Intro: Do you feel like you were meant to have a kick-ass career as a hair stylist? Like you got into this industry to make big things happen?
Maybe you’re struggling to build a solid base and want some stability. Maybe you know social media is important, but it feels like a waste of time because you aren’t seeing any results. Maybe you’ve already had some amazing success but are craving more. Maybe you’re ready to truly enjoy the freedom and flexibility this industry has to offer.
Cutting and coloring skills will only get you so far, but to build a lifelong career as a wealthy stylist, it takes business skills and a serious marketing strategy. When you’re ready to quit just working in your business and start working on it, join us here where we share real success stories from real stylists.
I’m Britt Seva, social media and marketing strategist just for hair stylists, and this is the Thriving Stylist Podcast.
Britt Seva: What is up and welcome back to the Thriving Stylist Podcast. I’m your host, Britt Seva, and this week, we’re going to talk about would a union be a good thing for the beauty industry.
Now, this is a question I’ve been asked, I don’t know, a dozen or so times over the years. To be honest, I wasn’t educated enough on unions to really dig in. I’ll give you my experience with unions, which is quite limited. My husband was an employee of the San Francisco Fire Department for many years. He was a union employee, not by chance, it was a requirement of the job. He did have some experience working with the union. You may or may not know, generally speaking, when you go into something like EMS, so whether it’s fire, medical, police work, law enforcement, anything like that, there is a high probability of lawsuit.
It’s just kind of one—it’s like being a doctor too. It’s one of those things that you run into. There were instances where my husband was involved in situations that did become legal and the union stepped in as his representative. That’s what I’ve seen play out as far as unions go. That’s my only hands-on experience myself.
So leaning into this podcast, I actually had to source a ton of information. I looked at the US Department of Labor as my primary source, but I also looked at smartasset.com, smallbusiness.com, and NPR. I just looked at all of the different stories and viewpoints, and I really wanted to research what it would look like if there was a nationwide or local unions in the beauty industry.
Now, before anybody says, “Wait, Britt, there are unions in the beauty industry,” no, I know that there are, and we’re going to talk about that a little bit too, but I think that—well, I know—that when people reach out to me and they’re saying, “I feel like we need a union,” what people are more looking for and talking about I believe is more like a national level governing unit that ensures that stylists are well taken care of. That is, that is my understanding of what people are looking for with a union.
Now the question is can a union provide that for the industry? And that’s the question I want to dig into today.
Spoiler alert, this podcast is not going to end with, “So what we should do is…” because what you’ll see is as you dig into this, it almost uncovers more questions than answers, which I think is why we don’t have a union as an industry today.
Let’s just look at what unions look like, what it could look like to be unionized as an industry, what unions do exist as the industry, and one particular state’s recent quest to unionize and how that shook out.
Frst, let’s look at the US Department of Labor’s definition of a union. “A labor union is a group of two or more employees who join together to advance common interests such as wages, benefits, schedules, or other employment terms and conditions, higher wages, health insurance, vacation days, pay, sick leave, and retirement benefits are a few examples of what workers achieve through their unions. Workers also pursue other enhancements such as flexible scheduling, protections against harassment, and safer working conditions that improve the quality of jobs and workers’ wellbeing.”
Most of those things are very in line with how I coach, right? I coach to salon owners working their way to be able to offer things like benefits. I coach to flexible schedules. I coach to being able to take sick time and not pre-booking yourself out so far that if you call in sick, you have to work seven days a week for the next three weeks to make up for it, right?
Many of these things are very much in alignment with what I coach to. One of the questions I’m just going to ask from the jump is why do we need a union to make these things possible? Question mark. Just one of the things that came up for me that I want you to just have that running through your mind as we go through these things, okay?
Let’s go back to how unions started because I think you need to understand the history of them to understand if it could apply today. Unions date back to the 18th century, but really started picking up in the 19th century during the industrial boom. In the Industrial Revolution, there was a ton of child labor being used, abuse of workers. I mean, slavery was still an issue. We had all of these major challenges where humans were being treated inhumanely and so unions were formed to negotiate painful working conditions as a way to help pass child labor laws and to prevent some of the abuse that we saw for years and years and years.
That’s where these unions came from.
With all of this, we saw unions peak in the 1940s, so we’re talking about 80 years ago. Ever since they’ve been on a bit of a decline. Now that doesn’t mean there aren’t still unions, there’s still actually several forms of unions.
Let’s talk about what unions exist today. There’s four different types of trade unions. We have craft, industrial, general, and federation. I’m going to quickly talk about each and then we’re going to get into our industry stuff.
A craft union combines workers who are engaged in a particular craft or skill, but who may work for various employers at various locations. For example, in the construction trade, all carpenters are in a carpenters union. Painters are in a painters union. There’s a plasterers union for those who do plastering, right? Within a specific trade, within each of those segments, there’s their own unions.
