The American Glossary of Union Terms You Should Know in 2025 (Abridged, Incomplete)

The title is only kind of a joke but I have wanted something like this for a while. It is obviously a work-in-progress. Please @ me on Bluesky or Mastodon if you’ve got a term that you’re curious about or a definition that you feel could be better explained.

Remember: If I haven’t filled it out yet, I plan to

wall-to-wall union

A union whose goal is to organize nearly every eligible employee working at a company, regardless of job classification, location, or seniority. The reason to organize a union this way is to build solidarity across all the employees and to build our power numbers.

trade union

often remembered as the more traditional industry or craft union, focuses on a particular industrial sector (e.g. hotel workers, electricians) with the goal of having control over the labor in that entire industry.

Organizing Committee (OC)

The group of workers at a company actively collaborating in order to unionize your workplace, either through voluntary recognition or a NLRB-organized election.

voluntary recognition

card check

union election

This is a process started by filing a petition for an election with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). Labor-friendly workplaces try to avoid this because it is often time-consuming and doesn't achieve any particular expanded consensus over the matter of whether a union should be established or not over a card check. In most cases, union election votes can be cast in person or via mail-in ballot, the ballots are then counted by a local NLRB office to determine the official result. A union-hostile workplace will often take advantage of the extra time needed to run an election by engaging in intimidation or manipulation of the employees that are eligible to vote in the election.

Unfair Labor Practice (ULP)

Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA or contract)

grievance

conventionally, it's useful to think of a grievance as a violation of contract terms. More broadly, it can also encompass a unilateral change of established working conditions or policies (which ideally, should be in your contract). They can be filed individually or collectively and it is often in the employer and the union's best interests to resolve them before they had a need to escalate them to an outside mediator, arbitrator, or other relevant body (which is usually agreed upon in the CBA)

strike

collection action (action, for short)