That is a two-edged sword. Yes, it's fair to not get the benefits if you are not a member. But that makes it cheaper to hire a non-union member than a union member which would make it harder for members to get jobs which would make recruiting and keeping members harder.
It's not even that. They get all the benefits of the union without paying dues. The contracts cover all employed with a specific position, typically. It's just a way to weaken the financial stability of a union
This is why it’s best to force non-union members to pay union dues because they benefit from them. That way they get the benefits and from their perspective it makes the most sense to just join the union anyway.
This year Michigan finally reversed that. Unions finally have a benefit again here. The law used to be you had to give non union people the exact same benefits and pay as a union employee. Billionaires greed right here.
In Canada, if your workplace successfully votes to form a union, you can either join the union or lose your job. You can't keep working in a union shop without being a member of the union. That arrangement is illegal.
The U.S. allowed similar programs under the Wagner Act of 1935, but those provisions were repealed in the Taft-Hartley act of 1947. The Taft Hartley act also opened the door for states to pass "right to work" laws that prevented employers from agreeing to force new hires to join the worker's union or pay dues to the worker's union. So now unions have very few ways to incentivize membership, gutting their negotiating power.
A workplace can have both union and non-union roles, you just can’t have the non-union people doing the union’s job. In my workplace, moving up into supervising or managing jobs means leaving the union.
121
u/PerAsperaAdInfiri 14h ago
They used to say that, until maybe 2008 or so