Does anyone have knowledge and or experience with forming a union in the US? After doing some mild research I failed to find a union that represents telework / work from home employees, specifically those who are facing return to office mandates from their corporate overlords.
In my light research I noticed what you said how unions are industry specific but also didn’t see any rules that it had to be. In the wake of covid and the great work from home experiment I think the new working world needs a new type of union to represent all of us who experienced first hand how much better wfh is for life balance and are equally upset about that rug being pulled out from under us because some executives say so.
I think the reason unions tend to be industry-specific is because the execs for a certain industry tend either to collude or snipe at eachother depending on the situation. So if an entire industry goes on strike it means that one company can’t capitalize on the opportunity of another company going on strike. In theory, if the widget-maker’s union goes on strike, it means the entire supply chain of things made with widgets gets choked, which exerts a lot of financial pressure on management.
This is a really good point, with WFH workers being diffused among the workforce, having just your work-from-home employees on strike might not actually put enough of a dent in your operations for you to care, as an executive.
But on the other hand being part of that single digit percentage of wfh employees might put you in a disadvantage in every company, union and policy.
Funny, just like being of any other minority.
I agree, it’s just going to be tricky, and asking a lot of union representatives to represent different types of work with different needs.