quickly pulled this series together she's an amazing connector uh and has been really great uh in are getting our webinars together for the last few years actually uh and i also want to thank the interpreters cooperative of madison uh for stepping up again fairly last minute to offer interpretation today uh and we'll hopefully be bringing them back on for the rest of the series as well so if you know anyone who uh would make use of the spanish interpretation make sure you recommend the series to them if you know they'd be interested all right i look forward to seeing you all in the future thank you so much for joining today keep an eye out for more webinars from cooperation works thank you all