this post was submitted on 23 Jan 2025
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Most communities have trade unions I could contact if I worked in a trade. But what if I'm an office worker? A chef? An IT person? How do I find a union job?

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 month ago

You should be able to find a list of registered Labour Organizations via your relevant governing body. For example.

After that it is research into Unions that sound like they'd be in the field you're interested in.

I'm not aware of any simple way to do this.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 month ago

Look at your local government jobs, they post their union information and often have large portions of their workforce grouped into unions (at least in California).

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 month ago

Pst.

You could always find a job and then lead an effort to unionize!

[–] SirDankbud 5 points 1 month ago

Not sure if this is the case in other countries, but universities here in Canada tend to employ unionozed workers and have a huge variety in positions. I'm a unionized groundskeeper and its an infinitely better gig than any other landscaping work I've done.

When searching for a union job, be mindful that many employers are anti-union and unions vary in their efficacy. Try to avoid unions that have already been castrated by bad deals, or ones that constantly have to strike for basic concessions.

When you succeed at getting a union job, I highly recommend showing up at meetings and considering a leadership role if you have the chops. A union is only as strong as its active members.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Maybe try the SEIU?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

Another vote for looking at Civil Service jobs.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 month ago

Join the union and look at their job board.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago

IWW – One Big Union

[–] danielquinn 3 points 1 month ago

There are unions that operate outside of trades too. CWU here in the UK for example. As a software engineer, I joined UTAW, a branch of CWU just a few weeks ago.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago (1 children)

I don't know how true this is across the board, but I'm an office worker for a power company and a lot of the people in my department are union because we work with the stuff around what the electricians and gas guys do. So maybe it's worth looking into jobs that support the trades to see if the workers around such are unionized as well?

For what it's worth, and more specificity, I do GIS mapping for electric and gas utilities in the area my company covers.