Pharmacy workers in Target's New York store win right to form microunion

[Omaha Steve]

Last edited Thu Sep 17, 2015, 03:14 PM - Edit history (1)

Source: CNBC

A group of pharmacy workers within Target's store in Brooklyn, New York have won a vote to form a microunion within the store, according to a filing on the National Labor Relations Board's website and union officials.

The group of pharmacists and pharmacy technicians won an initial ballot 7-2 in favor of forming the union, the filing showed.

The National Labor Relations Board in 2011 ruled that so-called micro unions are appropriate when their members share "a community of interest."

That decision was upheld by a U.S. appeals court, spurring the board in 2014 to extend the standard to retail stores in a case involving fragrance and cosmetic department workers at Macy's.

Read more: http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/17/pharmacy-workers-in-targets-new-york-store-win-right-to-form-microunion.html

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The first ever employees at Target to vote in a UNION!!!

[valerief]

1. Good news but the first time I've heard of microunions.

Got a definition here.
http://inthesetimes.com/working/entry/15183/what_are_micro-unions_and_why_is_big_business_so_upset_about_them

A micro-union, in short, is a relatively new description for a time-worn labor organizing technique that focuses on smaller, sharply defined groups of workers for the purpose of creating collective workplace action. That tactic, although nothing new, rubs against the grain of the popular imagination of labor organizing as a mass movement against large, highly visible corporations.

“It’s definitely an invented term, and doesn’t come from labor [sources] at all. In fact, it's a complete fabrication of the right wing," says Jay Lederer, communications director of the International Union of Operating Engineers (IUOE).

[Xithras]

3. It's a fancy new term for "very small chapter"

Having multiple unions representing different types of employees in a single company is a fairly common thing. My last employer had four different unions representing different employee groups.

Microunions are simply an extension of that. They are formed when an existing union can't adequately address the needs of a specific group of employees in a company because the role, skills, or working environment of those employees is radically different than the rest of the employees.

While the term wasn't used back then, my dad was in a micro-union for many years. He worked for a company that did environmental remediation for large corporate and government clients. Need to clean up a major sewage spill or chemical disaster? They were your guys. Most of their employees had fairly manual construction type jobs like operating backhoes and pulling booms, and their union covered most of the company. My dad was a lab chemist, and his department broke away from that union and formed a second union (microunion?) fairly early (it was an ugly breakup). The guys from the primary union were concerned about things like getting more porta potties on the construction sites (a legitimate gripe when the only toilets on a 500 acre cleanup site are located near the front gate) and reducing work demands on days when temps climbed over 100 degrees to improve worker safety, and they dominated union elections and leadership. When my dads area complained about things like substandard ventilation in their labs, they tended to get laughed at by the construction guys who saw them as whiners with cushy jobs in air conditioned offices. They had to fight hard, but they eventually broke away from the union representing the rest of the employees and formed a 6 person ICWU chapter. When a chapter is that small, pretty much everyone holds some position in the union. My dad served in every position in the union chapter (including president) at least once!

[C Moon]

2. When Target was first coming to be, I used to have a Boycott Target bumper sticker

because they were buying out stores and not hiring back union workers.
Oh the irony.

[wolfie001]

5. More like: Oh the progress!

Good for those workers.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. Better headline: Workers' right to form union acknowledged

They already had that right; they didn't "win" it. They won the effort to make their employer behave.

[wolfie001]

6. Great for them!!!

During another Union push way back, the expression uttered by one anti-Union Target worker (company shill I'm sure) "I'm my own Union" was total bullshit.