What to look for...

The Employee Free Choice Act may or may not ever come into existence. We believe it will however that plus $4.17 will get you a Grande Decaf Java Chip Frappucino from Starbucks and nothing else today. While we watch and wait, companies are still at risk.

Companies today are always susceptible to union overtures. Every situation is different and no environment is ever the same. There are trends and "hints" that your organization may be moving in that direction. Don't get paranoid. Not every single one of these means you have a one way ticket to a union. They can be a direction or at the very least a small warning. Here they are. They are not in any sort of order...

1. People you don't know or have never seen before start showing up in your offices and property.
2. Employees from multiple areas start having "out of the way" meetings.
3. Secrets...(like when your kids were young and stopped talking when you came around)
4. Union literature... (yes, that is obvious!)
5. The types and nature of employee complaints change and grow in volume.
6. The best and most loyal employees are not popular anymore.
7. Quality of work of your best employees starts to taper off.
8. Your worst employees start performing better.
9. A "whiner/complainer" becomes much more popular.
10. Worker "conditions, rights, fair share, equitable, tenure, grievance, agreement, labor" become newly used words

We did not list that your folks start meeting with labor, cards get passed out, and a union holds an off-site picnic. We don't want to insult your intelligence. Hopefully you will have seen some of the above prior.

Any change in your culture that you did not direct, encourage or plan is a high level alarm that your way of doing business is at risk. If an employee or employees can change your culture on their own then you should begin immediately to build a culture that will not allow that to happen.

Like any business competitive environment, if you leave a space or an opening; someone will fill it.