Re: [Wikimedia-l] about staff

Some historical context may be useful here, Gerard. The reality is that, while many workplaces aren't unionized in North America, there are also many workplaces where there is serious competition between two or more unions to represent the same employees. In many parts of Canada and the U.S., the issue of recognition mainly relates to the employer not being obliged to recognize a specific union that has not received support from 50% or more of the staff; in fact, in some locations employers may only recognize unions that receive greater than 50% staff support. It may not be something that is commonly seen in Europe, but I personally have observed truly shocking behaviour (threats, harassment, shunning in the workplace, etc.) on the part of trade unions that are competing to unionize the same employees. This is more commonplace when two companies are merging to form a single new company if the employees had different unions at the predecessor companies. And in many parts of North America, we have seen companies shut down unionized branches and expand non-unionized branches. Less than 12% of the United States workforce is unionized; it is not as enculturated in the US as it is in Europe. None of this has any bearing whatsoever on the Wikimedia Foundation; I have no doubt it would follow the applicable legislation should the employees wish to unionize. Risker/Anne On 9 March 2016 at 08:12, Gerard Meijssen &lt;gerard.meijssen(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: Hoi, Wikimedia-l mailing list, guidelines at: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Mailing_lists/Guidelines New messages to: Wikimedia-l(a)lists.wikimedia.org Unsubscribe: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikimedia-l, <mailto:wikimedia-l-request@lists.wikimedia.org?subject=unsubscribe>