Better Job Security Through Unionizing

It seems like every other survey of workers across industries keeps showing the same results: workers across the US are worried about their job security. And why wouldn’t we be? Seemingly every month of 2024 brought news of another mass layoff, with tech sector layoffs hitting employees especially hard.

That trend is set to continue in 2025, with announcements coming from several different large companies including Meta , Wayfair , Stripe , and more about large-scale layoffs to come.

But what can workers do? If the big bosses decide to increase their profits by cutting expensive employees loose, it seems like it’s every employee for themselves. But it doesn’t have to be.

Instead of battening down your own hatches and hoping for the best, you can serve your interests through strength in numbers. The best way to accomplish that? Join or form a union.

Unions Make Firing Employees Expensive

How do labor unions make it harder for companies to fire employees? There are a few mechanisms, but the most common, most direct method is by making it expensive to fire individuals and groups alike.

The CEO, Founder, or President of any company has one job, at the end of the day: make as much profit as possible, and keep the profits increasing year over year. That means that if cutting 10,000 jobs results in a net gain in profits, the big man upstairs is probably going to do it. After all, he’s responsible to his shareholders! If the profits don’t increase, he faces a lot of pressure.

So how do unions make the decision makers decide to turn around? They make layoffs—individual or mass—a lot more expensive than they would otherwise be.

The union puts counter-pressure on the folks that make the decision: they demand every last concession possible, and also bring the force of law to bear on the people in charge. This includes demanding greater severance packages, requiring the full payment of accrued benefits, instituting guardrails around who can be laid off and how.

That means that the “quick fix” of firing hundreds or thousands of employees to save payroll becomes a much more expensive proposition.

Collective Bargaining Prevents Mass Layoffs

Collective bargaining agreements put in place by unions also function to slow down and extend the process around terminations in general and mass layoffs in particular. Most unions include guidelines around who can be terminated, how a company can go about terminating employees, and contractual rights employees have before, during, and after being cut from the labor pool.

This means that upper management has to consult with union representatives before even beginning the process to terminate employees, to make sure that there are no other remedies that can be explored.

Studies collected by the Economic Policy Institute showed that unionized workers suffered fewer layoffs than non-union workers through the pandemic. A Pew Research study showed that more workers in the US lost their jobs during the Covid shutdowns than EU workers did, and a major reason for that was that EU workers are almost all unionized in some form or another.

The ability to bargain collectively, to bring the power of the entire labor force together and put pressure on CEOs, Founders, Owners, and Presidents, makes a major difference in keeping jobs secure.

Unions Hold Corporations Accountable to Employees

The number one focus of a workers’ union is to hold the decision makers accountable to employees. Most company leadership strategies revolve around making every employee feel singled out, individual, and singularly accountable.

Divide and conquer.

Unions allow employees to operate as a group. Since employees greatly outnumber the people at the top of the hierarchy, a united front and collective pressure can turn the tide of decisions. After all: even a mass layoff can’t work unless the “unaffected” employees fall in line and let it happen.

There’s strength in numbers. Unions give that strength a focal point and an action plan.