Microsoft to Reportedly Recognize Raven Software’s Union After Aquisition
game-news24.com
game-news24.com
I feel this is one of those questions with a simple answer, but the more you learn the more your sadness increases..
There are clear obligations in Germany for how to integrate unions in a business and where/how they're able to influence business processes. How is it in the US?
That is what those union ballots are about - the union needs evidence that they are representatives of the employees of the company.
A union has to start somewhere. Of course depending upon the legal jurisdiction a company might not have much of a choice if a union meets a legal threshold, and in the case of union action they might not have a choice otherwise than deal with a union.
In this case I doubt MS had a choice, I guess what is notable is that they have not needed to make such a choice before now.
But in this case, the union is already established and recognized by the acquired employer. MS (or any other acquiring entity) shouldn’t be allowed to ignore an existing employer-labor relationship. If that were true, any time a company unionized, the stockholders could just continually buy itself with another shell company and terminate the union relationship.
Uhm, and why should the company have a say in this, when it's the employees that are already telling the company that they are unionized?
Obviously the company isn’t going to work with literally any union that emails them and says it has a demand, without knowing if the union has anything to back up its demands or not.
If someone came to demand your money and said ‘or else’ you’d ask what the ‘or else’ is, wouldn’t you?
Pretty simple.
Check how many employees are part of the union. Does the union represent a majority of the workforce or at least a minority but made of important employees? Then you better listen to what they say, or they could go on a strike.
The only way to make companies agree to your demands is to promise them a larger loss if they don't agree.
> Since when a company has the option to “recognize” or not a union?
The company has the option to ignore the union if not enough employees are members, or the employees aren't important enough.
How does it know how many are members? They have to tell it or they ballot them.
If the union doesn't have this support, the company ignores them.
I don't get why that's so hard to understand?
I don’t get why that’s surprising?
From another [0] comment 2 minutes later:
> There are clear obligations in Germany for how to integrate unions in a business and where/how they're able to influence business processes. How is it in the US?
You say 'comprised of their employees' - who determines this? You need a secret vote at least, or some kind of voluntary indication of support. You need to know people aren't being coerced.
That said, it is also common for acquisitions to be structured as a transaction in which all employees are terminated by the acquired organization and hired by the new organization. This effectively "resets" the process and may require employees to hold a new election. However, employers can always recognize a voluntarily and skip the NLRB process which would make recognition mandatory. It seems that Microsoft has indicated their willingness to do so.
The concept of a normalized card-check-only process is generally favored by unions because the NLRB election process is widely viewed as excessively favoring employers. However, it has never passed congress. That is, the "card check" as it is often discussed doesn't actually exist as the legislation proposing it has never passed. The existing mechanism is a fairly narrow exception that mostly exists for employer convenience.
A union is by definition a group of employees. I guess you're talking about, maybe, representatives of a national union coming to an employer without there first being a union vote within...?
That's not remotely like what's being discussed here. What this situation is, and what's being talked about, are a union formed within the company (whether or not it's affiliated with a national union) and whether the employer has to recognize it and bargain collectively.
I can't even fathom the idea of a union with no members at a given company or organization "just showing up" and trying to get the management to bargain with them on their workers' behalf. It's just utterly nonsensical.
That's how many unions work.
For example look at what is happening with Amazon warehouses - existing external unions turn up and try to recruit workers.
You also see it for example in the UK where unions have a political party and try to use that to change labour laws through normal government elections.
Whether or not that's nonsensical is a matter of opinion!
In this case, the answers are: not at all; and lightly at worst.
> when the tech giant acquired Activision Blizzard later next year
As a non-native speaker, I am confused about the use of past tense for an (alleged) future event ("next year"). Is it just a typo and it should say "last year"? Or is it business English meaning "will have acquired"?
Gallant (Raven) gets one of the largest tech companies to recognize their union.