IWW and syndicalism

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Costco gets a nasty Christmas present and ends the year terribly (workers victory) (lemmy.ml)

submitted 9 months ago by SineNomineAnonymous@lemmy.ml to c/iwwunion@lemmy.ml

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Costco workers in Norfolk have unionised and Costco are seething.

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[–] loopgru@slrpnk.net 65 points 9 months ago (5 children)

Echoing others, Costco is a solid employer and I actually believe their sentiment.

HOWEVER

The difference between union and non-union is the difference between asking your employer pretty please to treat you well and telling your employer how you will accept being treated.

Even if the union yields no improvements whatsoever for the workers, it's worth it just to have that express and clear leveling of the playing field.

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 9 points 9 months ago (4 children)

Hey, serious question here, I own a small business with 8 employees. All profits for the business go back to employee bonuses / incentives. I pay myself $1/year and $0 in profit distributions. We cover medical benefits.

It seems like the sentiment amongst Lemmy is to unionize the employees, which I'm fine with, but am I allowed to pay their union dues?

My only qualm is it means less profit sharing for them, but if it improves morale to have that representation, I'm all for it. Ultimately, it is what they want.

I'm union dumb. I want to do right by the employees. But I also don't want to get screwed to their detriment (e.g. Personnel Concepts, fuck that company).

In before anyone asks, I work contract gigs in a completely separate industry to pay my own bills. I own this business to create jobs and be part of the community.

[–] loopgru@slrpnk.net 7 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I think it gets murky quickly if you pay their dues as the employer- if you're funding the union there's a pretty clear conflict of interest. To me the clearest way to address this would be to offer a stipend without earmarking it so they can fund the union (or not) at their own discretion.

Another option would be to just formalize it as an ESOP, thereby erasing the distinction between employee and employer and effectively obviating the need for a union in the first place.

[–] AlecSadler@sh.itjust.works 2 points 9 months ago

Good idea on the ESOP! Will talk to my accountant about this.

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