this post was submitted on 27 Apr 2026
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I once was on a tour of a non union maintenance shop, in an area where most similar shops were union. One of the people on the tour asked the manager about this.
His answer- 'Every shop around here that's gone union, has deserved it. I pay my guys above average, I don't flip out when they take time off, and we have decent health insurance. My workers are happy- when the union comes calling it's the workers who tell them to get lost.'
If WotC is going union, they probably deserve it.
If someone says you don't need a lawyer or a union you probably need one
You should always have a union anyway. Its made to protect you from abuse before it happens
The problem is it's not just 'form a union'. In most cases unionizing means joining a much larger union that covers many hundreds of companies. And it will mean that all questions of compensation or discipline then have to go through a union contract. It means more paperwork and less flexibility.
If there is trust between workers and management, then workers often don't see much benefit to going through all this. And that's why the guy said every shop that went Union deserved it, because those shots all tried to save money by screwing their employees and so the employees fought back and unionized which ended up costing the company more than if they had just paid the workers correctly in the first place.
Why not unionize anyway? Are unions on a factory level over there?
In most cases here unions are fairly large organizations where the larger union covers dozens or hundreds of companies. So it wouldn't be like 'Bob's maintenance shop union' it would be like 'international brotherhood of machinists union chapter #1234'.
And when that is done, the relationship between the workers and the company changes. The union will negotiate a specific contract with the company which all workers and all jobs then are covered under. This provides a lot stronger protections for the workers, but can also be less flexible in some cases. And of course the worker has to pay dues to the union, it's usually not that much but it's not zero.
Point is, if the workers are happy and have good relations with management then they often see no reason to go through all this.
On the other hand when management starts turning the screws and tries to make more profit out of the worker compensation, then it's absolutely time to unionize and workers are even more seeing that.
I don't really see the point to be fair. It's unlikely a union will force workers of a factory to modify the contractual situation if they're happy. However workers who are being well treated can push for better conditions for people working in other companies.
There should could be a subscription payment, where I'm form it is something quite negligible to the salary of one worker. If it is well administered, that money can be used to pay workers if they ever decide to go on strike.
When the company starts screwing workers, it is already quite late to be in a union, at that point you don't have a support net which has already been prepared. In general it's better to be in a union before you need it than to scramble for one.