Unions, however, are not just focusing on current members. More importantly for all employers, potential members also have unions' full attention. Indeed, earlier this summer, and hitting way too close to home, production employees at Great Lakes Brewing Company, Ohio's oldest and largest craft brewery, signed union cards to be represented by the United Steelworkers.
According to Richard Berman, the founder of the Center for Union Facts, this union activity is part of a much larger nationwide trend:
- This is the first time since the early 1980s where there has been significant interest by employees in "collective action" and "3rd party representation".
- Employees who feel they will be exposed to co-workers or customers who have the virus are communicating on Facebook and other platforms about their jointly held concerns. Union organizers have access to these conversations and are making themselves available to help.
- Most current HR professionals have no history in dealing with a partial workforce rebellion. This will most likely happen in individual companies, or it could be a wider industry movement in a city or region.
The best defense to a labor union is a good offense. To this end I recommend that breweries adopt the T.E.A.M. approach to union avoidance:
Train supervisors
Educate employees
Affirm the open door
Modernize policies
1/ Train supervisors. If a union is organizing, supervisors are likely to be the first people to know. They will also be the people that rank-and-file employees will come to with questions or concerns. Thus, supervisors need to know how to report, monitor, and legally respond to union activity.
2/ Educate employees. Employees should not be told that the company is anti-union, but why it is anti-union – competitive wages and benefits; a strong commitment to worker safety and health; positive communication between management and employees; a history of peaceful employee/management relations; management's openness to listen to employees and handle their concerns without an intermediary; and an unwillingness to permit a third-party to tell the company and employees how to do their jobs. Of course, if this is just lip service, you might as well not say it at all.
3/ Affirm the open door. Management should routinely gather its employees to learn what is happening within the rank-and-file and what they are thinking about. Management should walk the floor daily. It should also hold regular meetings with employees, whether in small sessions with HR or large town hall-style meetings. And management's door should always be open to listening to employees' concerns, offer feedback, and adopt positive change when feasible and practical.
4/ Modernize policies. In an ideal world, employee handbooks and other corporate policies should be reviewed and updated annually. I've yet to come across a company that does this so frequently. Issues to consider and review: Do you have a written statement on unionization? An open-door policy? An issue resolution procedure? Peer review? An employee bulletin board? An electronic communications policy? Most importantly, do you have a no-solicitation policy? It is the single most important policy to help fight labor unions.
No union avoidance program is foolproof. No matter what steps are taken and no matter the quality of employee relations, every company is at some risk for a union organizing campaign. Some, however, are more at risk than others, and it appears that, currently, unions are targeting the craft beer industry. All businesses should strive to be an employer of choice for employees and not an employer of opportunity for labor unions. The steps you take before the representation petition arrives will help determine whether you remain a non-union employer after the fact. If you wait to do anything, however, until after the petition arrives, it's almost certainly too late.