[wat10000]

Involuntarily binding the company to the contract would be bad, I agree.

But what's wrong with forcing the other employees to join to keep their jobs? That is fundamentally a requirement on the company, that they only hire people in the union. And that's no different from any other sort of exclusive contract. If a restaurant has an exclusive contract with Coke, is it sinister to say that Pepsi employees can't supply them, and they have to join Coke if they want to do that?

[mothballed]

I'm saying suppose some employees decide to form a union. And the company doesn't consent to sign an exclusive contract. As I understand it there are unions advocating that workers that didn't agree to a union still have to be bound to it anyway.

It's my understanding in some states in the US it's possible a worker will be forced to join a union if a certain number of other workers want a union, even if neither the worker nor the company hiring them consent to it. In about half of states under "right to work" though they do give employees the option to not join the union if they don't want to.

This happened to me when I was working a ~minimum wage job at a grocery store. At the time it was not a right to work state, and I was forced to join the UFCW. The union I was forced to join then made me pay dues, pushing me below minimum wage.

[wat10000]

I agree that would be bad. Is that what happens or is it that the employer agrees only to hire workers from the union and that's why you have to join? "Right to work" laws are about that situation; they prohibit agreements between the union and the employer that would require all employees to join the union. When you had to join the UFCW, was it merely because the UFCW existed at your store, or was it because the store agreed to only hire UFCW members?

[mothballed]

The store didn't voluntarily agree but they were forced by the NLRA to accept a "good faith contract" negotiation that the store had no interest in having good faith with. This violence-enforced negotiation process did result in it becoming a union represented shop. So the union via the NLRA forced the workers to pay dues to the UFCW (technically you can decide not to join while still having to do all the things union workers do including paying the dues).

So yes the false premise here was it was just a voluntary contract, but it really wasn't since the law required them to act in good faith to come up with a contract with the union when they had no interest in doing so except for the violence of the state that forced them to. Otherwise they'd have just hired non-union workers.

I did explicitly ask them when I was hired that I absolutely did not want to join the union or pay the dues. The manager was happy to hear that because they didn't like the union either, he certainly would have hired me without requiring anything union related if not for the NLRA forcing the "good faith" negotiation blocking it.

[nielsbot]

how much were your dues? and you were getting $7.25/hr?