Most communities have trade unions I could contact if I worked in a trade. But what if I’m an office worker? A chef? An IT person? How do I find a union job?
You should be able to find a list of registered Labour Organizations via your relevant governing body. For example.
After that it is research into Unions that sound like they’d be in the field you’re interested in.
I’m not aware of any simple way to do this.
Look at your local government jobs, they post their union information and often have large portions of their workforce grouped into unions (at least in California).
Pst.
You could always find a job and then lead an effort to unionize!
Maybe try the SEIU?
Join the union and look at their job board.
Another vote for looking at Civil Service jobs.
Not sure if this is the case in other countries, but universities here in Canada tend to employ unionozed workers and have a huge variety in positions. I’m a unionized groundskeeper and its an infinitely better gig than any other landscaping work I’ve done.
When searching for a union job, be mindful that many employers are anti-union and unions vary in their efficacy. Try to avoid unions that have already been castrated by bad deals, or ones that constantly have to strike for basic concessions.
When you succeed at getting a union job, I highly recommend showing up at meetings and considering a leadership role if you have the chops. A union is only as strong as its active members.
IWW – One Big Union
I don’t know how true this is across the board, but I’m an office worker for a power company and a lot of the people in my department are union because we work with the stuff around what the electricians and gas guys do. So maybe it’s worth looking into jobs that support the trades to see if the workers around such are unionized as well?
For what it’s worth, and more specificity, I do GIS mapping for electric and gas utilities in the area my company covers.
I would add one caveat to that: Not all staff/admin positions at unionized manufacturing plants are part of the Union. Was an office worker at a metals plant and all managers and office folk there were expressly forbidden from joining the union (not sure of the legality tbh). Managers I sort of get because the Union leader thought they would have undue influence on members’ decisions.
Managers never belong in the union, for a variety of reasons. Primarily because they don’t need the protections that unions provide as much; historically they’ve been the ones causing the problems the unions were formed to fight.
Non-manager office workers is probably up to each local. They also don’t usually need the protections, but there are some unions for them even if they can’t join the trades union.
