I work for a commercial construction company and we are a non-union company. Over the past couple of weeks we have had a union representative for our trade coming onto jobsites and trying to poach our employees. I have always heard stories about this and some of the things that unions have done to non-union companies to try and get them to comply. With all of the business people we have here, I assume for both union and non-union companies/industries, I am curious if anyone has any good stories to share. Ultimately, our president has a good relationship with the union rep’s boss so I think after a few conversations it will go away, but it has certainly caused some raised blood pressure in our office over the past few weeks.
Edit to clarify-
Today, based on our employee conversations, the rep had mentioned going to work for another company. In the past, they had certainly been approached to unionize, as mentioned below. Apologies for the mixup in terminology.
Be careful about the phrase “poach our employees.” I think you mean unionize our employees. Agreements not to poach employees are generally illegal. I am not suggesting you’re doing anything wrong, but would recommend different terminology.
Agree on the difference in poach and unionize and know companies who have had to take notes on whether to unionize or not. The instance today, the rep specifically asked a couple of our employees about signing on to go work for another company. I definitely agree with what you are saying though and can amend my language.
Having someone trying to poach your employees to go work elsewhere sucks, but it’s part of doing business unfortunately. We constantly have recruiters and reps from other companies reaching out to our personnel trying to entice them into moving to them. I even do that occasionally when I’m trying to fill certain positions. However, one thing that stuck out in your original post is that you mentioned the union rep is showing up at your jobsites and doing this. Are these jobsites where he has a valid reason for being there, or are those sites where he is just showing up? If he’s just showing up and trying to steal your people that’s a big deal. I mentioned that I will try to poach people from other companies but I’m not doing it at that company’s project sites or office. I don’t even reach out to those people via their work email or phone numbers but get in touch via other means (private email and phone if I can find it, or via social media somehow. If this guy is showing up to your project sites and trying to steal your workers and he has no other legit reason to be there, I’d toss him off the site and escalate if he continues.
The city of Austin has “hired” the Wrkers Defense Fund to audit public jobsites to make sure correct wages are being paid.
They get to come onto city of Austin funded projects and ask workers what work they are completing. The idea is to catch workers doing something that is a different classification than their certified payroll indicates.
And who is the Workers Defense Fund? Unions.
We had a meeting with city officials that consisted of AGC, ABC, and NAHB. The city would only let the lawyer from WDF speak.