citizen of industry
24th August 2011, 02:32
Some advice please on whether or not to join a second union. A little background:
We started organizing at my company in 2007. The now chairman plucked a union leaflet out of a trashcan, joined and started the branch. The company has refused to negotiate. We are foreign workers and they have us under a "independent contractor" scheme to avoid paying any benefits. We filed an unfair labor practice, they appealed the local labor commission ruling to the central labor commission, lost, appealed to the Tokyo district court, lost, are appealing again. They also sued the union for libel over an article, that's in progress but they will lose. There's a couple other unfair labor practices we filed pending, and we applied with the labor office for unemployment insurance and health and pension, those are under investigation and could go either way. The branch is pretty much emaciated. We only had about 20 members to begin with, but with high turnover, union busting and the fact that the struggle has been going on for 4 years with no concrete wins, we are down to only a few hardcore members who refuse to give up. The union itself is representative democracy, a touch on the conservative side but not too bad. The big problem for me - they are headquartered on the other end of the country. We do meetings via skype most of the time. I can't really participate in union activities aside from local branch activities. We are the only branch on this end of the country.
The union is part of a federation. The foreign workers caucus of another union in this area split off and formed a seperate union a couple years ago. It's a fighting union, there are many anarcho-syndicalist types in there, I have a close friend who is a member, it's direct democracy and located much closer to home. I'd like to join this union, but I can't fault my own union's handling of our case, and we're still in the middle of the struggle. But there's not much we can do in terms of direct action with so few members. It's turned into a waiting game with the courts.
There's no way I'm going to leave my union until a decision is reached, win or lose. I've put too much work into this. But I'm considering joining the other union as well just for fun. They are local and hold a lot of events. There was a Cindy Sheehan event a week or so ago I went to. There is friction between the two unions, because my union is still part of the federation and the other union split from it. I've been told not to work with them.
I would have joined a long time ago, but think it's kind of strange to be in a union that doesn't represent my workplace. I wish I could go back in time to 2007 and replace the trashcan leaflet with one from the other union so we wouldn't have had this logistical problem. It's rather isolating and we are half burned-out and just holding on.
We started organizing at my company in 2007. The now chairman plucked a union leaflet out of a trashcan, joined and started the branch. The company has refused to negotiate. We are foreign workers and they have us under a "independent contractor" scheme to avoid paying any benefits. We filed an unfair labor practice, they appealed the local labor commission ruling to the central labor commission, lost, appealed to the Tokyo district court, lost, are appealing again. They also sued the union for libel over an article, that's in progress but they will lose. There's a couple other unfair labor practices we filed pending, and we applied with the labor office for unemployment insurance and health and pension, those are under investigation and could go either way. The branch is pretty much emaciated. We only had about 20 members to begin with, but with high turnover, union busting and the fact that the struggle has been going on for 4 years with no concrete wins, we are down to only a few hardcore members who refuse to give up. The union itself is representative democracy, a touch on the conservative side but not too bad. The big problem for me - they are headquartered on the other end of the country. We do meetings via skype most of the time. I can't really participate in union activities aside from local branch activities. We are the only branch on this end of the country.
The union is part of a federation. The foreign workers caucus of another union in this area split off and formed a seperate union a couple years ago. It's a fighting union, there are many anarcho-syndicalist types in there, I have a close friend who is a member, it's direct democracy and located much closer to home. I'd like to join this union, but I can't fault my own union's handling of our case, and we're still in the middle of the struggle. But there's not much we can do in terms of direct action with so few members. It's turned into a waiting game with the courts.
There's no way I'm going to leave my union until a decision is reached, win or lose. I've put too much work into this. But I'm considering joining the other union as well just for fun. They are local and hold a lot of events. There was a Cindy Sheehan event a week or so ago I went to. There is friction between the two unions, because my union is still part of the federation and the other union split from it. I've been told not to work with them.
I would have joined a long time ago, but think it's kind of strange to be in a union that doesn't represent my workplace. I wish I could go back in time to 2007 and replace the trashcan leaflet with one from the other union so we wouldn't have had this logistical problem. It's rather isolating and we are half burned-out and just holding on.