By: Maria Williams
With unions being more active and the amount of media attention around recent union campaigns, educating your workforce about the potential impact and commitment of signing a union authorization card before they are approached has become paramount. Sticking your head in the sand or ignoring the current labor environment makes you much more vulnerable than addressing the situation head-on with your workforce. The comparatively small amount of money and time spent in this process will pay dividends in the long term. Former union organizer and union officer Rian Wathen understands the complexity of the union story and believes in the power and necessity of educating employees about the realities of unions – and what signing a union card can potentially mean.
As a staff member with the United Food and Commercial Workers Union, Wathen spent 15 years knocking on workers’ doors recruiting for the union, eventually becoming the third-highest officer in a statewide local. His experiences of seeing workers being misled about union organizing and then witnessing their disappointment with the final results created a shift in his attitude on the potential benefits of unionization. This led Wathen to found The Labor Educators, a proactive consulting firm that provides employees with informational sessions that teach them the process and realities of union organizing both prior to an election petition and during the campaign after a petition is filed.
As CEO of The Labor Educators, Wathen and his staff are committed to helping employers stay ahead by educating their workers on union topics before representatives show up, asking them to put pen to paper. They have created a more modern positive model by refusing to be identified as “union busters.” Instead, The Labor Educators create a fun and interactive environment, using a different approach to union education that avoids aggressive or confrontational methods of the past while still providing factual information. Their education programs focus on the National Labor Relations Act and the realities of what is possible under the law, as well as objective information on the union’s actual track record of fulfilling promises.
Unfortunately, the realities of union organization campaigns aren’t always clear to a worker who believes they will get instant results. Wathen explains that, unfortunately, the law permits unions to intentionally mislead workers when trying to convince them to sign union authorization cards, promising to deliver benefits that unions can’t fully deliver. Wathen explains from his experiences as a union organizer, “I know that employees who haven’t been taught about the facts first are much more vulnerable to manipulation by a savvy union salesman. Conversely, if those same workers have had prior proactive education, they are much less likely to sign on the dotted line”. To tackle this issue, Wathen and The Labor Educators strive to eliminate confusion and misinformation by providing the whole union story.
The real-world consequences of workers signing union cards in an information vacuum have become much more serious since the process was altered recently. Wathen expresses his concern that this makes companies more vulnerable regarding unionization, as it allows unions to represent employees solely based on their signatures on a union authorization card without the company ever having the chance to counter the union propaganda in the period before a vote. Clearly, this makes educating workers about the consequence of unknowingly signing a legally binding union card a critical part of any organization’s ongoing risk management strategy.
CEO Rian Wathen and The Labor Educators believe all workers have the right to know the truth and regularly provide preventative education to combat false information from union organizers, in addition to also doing training modules for executive leadership and front-line supervisors on all labor-related topics and the consequences of unionization.
Disclaimer: The content in this article presents the subject’s opinion and insights and is provided for general knowledge. It does not constitute legal advice, and readers should seek advice from qualified legal professionals regarding particular cases or situations.
Published by: Martin De Juan
