For Sympathetic Managers / Supervisors

If you are a supervisor, the law considers you an agent of the employer and prevents you from joining a union. Whether you want to support our mission or just want to stay on the right side of the law, this document is for you.

This document is broken into three parts:

How to tell if you are in fact a supervisor in the eyes of the law.
Can you be fired? (Spoiler: You’d have to try.)
Actions for the manager that must remain circumspect in their support to avoid retaliation by management.
Actions for managers who can afford to be more openly supportive to our cause.

All of the actions listed under the circumspect section can also likely be taken by openly supportive managers, but each person should analyze their own situation and act accordingly.

Note: This is written from a USA perspective. If you are in the UK or elsewhere, the broad generalities still apply but the precise laws and boundaries will differ slightly. We aim to get a UK review soon.

Am I a manager or supervisor?

Things that make you a manager:

You formulate, determine, and effectuate management policies by expressing and making operative decisions of your employer.

Things that make you a supervisor:

Authority to hire, fire, evaluate, discipline, or reassign employees (or contractors)
Employees (or contractors) who reasonably believe that you have such authority

Things that do not make you a manager:

Participating in hiring interviews
Working in HR
Being a Senior Associate or VP

On the US side, there is a technical definition of supervisor and manager in the National Labor Relations Act.

Example: Alice and Bob are in Houston on the same team. Alice is a VP, and Bob is an Associate. The rest of the team is in other cities. Alice works for Carol, an ED in London. Carol has told Bob that he “reports to Alice”, but Carol hired Bob and does the annual evaluations for both. Meanwhile, Alice cannot access manager tools in go/me.

In this case, Alice and Bob should confer together with Carol to determine exactly what authority Alice really has. If it’s simply about having a local contact to call in sick, then Alice is not a manager. On the other hand, if Carol plans to rubber-stamp Alice’s discretion to hire/fire/discipline, then Alice does act as a de-facto manager. In either case, it’s important for Bob to be part of the same conversation.

Can I be fired for this?

Certain activities are considered unfair labor practices by the employer. Don’t do those things, and you should be fine from a legal perspective. Doing those illegal things could create liability for the employer, which may be the fastest path to a pointed conversation with an HR representative.

Later on in this document there are some links to resources that should help keep you on the right side of the law.

It’s a long tradition for employers to resist the formation of unions. Arguably that’s short-sighted, because a healthy relationship between management and labor tends to be good for both in the long run. However, institutions naturally resist change, and so it may be wise to keep your support on the down-low.

The question comes up about joining our discord.

Certain people in the finance industry are subject to invasive monitoring of their personal lives. If you are one of those people, the company has probably demanded that you install monitoring software on your cell phone, on pain of being fired. In that case, it would probably be smarter to stay on the sidelines.

Otherwise, the union-related channels are strictly walled off. As a manager, you’ll never see it. You’ll also not be exposed to people’s real names or identities.

There are, very deliberately, spaces welcoming to all persons interested in the labor movement, as well as safe spaces for people with diverse attributes ranging from race and religion to disablity status, parenthood, veterans, the whole works – because you don’t stop being a person when the powers that be grant you a direct report or three.

This also gives you a way to supply unique insights. Interpret that sentence how you will.

Circumspect actions

Know your rights. Although you are less protected by the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) than a rank-and-file worker might be, you can still rely on this law for some protection.

Pledge to both your employees and your own manager that you will honor the law and remain neutral in the efforts of your employees to form a union.
Make sure that your employees know that you will neither monitor their union organizing activities, nor will you interfere with those activities in any way.
Make sure that your manager knows that you will assert the protections in that law, and you will not be pursuing any of these, as these would violate that law and place both yourself and the company at risk.

In this way, you can avoid being punished yourself for your actions related to the union, and can be seen as a fair, balanced, and most importantly regulation-following manager. Make sure this is communicated consistently through both words and actions. If asked why, state that it is both in your best interest as well as that of the bank to ensure strict compliance with the law, and leave your own opinion out of it.

Know the law.

Remain aware of actions from upper management.

If upper management is doing anything that is meant to countermand our efforts, leak this information to your trusted contacts in the union. We can be certain to keep the sources of this information anonymous. Having information about upcoming anti-union propaganda, internal discussions of NLRA violations, planning discussions, and the like can help us formulate proper responses and render their actions impotent. Knowledge is power, and you have access to what others may not.

Push back on upper management interference. Upper management will likely encourage you to take actions regularly to interfere in union action or provide information. If you hear these kinds of requests, inform them of the possible legal issues that may result from this action, and that you are not comfortable possibly breaking the law in this way. Pushing back from managers may make upper leadership less likely to issue these kinds of requests in the future, and makes it clear to leadership that they cannot simply issue demands and expect to be obeyed. Create a culture of principled conscientious objection.

Leave our literature / posters / pamphlets in place. Upper management may ask you to remove those pamphlets. It is both legal and safe to refuse (or simply “forget”) for removing them may qualify as illegal interference under the NLRA.

Share the law with fellow managers / peers. By providing clarifications of the NLRA to your fellow managers, you are protecting them from unnecessary ULPs and other legal risk. By phrasing in a way that compliance with this law minimizes legal and reputational risk, you have plausible deniability as to whether you support our union or not, should leadership investigate you.

Do not repeat anti-union talking-points, such as “we’re like family”, “people value individual treatment”, “union is unnecessary”, or “employees are treated well”. These are the four most common anti-union talking points, but you may hear others from corporate training programs or the like.

You are never obligated to spread anti-union propaganda, even if you are not protected by the NLRA. This falls under standard freedom of speech protections, and is something you are free to refuse.

Audacious actions

Share The Management Center’s Guiding Principles for Managers During Unionization among peers.

Indirectly declare your support of your unionizing workers. This may be risky, but if you leave your statements as something along the lines of “I cannot speak in either direction as a manager, but my own personal opinion on unionization. I support your legally protected right to form a union,” can make it less likely that you will face retaliation, and gives you a valid out, but does mean a great deal to employees under your leadership who may be hesitant to organize. Giving them even that thin sheet of protection may help people who are otherwise uncomfortable organizing muster the courage they need to step up.

If you see another manager suppressing protected action, stand up to them. The easiest and least obtrusive way would be to advise that manager that their action violates the NLRA, and that you want to look out for them to protect them from legal blowback. If you’re feeling especially bold, you can even report that as a ULP (Unfair Labor Practice – see 29 US Code § 158(a)). You do not have to be the target of a ULP, or even have “standing” in the usual legal sense, to file a ULP. Anyone can file a ULP on behalf of anyone else, publicly or anonymously.

When the company tries to action against the union: use malicious compliance, bureaucratic slowdowns, and feigned ignorance to defend the union.

Every action that upper management plans to use against the union will require action from their subordinates: that’s you. You can choose to willfully misinterpret those requests, interpret them excessively specifically, or even use the bureaucracy inherent in the system against it. A careful examination of almost any request can find loopholes to exploit while giving yourself a valid excuse. This shouldn’t be overused as it could result in negative impacts to yourself, but it can be done with a certain regularity depending on your own specific circumstances.

Naturally, all of these require careful consideration of your own needs and leadership structure, but this should provide a starting point to work from.