This isn't a direct comparison, but as someone who works at a union that represents a professional unit that includes internal investigators, I have a lot of sympathy for keeping the watchers out of the same union as the watched. Nothing quite like representing a member who recently one of my co-workers had to savage on cross in arbitration literally a week prior.
Any unit -- whether including guards and non-guards, professionals and non-professionals -- could have hostile management-favoring members in it. Some guards and professionals will be more solidaristic than some production-level workers.
Of course. (And note I’m not speaking to any of the other arbitrary distinctions in the Act.) But it is specifically and actively divisive to have people in the unit whose specific role it is to investigate (inter alia) other members of the bargaining unit. I suspect that “guards” would be seen similarly.
What was/is the logic behind the segregation of guards and non guards? The only thing I can imagine would be some fear of intimidation by the guys with guns and Billy clubs, but maybe I'm missing something.
This isn't a direct comparison, but as someone who works at a union that represents a professional unit that includes internal investigators, I have a lot of sympathy for keeping the watchers out of the same union as the watched. Nothing quite like representing a member who recently one of my co-workers had to savage on cross in arbitration literally a week prior.
Any unit -- whether including guards and non-guards, professionals and non-professionals -- could have hostile management-favoring members in it. Some guards and professionals will be more solidaristic than some production-level workers.
Of course. (And note I’m not speaking to any of the other arbitrary distinctions in the Act.) But it is specifically and actively divisive to have people in the unit whose specific role it is to investigate (inter alia) other members of the bargaining unit. I suspect that “guards” would be seen similarly.
What was/is the logic behind the segregation of guards and non guards? The only thing I can imagine would be some fear of intimidation by the guys with guns and Billy clubs, but maybe I'm missing something.