The increased flexibility to work remotely has been liberating in many ways for workers however it also poses challenges when it comes to organizing.
I've found that the primary means of communication between remote workers is owned by the company, for example slack and teams. This leads to a reluctance to discuss unionization due to the perceived threat of the company eavesdropping and taking action against them.
There are also less opportunities for the kinds of informal conversations that lead to solidarity and organizing that would usually happen over lunch or after work at the bar or pub.
What challenges have you faced in organising remote workers and what solutions have you found?
My union uses our personal email addresses for broadcast info, and won the right to use the employer's video comms for meetings.
My day job is unionized 100%-remote IT in the unionized arm of a cruel global company, contracting to an organization so massive that it used to have the largest single-owner intranet in the world (so it's not a mom-and-pop).
Other Work from Home-Office points:
It's generally a great job where people don't bail - openings are created generally through retirement - and my peers have all worked there 20+ years; if they're not filling vacancies from advancement or retirees.
Thanks for sharing your experience. Interesting that you use company infrastructure for meetings. I guess it's assumed that somebody will feed info back to the company regardless of platform anyway.
Do you know how the initial bargaining unit was formed and recognised?