Ask a Union Organizer: Are there ways for private sector middle managers to form a union?
I am a middle manager at a non-profit where junior staff have unionized. I've read your response to an earlier question about middle management unions, and it definitely resonated - many of us feel like we can't affect real change, are overworked, and would love to unionize. It is our understanding that we are not legally protected by the NLRB to unionize, and I was heartened by the examples you shared, but I believe that they fall under a different category entirely as all of those middle management unions are for government employees. Are there ways for private sector middle managers to form a union?
- Curious Middle Manager
Dear Curious Middle Manager,
It’s no surprise to hear this resonated with you and many of your coworkers! The good news is that the simple answer to your question is yes, there are middle manager unions in the private sector, including at non-profits. If you do not anticipate your employer will fight to keep you from unionizing, the issue of your middle manager status may not even come up much. If you do expect your management will try to stop you from unionizing, though, that doesn’t mean all hope is lost! There are still various tactics you and your coworkers could utilize to win your union, both within and outside the formal legal system.
First, the legal question: do you and your colleagues really count as management under the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA)? While you are correct that it would mean that you do not have the same labor rights workers have, Section 7 of the NLRA provides a specific definition of what constitutes a “supervisor,” and many so-called “middle managers” do not meet it. Oftentimes, part of the reason middle managers feel frustrated at work is that they are not really “managers” at all. In fact, misclassification of employees in this way is such a pervasive anti-worker tactic that narrowing the definition of “supervisor” is one of the provisions of the proposed federal bill, the Protecting the Right to Organize (PRO) Act.
Whether or not you are a “supervisor” for the purposes of the NLRA is not about your title, or even whether someone around the office might refer to you as “my boss,” but about the level of responsibility and authority you have in practice. More specifically, the NLRA defines supervisors as people with the authority to—either directly or by effectively recommending such action to a superior—take action on behalf of the employer to independently “hire, transfer, suspend, lay off, recall, promote, discharge, assign, reward, or discipline other employees,” or “to direct them, or to adjust their grievances.” This authority may not be of a “merely routine or clerical nature,” such as a rote signoff, “but requires the use of independent judgment.” People who function as middle “managers” without actual management authority are unionized in plenty of private sector workplaces, sometimes separately from the more junior staff, and sometimes even together in one big union. This is true at both for-profit workplaces, such as union newsrooms where editors and reporters are often in one bargaining unit together, and at non-profits, such as legal organizations where paralegals, junior attorneys, and the mid-level attorneys who pseudo-”supervise” them (but without independent authority) may be in either separate unions or a single bargaining unit, depending on the context and whether there would be a conflict of interest.
Regardless of the legalities, however, the most important tool in your toolbox will always be your collective power to organize as workers. As you can probably tell from that lengthy definition of “supervisor,” the NLRA provides a lot of gray areas, and it’s common for there to be credible arguments both for and against an individual being classified as a “supervisor.” Even if you feel you have a strong legal case, your employer could still cause headaches frivolously contesting the issue.
Unions have not typically won things by making the best legal arguments or following the rules to the letter, but by building and wielding raw worker power. In 2018, when public school teachers in West Virginia and across the US struck and won more for themselves and their students, they were engaging in illegal wildcat strikes. As the recent strike wave across the entertainment and auto industries reminds us, withholding our labor is the ultimate source of workers’ power. The successful Teamsters contract campaign at UPS, however, also shows an alternative potential outcome when you are highly organized. By organizing collective actions like practice pickets to make it clear to the bosses that they could pull off a strike, workers were able to extract $30 billion worth of concessions from the bosses without ever actually walking off the job. Working in repro or other social justice spaces also opens up further possible tactics. While people may not really care if a car company is living up to its stated values, they do often care about such things in the case of non-profits or otherwise mission-driven organizations. Taking internal collective actions can show the bosses that you have the ability to escalate further and make noise that could embarrass them in front of press, partners, donors, and other important audiences.
Ultimately, your specific context, your prospective members’ wishes, and the union you end up working with will all help shape these tactical decisions. But you and your coworkers do have options.
As a first step, consider reaching out to the union that the more junior staff are working with, as well as unions that represent people at similar organizations to yours. Together you can discuss your specific situation and see whether they would be willing to organize you. You can also reach out to the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, where a volunteer will reach out to help get you started. Different unions have different capacities, resources, and levels of risk tolerance, so you may need to shop around a bit. If one union tells you they can’t organize you, that doesn’t necessarily mean you won’t find a good fit somewhere else. But if you and your coworkers are willing to organize and stick with it, you could be signing a union card before you know it.
In Solidarity,
Sylvie Hawes