Imagine if extension specialists had a union, bridal stylists had their own union, those who did coloring services or chemical services had their own union. You could see the benefits of doing it that way because does a bridal stylist have the same scheduling needs or wants or challenges as somebody who’s doing cut and colors? No, I mean, it’s completely different business models. So you could see how sometimes a craft union makes the most sense.
Then we have an industrial union, which is where everybody in the same industry is in the same union regardless of their skill or their specific trade. Imagine if stylists, barbers, bridal stylists, extension artists, everybody else, all together, one union. That would be called an industrial union. So our entire industry, one force.
Then we have a general union, which would be like a national union with one central body. For example, a lot of hospitals are a part of nationwide hospital unions. One union may represent hospitals in 14 different states.
When you think of the unions, it’s like the group of officials who oversee and fight for the rights of those who are within the union, right? If you were to join a union, you’d have union representatives. The union representatives can work at the industry craft level, the industrial level (based on industry), or the general union level, which would be national, it might include multiple different industries, but same governing boards.
For example, there’s a general union called the National Labor Union Congress. This is a centralized union that negotiates the employee’s rights for every single employee who happens to be a part of that union. It could be a national coffee chain, it could be nurses, it could be all kind of different employees who happen to be involved in that union would all have their rights fought for at the same time.
Then there’s a federation. Imagine if our industry decided to go craft based, so there was the extension union, the barbering union, the bridal stylist union, and all these small localized unions came together to form a federation. Then there’s individual union levels and then there’s also a higher level where you get together. If you think of it like state government, you know how you can have mayors of different cities and then you have the governor who oversees the state. It’s like a pyramid like that where there would be different levels of union representation and there would likely be meetings where everybody also comes together, that sort of a thing.
That begins challenge number one. If we did a poll here on the Thriving Stylist Podcast and said, “Hey, what kind of union do you think would be best for our industry?,” some believe it should be more craft based, like all bridal stylists should be represented by the same governing board. Some would say, “No, we’re more powerful if the industry comes together combined.” The challenge with that is that barbers might want something completely different than nail technicians or maybe we’re not including nail technicians. Is it all licensed beauty professionals or is it just cosmetologists or is it cosmetologists and barbers? It opens up this can of like, but what does it include?
Versus when you look at an electricians union, it’s either you’ve got the electrician’s license or you don’t, right?
My husband was working with the San Francisco Fire Department. He’s either a firefighter or he is not, and so very cut and dry, and makes it a little bit more simple. Our industry’s a bit more complicated and to date, there’s not been an alignment of we all want the same things. This is an industry where people do have individual aspirations and interests and goals and scheduling needs, and so aligning those into a perfect package where everybody’s happy has historically been challenging.
Let’s for a second—we’re going to have some story time. We’re going to break up all this technical stuff with some story time and then I’m going to get into some pros and cons and just things to think about.
Remember at the very beginning when I said a labor union is a group of two or more employees? As soon as I said that, did anybody go, “Oh shoot.” Unfortunately, that’s a lot of where this falls apart for our industry is that less than 40% of our industry is actually an employee of anything. Most of the industry is independent, either a salon owner or a studio suite owner, a booth rental stylist. The majority of our industry is not an employee. The fact that we are a group of independents immediately makes us unique.
It’s one of the things that’s always been a challenge for our industry is how we operate very differently than most. I don’t think it makes us a special snowflake, but it certainly does make it harder to do something like a union because one of the most basic requirements is that it does have to be employees coming together. It can’t be just individual business, 20,000 individual business owners assigned to unionize. That doesn’t work as far as the US Department of Labor standards. It doesn’t look like that. It starts to become a little bit tricky as far as how this would come together.
Let’s get into some story time. You can look this up. This is a story from NPR and it dates back to one year ago when the Atlanta Opera hair and makeup artists decided to try to unionize and they reached out to the Theatrical Stage Employees Union, which is generally how you start creating a union. We’ll talk about that in a minute too. But you reach out to a union corporation who does this professionally—it’s not just like you, me, and Susie get together and we decide we’re going to do this. You do need to go to a union governing board to put this together.
They reached out and worked on securing a collective bargaining agreement, which are the terms that the union would come to, in this case, the Atlanta Opera House with and say, “Hey, listen, this team of employees needs specific things.” Specifically these hair and makeup artists were saying we need health insurance. This was coming right after the pandemic and the closures in the shutdown, right? They said they need more stability. One of the things they were really fighting for was health insurance. A lot of them are uninsured and that causes massive financial hardship, emotional distress, all of these different things.
