Petition: Help Us Keep Our Union United!
Autistic Self Advocacy Network Board and Management
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The Autistic Self Advocacy Union is thrilled to share that we have been granted voluntary recognition, but ASAN's leaders are trying to weaken our union by disputing the inclusion of three members. Please read and sign the petition below to learn more and take action!
To:
Autistic Self Advocacy Network Board and Management
From:
[Your Name]
Background
The Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) is a nonprofit made by and for autistic people. ASAN thinks autistic people should have all the same rights as non-autistic people. Autistic people should get the same chances to do well in life as non-autistic people.
To help ASAN reach those goals, ASAN staff made the Autistic Self Advocacy Union (ASAU). A union is a group of workers who come together to protect their rights at work. To learn more about unions and about ASAU, go to our website: https://cwalocals.org/asau
The U.S. government has rules about how to become an official union. Official unions get better protection than unofficial unions. ASAU wants to be an official union so we can have our rights protected. There are a couple ways to become an official union. The best and fastest way is through getting voluntary recognition.
Voluntary recognition is when the people in charge of a workplace decide that they will cooperate with their employees’ union. Voluntary recognition is a way for the people in charge of a workplace to show they support the union. The main people in charge of ASAN are the Executive Director, Managers, and the Board of Trustees.
What is Happening Now
ASAU is very excited to share that ASAN’s Executive Director, Managers, and Board of Trustees have granted us voluntary recognition! Now that we are an official union, we can do more work to make ASAN better.
BUT, ASAN’s leaders are making it harder for us to work as a union. ASAN’s leaders and their legal team are trying to stop three members of our union from staying in our union. They say that these members should not be in our union because these members are managers.
Laws about unions say that managers cannot be in unions. There are certain things that have to be true about a person’s job for that person to be considered a manager by US labor law. Some of the things that have to be true about a person’s job for them to be considered a manager are:
The person has to have the power to hire and fire other workers
The person has to have the power to promote other workers
The person has to have the power to assign projects to other workers
The three people in our union that ASAN’s leaders are trying to take out of our union have the word “manager” in their job titles. But, none of these people have the power to do any of the things listed above on their own. They are sometimes involved in discussions about decisions about other workers, but they cannot take action without people one or two levels above them saying it is okay. ASAN’s management team has meetings without these three people. ASAN’s management team does not let these three people make big decisions on their own. These three people belong in our union. They are not really managers according to laws about unions.
When employers try to make it harder for workers to unionize, that is called union busting. ASAN’s leaders are doing union busting by trying to make our union smaller. Taking three people out of our union means losing 25% of our union. To keep our union strong and work to make ASAN better, we need these three people in our union. We need your help to tell ASAN’s leaders that everyone in our union right now belongs in our union!
How You Can Help
Signing this petition shows the people in charge of ASAN that you want them to stop trying to remove people from our union. We hope lots of people sign this petition to support our union!
After you sign this petition, you can share the link with people you know. You can share the link on social media.
You can follow ASAU on social media. We are @AutSelfAdvUnion on Bluesky, X, and Instagram. We are on Facebook at facebook.com/AutSelfAdvUnion. We would love for you to share our social media posts!
Thank you for your support. With our community behind us, we can show ASAN’s leaders that ASAU is stronger together!