this post was submitted on 18 Mar 2025
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How is it even legal to have explicitly preferential pay for people not in a union? Is there a limit to that, or can companies just say, "Anyone who joins a union will be paid minimum wage." Ofc with at-will employment they can always just fire you, but like, if you think about it it's pretty fucked up right?
How do they even know you're in a union? I that they just knew whether there was anyone in the union.
sounds like their pay is based on union rates. that's probably just a company policy for everyone.
What I'm saying is that if they can set "$0.50 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone, they can also set "$5 above union rates" as the company policy for everyone and then cut union rates by $5. It's essentially just bribing people to not join a union or penalizing them if they do. It being company policy for everyone is irrelevant.
They can't cut union rates since they have a contract. So they can, within reason, pay non union workers more but not lower the pay of union workers. One of the benefits of being in the union is that they can't just lower your wages and they may have issues firing you for bad reasons.
There's a limit to how much they can pay the ununionized workers before it becomes clear they're trying to interfere with the workers rights to free organization. In the image, it's quite likely that the extra 50¢ is union dues, or could be explained as related to costs.
They can't cut union rates.
sure, but whether or not they know it they have caved to the union's demands by doing that
I don't think it's preferential pay. It's just that they pay more, somebody in the union also can get more money than the union minimum. Somebody not part of the union can get less or more than somebody in the union, just not below the union minimum.
It's not that if they join the union that they get less money. The union + 0.5 just means that they earn better than the minimum and the employer gives them more than the minimum, because people like that.
At least that's how it works where I live and union contracts are common.
Not everyone part of the union has to get exactly the union minimum, it's just that you cannot legally get less. People might not be part of the union but they still fall under the union contract negotiated by the union, because it applies to the entire company.
You may be right, but it certainly sounds like she's claiming it's contractual, explicit, and general policy.
I don't read it like that. The sentence just says that their pay rate has that amount, not that it is connected to them not being a union member.
Who's "we" then, if not non-union members?
The people the contract is with, maybe all employees of the company have the agreement.
You are thinking way too much into that statement, the way I described is the way it works here, and that seems much more likely tbh.
That's literally what I'm saying.
You are saying it's union members vs non union members being separated.
And it's not.
The union members are included in the "we" that contractually makes $0.50/hr more than... union members?
The contract negotiated by the unions just defines the minimum, union members can earn more.
I can't tell if that's a yes or a no to the question of whether the "we" that gets paid more than union members includes union members.
I wouldn't be surprised if the union has other benefits that more then make up for the 50 cents, e.g. better medical, vacation, or whatever.
Other than the minimum wage and protected classes, there's not really any laws around how much employers must pay. They can have two employees, Bob and Tina, and pay Bob half of Tina's salary because they just hate the name "Bob". If Bob doesn't like it he can quit.