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(American version) Hand out union flyers in the break room.
As an American, how does this work in other countries?
you get the flyers from the company. unless its a non-union site, in which case you will usually have to climb over the picket line to get in. the one at tesla is coming up on 15 months now, the union have signalled that they have the funds to keep the strike going while paying every worker 125% salary for another... 200 years.
How do you know the union is working for you as opposed to for the good of the company?
There was one case where the company selected a union in the US that doesn’t give the workers much if anything
The Union at my job actively and intentionally made shit way worse, like, hilariously so.
generally unions are hierarchically structured so that one smaller union can call on the resources of their parent organisation. my employer has a collective bargaining agreement with a union representing "white-collar workers" (it's a more formal term here), which is itself a sub-union of the "central organization for professionals" which means that the sub-union sets the minimum terms and if the company fails to uphold them they get struck by all the sub-unions of the central org. since my employer is active all over europe, this may eventually escalate to the EUTC if bad enough, meaning the company would be seeing strikes all over the continent.
CBA's occasionally get renegotiated based on directive from the central organisations. this includes minimum yearly raises and such. currently we're just coming out of a negotiation period where raises were centrally agreed to 4.5% over two years, which together with inflation being higher than normal meant that most people's actual salaries went down. however, this was not a surprise, it came as a request from the central bank as a means to lower inflation back to normal, which to their credit seems to have worked. so in the short run it was a bit anti-worker, but it stabilised the industry which means i still have a job. my previous employer did not have a CBA, with the reasoning that their terms were better anyway (and they were but the point is is the "collective" part, not the "agreement" part) and when inflation hit them they basically randomly stopped giving raises. a few of my colleagues actually passed me in salary.
as for another pretty interesting example, the tesla thing. the strike they are currently facing is due to them being non-union. there is no rule saying they have to be, but in general auto makers are unionised. tesla has a standing policy to not talk to unions, and they are not doing anything wrong on paper, so the union is basically besieging them. people working for tesla generally don't want to be unionised (at least they say so publicly) so the strike is based on other unionised workforces (like electricians, postal workers, dock workers) refusing to do work for tesla. tesla are calling this behavior into question, and on paper it is questionable. it has prevented a lot of shit historically, so they won't get anywhere with it, but looking in from the outside it must seem a bit odd.
Good question. That takes a little research. You'll want to talk to a union that is capable of making collective agreements.
There are indeed fake unions out there with no other purpose than to take your money and keep you from organizing into the actual unions.
Contat the umbrella organisation if in doubt.
(UK) Last time I started in a unioned job the company (voluntarily?) told me about it during my induction, there were flyers in the break room, a poster in the break room with a named representative on my floor (a regular worker like me, it was voluntary) and official rep who I could call. Maybe once or twice a year the union did a presentation in a meeting room at the office and you could could take the hour (unpaid) to go and watch, after which you were encouraged to sign up. Semi regular emails through the year to my company email address about pay and bonus negotiation etc.
Simple: you don't fuck with unions. They are far more powerful in Germany. And Germany is the lower end even. 😅
Worked in the UK, when I started my job I was given lots of hr forms, contract, info about benefits and leaflets for each of the two main unions that covered our workplace. If there was ever any issues, our line managers would remind us of our right to have a union rep present for meetings with management.