ABA Family Legal Guide

Law and the Workplace

On the Job

Unions in the Workplace

If the union wins the election, which workers does the union represent?

If a union is voted in to represent the workers, it doesn't necessarily represent every worker employed by the company. The union election is held among those employees who are considered to have a "community of interest" at the workplace. These employees form a bargaining unit, which is the group of workers voting in the election who will be represented by the union in the event the union wins the election.

Employees have a community of interest if they share similar working conditions, jobs, hours of work, and supervision. For example, employees who work on an assembly line probably do not have a community of interest with office workers, whereas salespeople in a department store would probably share a community of interest even though they work in different departments and sell different types of goods.