What’s the path from here?--

Once again, this is going to be a little vague- not because we want to keep you in the dark, but because we must keep management in the dark… they happen to be dedicated subscribers to this blog as well.  (Which may not exactly be legal under Section 7 & 8 of the NLRA, but when has a few laws ever stood in their way?)  

So you signed, your buddies signed [or said they did], and now you want to know when ConocoPhillips will bend at the knee and buy us all puppies.  The answer, once again, is… it depends.   Yes, that’s a shitty answer.

What is the legal process from A-Card to union creation?

Step1:  We HAVE to have more than 30% of potentially eligible voters sign A-cards to ask the NLRB for a Union vote.  But it would be COP-management-level-retarded to demand a vote with only 30% support.  So the actual number we’re aiming for is higher.  

What’s that number?  I’m not posting that here… email me with your name and we can talk about it.  

How close are we to that number?  See the previous answer.   

How long do we have to get to that number? A-cards are valid for a year, but we’re not going to wait that long.

Step 2: We make ‘our number’ and have the NLRB tell Conoco we want a union.  COP could do two things:

1: They could say “ok, prove to us you have more than 50% of the support and we’ll voluntarily recognize your union” – this is a “Card Check”, which is done by the NLRB and a third party, not Conoco- they just get a report that says “yeah, more than 50% signed, or No, less than 50% signed”... no names. (Spoiler- they’re not going to voluntarily recognize us even with 99% support.)

2:  They say “Screw you, we’re going to make everyone vote.”  Then we hash out with COP who should be included/excluded in the vote, then we decide how the vote should be done- in person or by mail.  Then we figure out how long voting should be open for.  Then we vote. This is a secret ballot-  literally no one will EVER know how you voted. (If we use mail-in votes I’ll write a blog post dedicated to how that’s kept secret). 

Every one of these ‘then’ statements listed above could take 2 days, or 3 months, we don’t know because we’re dealing with an incompetent government that can’t get their shit together or stay open, and a mega-corporation that has so much bureaucracy it takes 3 years to get a busted handrail welded back in place.  

The vote:  Once the vote “window” has closed, ballots are counted, if there are more Yea’s than Nay’s, we’re a union.  

Yea!  We’re a union, now what? Then we get into the nuts and bolts of forming committees, electing reps, figuring out what our demands actually are, getting a CBA hashed out, and ratifying it.  There are other blog posts and educational links about a lot of this, poke around a bit- I know this blog isn’t as entertaining as TikTok but you might learn a thing or two.  Seriously, google some shit.  There’s 40 websites that can do a better job of explaining the details of union creation than I can. I'm a knuckle-dragging wrench-monkey, not a union PR rep.  

Again, sorry for the lack of details. I wish we could be completely open and forthcoming with all the details but a battle plan that the enemy can read isn’t a battle plan.  In the meantime, keep your coworkers positive, employed and safe.  And expect management to be extra buddy-buddy with us as they pinky-promise that they’re on our side and spread lies about how we’re not actually getting fucked and how future fuckings aren't coming.