Here’s where the snag hit is that the Atlanta Opera made a statement and said those who work here are independent contractors, not employees. Therefore, they cannot collectively bargain, which is how the law works. Independent contractors can’t collectively bargain. It doesn’t work like that. It does have to be employees of an organization.
Here’s where salon owners should maybe get a little nervous and where even stylists should get a little bit nervous. Because this went to a legal level and because the question was, “Listen, are these Atlanta Opera house hair and makeup artists employees or are they not?,” it opened up that can of worms, which is a challenge within our industry as well. Where whomever was overseeing this—at this point—legal matter, said, “Well, are the employees or are they not?” The way that our United States government decides if somebody’s an employee or not is by how much the business has control over the manner and means in which the worker does work. The more control, the more likely the worker will be deemed an employee, not a contractor, at which point the employer needs to offer things like unemployment insurance and pay for those taxes.
A lot of people in our industry don’t want to become employees. As soon as you start to unionize, the first thing that’s going to happen is the government or whomever the governing body is that you look into this is going to say, “Well, how many of you are actually employees?” And those who aren’t the salon owners could end up having to pay back taxes for those who are working independent contractors but haven’t been filing their paperwork properly could end up in an IRS mess.
What I got from reading this article is our industry isn’t showing itself as ready to even attempt something like this because we don’t run traditionally like a traditional business does.
For example, Starbucks—not all locations. Starbucks is a franchise, not all locations but many locations decided to establish a franchise. In recent years, they have—this has been over a year—they’ve yet to create a collective bargaining agreement.
It’s difficult to have even individual locations come together and everybody to agree. While the union was formed, there is no collective bargaining agreement. Nothing has actually taken place that would benefit those who work at Starbucks.
You look at a company like Starbucks and you think, “But they already have the health insurance and they already have the education benefits.” Yeah, but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t more things that they want. I’ve never worked at Starbucks personally, so I don’t know what their wants or needs are. I haven’t looked into that to that degree. But when you look at something like an organized company—like Starbucks—with employees is having a hard time unionizing, imagine if an independent-based industry like ours tried to do the same thing. How would they ever get on the same page? It starts to become a challenge.
Let’s dig into pros and cons a little bit.
Let’s start with the pros ’cause they’re so simple.
Unions increase the pay and benefits for workers. It’s one of the reasons that most people consider unionizing. It’s definitely the juiciest, the most exciting. We want more pay, we want more benefits, we want to be more appreciated as employees. Again, I go back to the fact like, hey, some salon owners take note. If this is a conversation in the industry, this is maybe what people want. The funny thing is generally the business becomes more profitable when the employees are taken better care of. But that’s neither here nor there. Generally speaking, that’s one of the big pros that somebody who’s unionized gets to take advantage of.
Number two, there’s a formal process for disputes and complaints. Right now, if you’re a stylist, like the amount of DMs I get from stylists who are like, “My owner did this and I can’t believe they did it, how do I handle it?” Well, if your owner does something that is inappropriate, disrespectful, discriminatory, whatever, there is a formalized process for that. You can follow the formalized process. Often, go directly to your union representative and then wash your hands of it and the union takes care of it. Or the process defined by the union and agreed upon by the collective bargaining agreement takes care of it. There’s not as much gray area, it’s very black and white.
Number three, it creates an industry standard. People can’t just say, “Well, take it or leave it. This is the best we can do.” Well, no, there’s this other option that’s juicy and if you can’t give me what I need, I might just look to a unionized salon instead, right? Something to think about.
Cons, these are the things that people don’t realize.
Con number one is that there’s union dues that need to be paid. Union dues are very minimal. You’re looking at somewhere between a couple hundred to a couple thousand dollars a year depending on the industry, depending on how much you make, depending on a lot of different factors. Union dues are required to be paid by an employee whether you like it or not.
Let’s say somebody works at a hospital that’s unionized and they’re like, “But I don’t care to be a part of the union.” It doesn’t matter. You still pay in anyway. It’s not something you can opt into or out of. You are in. If you choose to work for a business that is unionized, you’re in, you pay it. It’s part of what you have to pay for to be an employee of that place.
With that, number two, businesses that are unionized can have different hiring practices. They can require people to be members of a union prior to being hired. This has brought up some issues of discriminatory hiring practice because some unions can screen and be particular for who can be a member of that union. For example, there is a union based—actually there’s several, but of them I was looking at, there’s a union based out of Los Angeles area that is for those who are makeup and hair professionals who work on movie sets. There are very specific requirements for applying to be a part of that union. Not everybody’s even accepted. Now, once you are accepted, you get these perks and benefits, but you have to work to even meet the qualifications. It’s the same if you’re a film actor. There’s unions, but do you know, there’s a lot of actors who were like starving, like trying to get by, they can’t just join the union. You can’t be a broke, out-of-work actor, join the union, and get insurance. It doesn’t work like that. You have to meet criteria before you can even apply.
