My workplace is voting on a union in two weeks, and we have an unusual amount of people we haven't talked to. It seems like a tossup at moment. I'm hopeful but not at all confident.
Management has officially been nice once the vote was triggered, but it seems a few of our workplace bullies who have carved out priveledged positions, and who don't show respect to other coworkers, have sided firmly on the anti-union side (I wonder why?) and are running around the store talking shit to everyone (and throwing in some transphobic bullshit while they are at it).
Some of them have showed up at our meetings to start sealioning and wasting people's time. Others are posting long screeds in the breakroom lying their asses off and basically acting on behalf of management.
After the first meeting I explained my experience and poured my heart out thinking they were there in good faith and I would be taken seriously, but of course not. Next meeting same fucking questions and pretending no one answered.
Some of it is continueing to ask for specifics we can't give, because it depends on the negotiating process and workplace surveys. All we can say is "It's up to us to decide that during negotiations". Is there a better answer we can give?
Has anybody else dealt with this shit? Any tips?
Our current plan is to not engage with them as as possible and kick them out of the next meeting if they show up.
Dimmer06 gave you great advice. I'll just add some things on top of that.
The thing that stands out to me most is that you feel like you haven't talked to a lot of people. I cannot stress enough that the most powerful tool you have as people independently forming a union is the one-on-one conversation. You can accomplish this efficiently by:
Having a core set of reliable allies (like your organizing committee) all take on lists of people to talk to.
developing a script intended to meet specific goals (e.g. promote a yes vote).
Practicing ways that conversations might go and how you will respond.
Doing a round of conversations and sharing your results. Promote sharing of what did not go well and provide constructive feedback for how one might navigate that situation in the future. Some can't be navigated, just commiserate about those.
Repeating that last step until you have spoken to everyone and, at minimum, labelled your list using their propensity to vote yes. For example: a strong commitment to vote yes, unsure but leaning yes, they aren't leaning either way, they are leaning no, and hard nos (this is just a Likert Scale). Make sure to track when they were contacted and whether they requested to no longer be contacted.
Develop your script with the above in mind. It should start with a friendly introduction, include a short spiel that emphasizes how important it is to vote yes, and then usually end with them telling you how they are leaning. The conversion may continue in various ways. If they are a hard ues, you can ask them to join your effort. If they are a soft yes, maybe, or soft jo, ask them what concerns they have and use this chance to do friendly debunking. One someone provides a hard no, move on.
After you have spoken to everyone, develop a follow-up plan. For example, you'll want to get all of your hard yeses to vote ASAP. Help them do so whenever this becomes an option. I don't know what exact procedure you have to follow for your situation, but a good practice is to track whether they say they voted or not. Keep revisiting those who haven't with friendly one on one reminders. Turn the soft yeses into hard yeses by addressing their concerns or innoculating. Repeat for the maybes, etc etc.
Use this experience to define topics and innocuations for the larger meetings.
I've seen this basic approach work many times. It is usually a lot of work, especially in these final weeks, but then there is a big payoff.
Regarding the anti-union disruptive dweebs, I would just point out that their questions have already been addressed and out of respect for everyone's time we need to move on. Keep artifacts of previous explanations (notes) so that anyone curious can address their concerns afterwards. Offer to have one on one conversations with them later to address their concerns. This is a valuable skill to develop in general, basically handling unreasonable critics and disruption. And move on from individuals asking more than one question, say you need to give others the opportunity to speak or that you need to move on.
If these people act like babies, ask them to leave and don't invite them back. The crowd will understand, doubly so if you are patient and calm.
Anyways, you've got this! You've already made so much progress. You just neex to dunk on management for two weeks by out-organizing them.
Thanks for the advice! We've been doing a lot of this stuff, so it seems like we are on the right track.
Not to be too confident, but we just did a count of hard yes supporters and I think we got this.
Hell yeah