The 12 workers at Mockingbird Society, based in Seattle, organized with UFCW Local 3000 last month, seeking a formal process for negotiating workplace needs. The youth advocates and support staffers are also eager to enshrine their current benefits in a binding contract, which they plan to negotiate before the end of the year.
Early in the organizing process, a slim majority of workers supported unionizing, but progress stalled. The effort regained momentum once workers realized that management could make significant changes without their signoff. At that point, more than 80 percent of workers agreed that forming a union was the best way to protect their rights and give them a say in the workplace.
Organizers held small meetings with workers and conducted one-on-one outreach to make sure they understood what unionizing entailed, including information about dues, their specific rights as union members, and how to negotiate a contract. When an employee faced a layoff before the vote, organizers demonstrated the union’s value by connecting that worker with unemployment resources. When it was time to vote, the organizing committee sought the help Seattle City Council Member Eddie Lin to act as a neutral third party.
“Workers at Mockingbird decided to form a union because they realized that management could dictate and change anything they wanted about their working conditions if they had no union,” said Robert Goldsmith, an organizer at UFCW 3000. “As soon as they formed their union, we were able to enforce our members’ rights even without a contract.”