The increased flexibility to work remotely has been liberating in many ways for workers however it also poses challenges when it comes to organizing.

I’ve found that the primary means of communication between remote workers is owned by the company, for example slack and teams. This leads to a reluctance to discuss unionization due to the perceived threat of the company eavesdropping and taking action against them.

There are also less opportunities for the kinds of informal conversations that lead to solidarity and organizing that would usually happen over lunch or after work at the bar or pub.

What challenges have you faced in organising remote workers and what solutions have you found?

  • corsicanguppy@lemmy.caEnglish
    6·
    8 hours ago

    My union uses our personal email addresses for broadcast info, and won the right to use the employer’s video comms for meetings.

    My day job is unionized 100%-remote IT in the unionized arm of a cruel global company, contracting to an organization so massive that it used to have the largest single-owner intranet in the world (so it’s not a mom-and-pop).

    Other Work from Home-Office points:

    • generally not a ‘work from starbucks’ gig, as we do some ‘private possum’ stuff, but there’s occasional flexibilty to request working from grandma’s spare room - or a campsite with a gennie and a starlink! - and it was successful.
    • our worksite must be approved by regional work standards, so it’s usually an office and a desk and not a couch or counter.
    • we’ve ‘won’ the right to not be on camera - I’ve seen my boss twice in 3 years and not seen the rest.
    • days-off and evenings are generally sacred, but if we hear of disasters we anticipate a call.
    • work-weeks are 35- or 40 hours, on the employee’s choice, with the choice for a ‘9x9’ (or 9x8) schedule for an extra day of rest with no pay loss
    • pay is 1% higher than (union) people working for the place we’re contracted to but union’s always a little less than dot-coms.
    • we do have a damoclean-sword ‘RTO’ clause, but they have to call us all back, they have no desks anymore, and they know we’ll strike over constructive dismissal

    It’s generally a great job where people don’t bail - openings are created generally through retirement - and my peers have all worked there 20+ years; if they’re not filling vacancies from advancement or retirees.

    • lemdeggity@lemmy.dbzer0.comOPEnglish
      2·
      8 hours ago

      Thanks for sharing your experience. Interesting that you use company infrastructure for meetings. I guess it’s assumed that somebody will feed info back to the company regardless of platform anyway.

      Do you know how the initial bargaining unit was formed and recognised?