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> why this is legal I have no idea It's legal, and in fact normal, under the US labor law regime, because because the union is legally obligated to represent a
by kalkin 11y ago
> why this is legal I have no idea
It's legal, and in fact normal, under the US labor law regime, because because the union is legally obligated to represent all employees equally, members and non-members, in both collective bargaining and individual grievances. Without something like this the temptation to free-ride those benefits would be pretty enormous.
- kalkin 11y agoDon't get me wrong, I'm sympathetic to your frustration. A lot of U.S. unions are pretty undemocratic and mediocre. It's not unrelated to their weakness.
- bradleyjg 11y agoThey aren't obligated to represent all employees equally in collective bargaining. It'd be impossible for them to do so, because there are intra-employee conflicts of interest. Rather than being a fiduciary institution, at least when it comes to negotiation, it's a democratic one that only needs to represent the interests of 50% + 1 members of the union. Often this manifests in trading off the interests of newer members in order to secure benefits for senior members -- sometimes even going so far as to bargain on behalf of retirees who aren't even members. But other configurations of favored and non-favored groups exist (another fairly common one is part time or seasonal employees paying dues but not being effectively representated during contract negotiations). Grievance representation is a different matter, there the union is much closer to the fiduciary ideal.
- kalkin 11y agoSure, it's not equality in all respects, but they aren't allowed to discriminate purely on the basis of union membership. If they negotiate a pay level for a job classification, that's for everyone. You don't join a union workplace and then negotiate your salary separately while everyone else is on a scale.