GEICO Workers Launch Union Effort, Management Says Call the Cops [View all]

After GEICO removed all bulletin boards from the Buffalo office to hinder unionizing, organizers started hanging union posters in restrooms. Management responded by removing them and mandating organizers obtain permission from HR first. Photo: @GEICOUnited.

September 28, 2022 / Jonah Furman

GEICO insurance sales rep Lila Balali first started thinking about a union early in the pandemic. “I didn’t really know what a union was,” she says, “just that it was something for the employee.”

She and her co-workers had been abruptly sent to work from home, where she set up a cramped workspace. “We were taking calls on our cell phones, 40 hours a week, our phone to our ear,” she recalls. “You couldn’t get reimbursed or provided a headset.

“A billion-dollar company—a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary, a Warren Buffet company—was having us go on our cell phones. They passed the cost of business on to us. They didn’t want to spend $1,000 on each associate, and we couldn’t stop them.”

This year, she and her co-workers in Buffalo launched GEICO United, an effort to form an independent union at the insurance giant. GEICO has 2,600 employees in Buffalo, making it one of the area’s largest employers. The union would be the first at the company, although more than 50,000 workers at other Berkshire Hathaway companies are unionized, including rail workers at BNSF.

FULL story: https://labornotes.org/2022/09/geico-workers-launch-union-effort-management-says-call-cops