What does it mean for employees to want to start a union? What’s a union? What does it do? Why do people want it and why do company’s fire you over it?
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The ELI5 version –
A union is like a club of all the people who work for the same company. The members of the club agree to work together to talk with and negotiate with the company for things like pay, benefits, and working conditions. The company’s priority is making a profit. The union’s priority is benefits for union members. If one person asks for a raise then the company can easily say no and the person can leave if they want to. If all of the employees as for a raise at once, via the union, then the company can’t simply ignore it or say no, because the union (the club of all the employees together) can tell the company they will stop working and then the company can’t make any money.
Employees want to start unions so they can increase their negotiating power to get better compensation. Companies don’t want employees to start unions because they don’t want to have to give pay raises to employees.
There are complex laws about relationships between employers, employees, and unions. In very general terms employees have legal protections to start unions, but companies discourage it.
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