I’m hoping someone with knowledge of collective agreements and unions can help me understand why union members would agree to 2 weeks vacation. Doesn’t a union hold more power for negotiation?
More than 1 year of continuous employment -> 2 weeks
From what I can tell this is less than most regular employers (maybe food industry is like that though).
I’m looking at forming a collective agreement at my workplace but seeing this result is discouraging.
Well if you’re just reading random CBAs without the context of being a worker within that CBA, there is a lot you’re going to miss. Unions are not something you can fully understand from the outside looking in. Generally it’s only the executives and officers within a union who have a good idea of how the whole thing works.
Lets use vacation time as an example. If you read my CBA you will find I earn 10 hours of vacation time a month, or three weeks a year. That may seem low, but my employer gives us two weeks paid off when the business shuts down for Christmas. So 40% of my vacation time is not mentioned in the CBA. My employer is also generous with sick days and none of that is part of the CBA, so you can add another week and a half of time off a year. So my CBA says I’m entitled to three weeks off a year but really I end up getting six and a half.