You can’t “volunteer” for a for-profit company’s business operations. They have to pay you or they are in violation of the FLSA.

Nah, giving anonymity to a PR flak who is pushing a story is bullshit.

Unfortunately, federal workers don’t have the right to strike.

It doesn’t. Union members vote on contracts negotiated by elected or appointed representatives. If they want stock options to be part of their compensation plan, they can have them. Most unionized places don’t accept stock options as a substitute for fair pay and benefits for a variety of reasons.

Hey I made Splinter! Thanks for the links!

I’d very much recommend doing a search on area labor unions, see how they operate, and which seems like a good fit. Give them a call. Just because you are small doesn’t mean you couldn’t benefit from a union. There may be caveats if the insurance company is part of a larger network; if someone owns say, 15 McDonald’s…

The short version is that a majority of your coworkers would need to agree, in case there is an NLRB election, since it’s majority rule for union elections. Most employees who are not considered confidential employees (such as executive secretaries) or supervisors are eligible for union representation. I would say the…

You can!

There are several options. The National Labor Relations Board looks for something called a “community of interest,” which could be essentially trade based, or you could have a sub-unit in that just one division of a company organizes, or you could go “wall-to-wall” in that all workers of an employer are in the union.…

You can’t. Unions are prohibited from discriminating against non-members within their unit.

At this point, the success of TNG and WGE in recent elections should prompt employers to just recognize, as the labor management firms are not preventing successful votes.

You do not know what you are talking about.

Fair. My apologies for being pedantic. I’m glad that Jezebel reported on this.

Technically, he sent me that statement before the story ran, as a response to a request for comment.

Unions are what the members make it, since they ARE the members. If you don’t like what your union is doing, organize the members to make changes. It’s not that hard.