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?
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.
I get that, I'm just highlighting the potential for abuse. Or rather, that it's fucked up in the first place.
Oh of course. But this is America, the land of the exploited.
We still have 7.25 minimum wage.
I mean of course it's fucked up of course there's room for abuse. That's capitalism. The point of capitalism is abuse. The point of capitalism is the exploitation of the worker. In essence that's the problem here. You keep asking why are things aren't Fair, the answer is capitalism it's inherently unfair. There are no rules in a capitalist Society to keep things Fair. The point of capitalism is to make things unfair.
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.
That's just union contract negotiations.
Not providing cost of living increase is effectively a pay cut FYI, and we're speaking colloquially here.
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.
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.
So even then, the union people might be making more than the union minimum, so the non union person might still be making less than an average union person while not getting any union benefits.
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.
How do they even know you're in a union? I that they just knew whether there was anyone in the union.