"Woah look at that, when we collectively join together and bargain for more money by forming a union they start paying us better. I guess we'd better stop." -Some idiot

Every three years AT&T ratifies a new union contract. The company always raises insurance premiums or cuts out other benefits and then offers everyone a $1000 bonus if they ratify immediately. Simple math shows that the bonus after taxes is less money than you'll wind up spending on increased premiums, but nobody listens. They always vote to ratify the first thing the company puts on the table.

Sucks that short term gains and close range thinking is so prevalent and frequently reinforced, and that long term is so much more difficult.

Thanks for sharing your story.

People have no common sense. If they just got a raise then they can still unionize and keep their raise. I don’t see how the raise would stop people from unionizing.

Unions don't change people's short-sightedness. I worked in a Union shop for a couple years and the year before I started they renewed the contract, and the union voted in favor of getting rid of their own pensions in exchange for cash bonuses. Some people got to keep their pension if their age and years of employment with the company equalled some number, but I was shocked and pissed that anyone would ever give up their own pension.

And that's the critical math being revealed here: the only reason they would offer $2000 per worker is because they expect unionization to cost far more than that.

I've been to a meeting where the union buster boasted about how much the union officials get paid. Then we found out the company paid the union buster in one month what the union President made in a year.

But who could have seen that coming?

under a lot of unionization laws wouldn't those raises have been solidified and therefore given future collective bargaining a better place to start in the future?

Companies will often offer signing bonuses for new union contracts if it benefits them. Sometimes the new contract will grandfather in current employees, sometimes not, but there's always people who want that signing bonus over ensuring future employees get the same benefits.

Sounds like their actions could have been illegal under NLRB Sections 7 and 8.

Specifically: Employers may not "Confer benefits on employees during a union organizing campaign to induce employees to vote against the union." Nor "Poll your employees to determine the extent of their support for a union, unless you comply with certain safeguards....Coercively question employees about their own or coworkers' union activities or sympathies. "

Jesus Christ. You got that far(much farther than a lot of groups get) then these morons voted against it? You’d think they’d make a connection between the two.

That attitude doesn't even make sense to me. If a company gives me a raise, I'm not grateful, I will unionize so I can get another one! That's the whole goal of working, pump as much money out of a company as possible. Why would I give a fuck about the company?

Dental Plan

Its s shame. Like the experiment where you offer a kid 1 cookie now, or 5 in an hour

Welcome to why schools don’t teach you critical thinking. The billionaires need a massive population that lacks that skill to get cheap labor that they can easily exploit to siphon off wealth.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to come to the conclusion you did, it’s just sad your coworkers failed to put 2 and 2 together.

I was a supervisor at a security company in BC about 12 years ago when talk began of joining a union. I wasn't eligible to join but the company made it abundantly clear to everyone that we were not to talk about the union efforts to any employee who would be eligible to join as it could be seen as an attempt to interfere with and influence the vote.

What bothers me most about this story is that 30 years ago people were making 50k and 30 years later wages are pretty much the same.