Ask a Union Organizer: How do I protect myself from retaliation?

I’m interested in moving forward with organizing my workplace, but I know leadership won’t be friendly to this effort. How do I best protect myself from retaliation or firing while taking the steps to unionize? - Washington, D.C.

Dear D.C.,

First of all, I hope you aren’t reading this at work. You’ll definitely get fired for reading this at work. Seriously: clear your browser history.

Safely at home & off-the-clock? Wonderful. Congratulations! Your desire to form a union at your workplace is laudable; it takes unpacking our deep capitalist conditioning and a journey of personal reflection about your self-worth to realize the union vision. I commend your bravery.

You’re right to be fearful of retaliation—even if you don’t get fired, a unionization effort can damage your personal relationships with leadership and community members.

A winning campaign that successfully protects workers effectively uses Lion Mind. Do you know about Lion Mind? Imagine a room with a dog in it. You throw a bone with a little meat on it into the room. The dog is going to immediately engage with the bone—rip the small amount of meat off, and probably gnaw haphazardly on the ends for a while. It’s a lot of effort for a little bit of payoff.

The Lion, however, ignores the small bone with little meat. She blinks, and yawns. She conserves her energy for something worth the payoff for its effort and risk. In order to win your union campaign without being retaliated against, you must be Lion-Minded.

Offenses from management should certainly be described with times, dates, and witnesses in a VERY SECRET file somewhere; but jumping at every opportunity to speak up, shout out, or walk-out is about as effective as my cocker spaniel and those damn squirrels. All that noise simply draws attention to your discontent, your anger; and your leadership is well-versed in how their staff reacts in the face of injustice. They’ll be expecting you. And you really don’t want them to see it coming.

Your campaign’s success will likely hinge on how successfully you can leverage donors and the community to criticize your leaderships’ business decisions.

But you’ll never win if your leadership gets to tell the story to donors and stakeholders first—and launching a public campaign, building allies, and planning direct actions without your leadership finding out is not easy.  If your leadership discovers your rabble-rousing before you file for a union election with the National Labor Relations Board, you’ve got zilch in terms of legal protections. You’ll definitely get fired if you’re found out. Congrats! You’re now a spy.

Because, really the only way to protect yourself from personal and professional retaliation for union organizing is Spy Work.

Really! Spy-stuff like dead drops, encryption, code words, black-bag operations, false flags, and surveillance are all integral parts of winning. Because, remember; you don’t want them to see it coming, and you need an arsenal of information about your organization’s operations before you file for a union election with the NLRB. Once leadership knows you’re getting organized, they’ll likely shut out access to all kinds of “sensitive” information that can help build your negotiation platform, reveal actual wrong-doing, or turn the tide of community support in your favor. 

Oh yeah, and they’ll look for any opportunity to fire you. If you are serious about getting organized, you need to get ready to do some seriously good work. No calling-in, or late mornings, or skipping out on the all-staff meetings. Be a model employee; don’t give them a reason. Lion Mind.

And remember, this campaign is the ultimate need-to-know. It can be hard to anticipate who will support your cause and who will go all teachers-pet hall-monitor about the information. It’s important to build authentic relationships with your coworkers before you approach them with the idea of actual unionization. Spending time asking open-ended questions and pressing your comrades to dig deeper into their feelings about your organizations’ leadership, thoughts about their day-to-day, and frustrations-- with the intent of discovering true alliances-- is totally spy-work. I mean, leave the honey traps and blackmail to the Russians; but the rest of it pretty much applies.

And what’s the very last thing a spy would do? That’s right! A spy would NEVER post about their mission on social media. They wouldn’t talk about it openly at the bar or call someone on an unsecured line to talk about their goals and strategy. They wouldn’t trust a journalist or a known gossip. They reveal only what the person needs to know—without ever revealing the big picture strategy.

This need-to-know basis isn’t intended to shut anyone out of the process. It’s to protect the mission: to unionize your workplace. Often, it’s very strategic to shield some people from potential retaliation if it’s a risky move and things might not go according to plan.

If you’re a spy, then the bargaining unit’s solidarity is your big hat and bad mustache. If your bargaining unit is operating with what we call Solidarity, actions and messages aren’t able to be traced back to any individual person(s), and management doesn’t know who started the shit-storm. It’s always just a mystery. When no one person can get shit-talked or shit-canned for public statements, letters to donors that hard-ask for support in unionization efforts, or other pressure tactics; it gives you more freedom to act. Solidarity, when carried-out correctly, ensures that no individual gets targeted for retaliation. Union Solidarity is meant to protect us-- and our coworkers--during a union campaign.

A union’s ultimate goal is to protect your jobs and make it better for future workers at your organization. It’s not about being the loudest or the most righteous or by having the most sharable social media content. It’s about winning for realsies. Lion Mind.

Unions are meant to protect workers, so if an action would unduly risk a worker’s job, the union simply finds a different way. And if your campaign does need potential martyrs, your bargaining unit should leverage the most privileged among you. Imagine your Organizing Committee like linking arms with your coworkers—but not in a straight line. It should look more like a spiral inward—with the center completely protecting coworkers who have the most at stake and the least institutional power. If you’re like me, and you have able-bodied white-privilege and generational support; you should start mentally & emotionally preparing to take one for the team. 

Keeping vulnerable workers safe in the center of the spiral should never mean these workers go without influence, leadership, or decision-making power in your bargaining unit; these workers’ needs and vision for the future should be at the center of your contract negotiations, too. Once you’ve ratified your first Collective Bargaining Agreement, there will be formal leadership elections within your local and it’ll be safe for anyone to run for positions that control purse-strings and act as spokespeople.

We may come to social justice work for the cause, but we usually stay for the comrades. This process can be painful, because it’s going to be a major call-out to whomever signs your paychecks and some of your friends might lose their jobs.

And even if your campaign is perfect—even if you do everything right; you still might get fired. Organizations love to hire big law firms to find loopholes like “corporate restructuring” that eliminate enthusiastic members of your bargaining unit. Some of you will almost inevitably face personal and professional retaliation.

But, hey; Roe never got her abortion, either.