Logo of JPMC Workers Alliance

We are a dedicated team of JPMC employees devoted to a simple mission: Better working conditions for all JPMC employees worldwide.

Questions and Answers – or, Countering the Propaganda

As workers begin to question the status quo and contemplate bettering their circumstances through collective action, companies take notice and eventually gear up for a propaganda war. The company will do, say, or publish whatever brain-rot will make us sit down and get back to making the capitalist class even richer than they already are, rather than joining hands with fellow workers and claiming our rightful share of the surplus our labor creates.

The first line of attack against workers self-organizing is to teach the management some scripted talking-points to keep us divided – fighting amongst ourselves and distracted from the prize.

We need to understand the real facts, stripped of corporate mendacity and propaganda.

Myth: There’s no money in the budget for raises.

Like all companies, ours is in business to make money – but that’s only half the story. What happens to the money that it makes? Here are some ways it can be used:

Who controls where this money goes? Why, the top executives do, of course! It’s only natural they’d want to direct as much as possible into their own pockets.

Executives realise that any improvement to Worker quality-of-life, working conditions, benefits, or wages, immediately translates to a reduction in what they can pay themselves. So they fight like tigers to prevent it.

Let’s be real. Executives serve a valuable function, but no part of a company can function without the rest. Labor deserves a fair piece of the pie too, both in working conditions and compensation. The only question is what’s fair? Should it be, the worst they can treat you and you don’t leave? Or should it more properly be, the best they can treat you and they don’t fold?

As long as we’re isolated – bargaining only on behalf of ourselves – the company has all the leverage. They can issue “take-it-or-leave-it” ultimatums, counting on “leave-it” to be infeasible or uncomfortable or worse. Only through collective bargaining and the threat of coordinated big-A Action can we get any leverage. Only through a contract – a union contract – will we be able to retain any of the gains we make thereby.

Half-Truth: But the company treats you well!

But do they really treat you how you want to be treated? Or do they alter the deal whenever the CEO gets salty about Friday night phone calls? Do they keep us in the dark about planned changes so that we find out from news media leaks instead? If you’re lucky enough to have a clean and safe work site, then what’s happening with your work/life balance?

The simps and sycophants will point out how much better life is for today’s white-collar worker than the black-lung factories of Industrial-Revolution era coal mining. And it is – because of unions! But this is still the wrong standard. The world is at a far better baseline now than a hundred years ago. Today, we can do better and we should do better. To do that, we will need to understand:

The same group of employees behind the now-famous petition (Thanks for the shout-out, Jamie Dimon!) collected data from a survey that went around in January. It shows that 95% of us are unhappy with how the company treats us.

A decent respect for human dignity compels us to insist collectively on improvements. The only way to actually influence the status quo is to organize, unionize, and fight for what’s right!

Distraction: Look at this Shiny New Headquarters!

Most of us don’t benefit. Current estimates put the cost at $3,000,000,000. That’s enough to buy everyone assigned there a small house in rural Texas. Globally, it’s over ten thousand dollars per employee. It’s not built for workers; it’s a real-estate play. Wouldn’t you rather have the cash in your pocket?

Division: You want those people to be included?

Historically, a classic union-busting tactic was to take advantage of racism and similar ingrained social disparities. However, today’s workers are much more egalitarian. Yes, we do want those people to benefit. Equal pay for equal work!

Another common divisive tactic is to point out the so-called “free-rider problem”: People in right-to-work states (i.e. everywhere JPMC has an office) cannot be compelled to join a union or pay the (miniscule) dues that come with a union contract. The rule functions to undermine solidarity on the job by pitting workers who pay dues against workers who do not.

The answer is straightforward: “Freeloaders” are only a problem if you see the union as a third-party service provider, which ours is not. Rather, we are a group of concerned workers taking action on issues that we care about. By having all workers’ backs – even non-members – we create goodwill and tend to win people over.

Finally, unions anywhere make life better for workers everywhere. This is the union spill-over effect. The boss would have us sacrifice our own gains just to keep others down. No such pettiness afflicts our members. A win is a win.

True, but not in a good way: The Company values a direct working relationship with employees.

The company values the direct working relationship because that is a relationship it can control. Workers unionizing and fighting that relationship dynamic is exactly what they fear: a loss of control. With a union, you and your co-workers have the power to take that control back, to wrestle the levers of power from the hands of people who do not value you, only the working relationship they have that controls you.

Remember who controls the money. With 300,000 one-on-one relationships, we’re stuck in a race to the bottom, competing to be the lowest bidder in terms of compensation, respect, working conditions, and quality-of-life: The company holds all the cards. Only through collective bargaining can we hope to leverage for ourselves a fair share of that sweet, sweet profit that our efforts enable and create.

Half-truth: The company believes employees prefer to be treated as individuals, and will do just fine without a union.

It’s not about what the company believes, is it? We should like the truth!

Americans have been sold a mythos of rugged individualism for decades. The company would like us to believe that we’re all temporarily-embarassed billionaires awaiting our big break. In any case, big breaks don’t come from working for The Man as divided individuals, coordinated only by Management.

The way to succeed, in business as in war, is with a unified front. Shoulder to shoulder in unity, with interlocked shields, the Roman Legions marched unopposed wherever they chose. But should one man break ranks, rout would soon follow.

