I need to set up email on my phone like an adult instead of it just being 'the thing I sift through when I forget a password' because I almost missed a dang email from our lawyer until people started blowing up my phone to go check it. Unionization updates below the cut:
So we have a potential date set for our election, but the trick is that the company will only agree to this with the stipulation that one of their District Mangers (not necessarily the one for our District, but likely) is present at the store the day of the election. This has the obvious implication of making workers casting their ballots feel as though they are being surveilled by management and is an act of intimidation, and our legal counsel believes that we could certainly argue as such in a hearing and get that request declared illegal. But doing so would require delaying our vote by an indeterminate amount of time, which gives the company more time to rev up their anti-union campaign within our store, and increases our chances of losing support due to attrition and counter-campaigning. I've explained the situation to my committee and tomorrow we'll talk with our lawyer about it as a group, but it's my expectation that they will feel similarly to me and that having the election sooner will be more important than denying the company this intimidation tactic. It's my belief that we're currently strong enough to not be deterred by the presence of management, but tomorrow we'll see if everyone agrees with me on that point.