When we submit to be treated as individuals, we are divided and made to compete against each other. We would do better to cooperate.

Cole’s Notes: The company may believe this, but is it true? The evidence you show here says that it is not. Working as a union does not mean that people cannot be treated as individuals, but it means that we are not obligated to be treated only as individuals. The company has the power to discard or ignore the opinions of individuals, and that’s why they want to treat employees that way. It is impossible for the company to treat a voluntary union of workers this way. The company claims that we will all succeed and prosper in a union-free setting, but that is exactly what we have now. Do you feel like you’re “prospering”? My guess is that the answer is no.

Outright Lie: The union just wants your dues-money. They don’t care about you.

Remember: The union is identically us employees (in a specific bargaining unit). We care about ourselves because we are ourselves. Yes, we would have a relationship with a national organization, but each union local is its own legal entity, operated democratically by the vote of its members.

So what’s up with dues, then? What does that 1.3% buy me?

First of all, there are no dues before a contract, just like no taxation without representation. Furthermore, a contract will certainly not lower your pay. (Why on Earth would we agree to that?) In fact, on average union workers get paid 13% more. (Look it up!) Nowhere else can you find a 10x return on investment. So while nobody can promise any specific increase, we can say that the statistics are in our favor.

Next, the national organization performs a range of services for us. Think of them like the lawyer you’d bring to a court case: They know how to negotiate, how to navigate the process, how work the levers of law and government in our favor. That leaves us regular people free to do the work we actually know how to do.

Another big point is the assistance fund. Some people call it “strike insurance”: Basically, on the off chance that a bargaining unit collectively elects to strike, then the assistance fund pays out a stipend to help members keep the lights on during. It won’t put your kids through college, but it’s something.

Last, as a member of a legally-recognized union, you get certain additional legal rights. We’ll talk more about that in the next section.

Wishful Thinking / Disinformation: The Company believes itself best able to solve problems one-on-one, employee-to-manager, rather than through a third-party.

Either way, you’d still have access to the management chain – even one-on-one, if that’s your preference. However, one-on-one, there are no witnesses. We all know what happens when there are no witnesses.

If you’re fixing to have an uncomfortable conversation with management, wouldn’t you rather have a colleague in your corner? You’d have that right under the law, if you were in a union.

A union is no mere “third party”. It is composed exclusively of non-management workers in your same company – in the same bargaining unit. And one of the services it offers is formal dispute resolution. When you choose to use it, the union can negotiate on your behalf to get problems fixed.

Cole’s Notes: This is correct. A union is you! A union is a democratic alliance of workers, ratified and approved by its members. Look at history: we are a society that claims to value democracy, placing it above all else. Why would we accept anything but democracy from our workplaces? Management wants to maintain the system they have, which is deeply hierarchical and structured more like a feudal state than any form of democracy I would recognize. Wouldn’t you rather hold your work to that same democratic standard?

Threats / Disinformation: You can’t negotiate your salary once unionized.

As things stand now, most people’s only realistic opportunity to negotiate salary is when they’re hired. Think back to January: Do we negotiate our raises or are they handed down to us from the executives with a “take it or leave it” overtone? For that matter, did you even get a raise? Many of us did not. Many more got a pittance. And what is our alternative? Go for a walk? These days, the grass is not much greener on the other side of the street. We need to fertilize our own fields.

Typically with a union contract, pay scales and raises and the conditions for them would be laid out as part of the contract which we re-negotiate collectively from time to time. Something akin to this military pay scale could be negotiated, adjusted for the kind of work done and the level of risks and responsibilities involved. I’d like to see profit sharing also be a defined part of it.

By the way, not all unions are the same in this regard. NFL, MLB, and NBA players are unionized but still negotiate individual contracts.

Delay: Wait and see / We’ve done so much already!

We’ve seen what years of the status quo brought us: Arbitrary and unreasonable surprise edicts from on high, with no power to resist it. The company may even offer some token concession in an effort to silence us. But make no mistake: Once dissent is quashed, the concession soon disappears. The corporate goal is not happy, fulfulled workers; their goal is profit, pure and simple.

Scare Tactics: You’ll be made to strike!

Not in the sense the Executives would have you believe.

We only strike if we, the union members ourselves, vote to do so. The same is true for other, less-disruptive labor actions such as work-to-rule or Blue Flu.

In practice, strikes are generally rare and short-lived. They’re a nuclear option for when negotiations break down or grievances go chronically unresolved. Work stopages are at historic low levels according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.

Despair Tactics: You’ll wait forever on a contract / It can take years…

This just means the company intends to act in bad faith. That’s literally against the law. It’s also common to the point of being usual. Fortunately, our national partners – whether we affiliate with CWA or UE or any other – know how to hold the company to account.

Getting a contract is never easy, but it’s totally worthwhile.

Bullying: In the current political climate, we don’t have to follow the law.

The political climate is what it is. That does not mean we bow down before our corporate overlords and beg alms. Some things will be more difficult than they might have been a few years ago, but let’s don’t forget our spiritual forebears who struggled for and won the right to organize, written into law in 1935. They operated largely without a legal framework for protected concerted activity, and in time they won. If they can do it, so can we. Just – be prepared for a long, hard struggle. This is not a battle; it’s a war – and a war we can win, together!