Salons could say, “Yeah, we’re unionized and we only hire those who already qualifiy to be in the union.” If the union criteria is you must have been a stylist for three years or more, then those who are newer to the industry than that couldn’t be hired to even to be an assistant at that place of business because they don’t meet the union requirements. It’s a little bit more complicated than I think that people think. Just something to keep in mind.
Lastly, there’s something called union seniority. So have you ever heard of teachers earning tenure? And it’s not tenure, it’s tenure. It’s T-E-N-U-R-E, and if you know of teachers, they say, “Yay, I’m tenured.” It’s essentially a level of seniority within a union system. Some schools are private and they’re not unionized. Most public schools in most states are unionized. You pay union dues, but there’s lots of different benefits. One of the things you earn is guaranteed seniority, kind of. If you look at how—let’s use the teachers for example. How teachers are paid, a teacher’s income goes up the longer they work. Structures like that to me almost support minimal effort. Why work harder when I could be a stylist who’s barely getting by five years in, but my bargaining agreement says that five years in my rate of pay should be x. It doesn’t necessarily matter how much the person’s producing. Did you ever in high school have a terrible teacher who had been at the school for 15, 20, 30 years? They were tenured. The way that something like that works is unless somebody does something illegal or completely goes against union policy, they are fairly protected from being terminated. Just being a bad teacher is not enough.
Imagine if you’re a salon owner and you have a stylist in your space who’s not good, like they’re lazy or they just are uneducated and they’re not good at what they do, but you have this union agreement. You can’t let them go for just being crummy. There has to be other reasons than that.
Now the other thing is if you’re a mega driven stylist and you’re like, “I built an entire clientele in 18 months,” well, you’re not going to make top dollar for 15 years because that’s how the union pay structure works.
Seniority is a really big deal in unions. For some people it takes a really long time to gain seniority.
The other thing is, has anybody ever had somebody who’s trapped in their salon space due to a non-compete? This is part of the reason I’m not a fan of non-competes. You don’t want somebody who’s very miserable working in your environment. It chases all of the great, motivated people out the door.
I have had friends who are saying, “I work in such and such county and I’m completely miserable here, but I have my seniority and I’m not willing to use lose it, so I’m just going to stay.” They use every sick day they get, they show up and they half-ass it the whole time. These are my friends and I understand that the position that they’re in. They’re just not motivated by their job anymore. But they’re unionized. They’ve earned seniority and they don’t want to go somewhere else even if there’s other opportunities they like more. They’re so in this seniority system that they’re like, “Well, I’ll just work in misery for the next 25 years.”
In some ways, the system can be great and in some ways, the system isn’t what it seems.
The reason I bring all of this up is I am a huge proponent of I want our industry to be more like traditional business. I think that stylists should be able to be employees, but still have freedom and flexibility and make a ton of money, a ton of money, whether it be hourly, salaried, commission for now at least. But one day I’d love to see that kind of shift away.
When you look at employees today in massive organizations who are really, really happy, they’re generally hourly or salaried employees who are making really good money. If you were a stylist and you were making 300 grand on salary, would you be sad that you weren’t making that on commission? Or would you just be like, “Heck, yeah, I made 300 grand this year.”
I think that if we can get out of the mindset of it has to look exactly like this, we want everything, there’s just no flexibility. We look at like—but what does traditional business do? The majority of traditional businesses aren’t unionized.
I think in some ways our industry looks at a union and says, “Well, there’s a lot of trades that are unionized. Maybe it’s good for us.” When you look at the trades that are unionized, they’re already employee-based. I think that we have to put one foot in front of the other.
In order to even consider a union, our industry would have to be at least predominantly employee based. There are already unions in the beauty industry, but like we discovered with a couple of the stories I’ve told you today, those who are independent have a much more challenging time joining. It’s not that there are not unions for independent contractors, but there are a lot of stipulations and limitations to them. The benefits of them are tricky because trying to get insured by a union as an independent contractor is very tough, if at all even possible. I think the bigger question is not we need a union. I think that the stylists think let’s get a union because it forces the hand.
I think instead we say like, as an industry, “Can we have our cake and eat it too? Can we run more like big business where stylists have all the benefits, make great money, work flexible schedules? Why is that not possible for us?”
It’s possible for almost every other industry on the planet. Why not us? I think that’s a part of the bigger question.
I hope this has helped to provide some clarity, at least given you a research jumping off point. If it’s something you’re still interested in looking into, go for it. If you’re looking for me to spearhead it, I’m not going to. I think our industry is years and years away from even considering something like this given the fact that we’re so independently based. But I hope it’s given some clarity and some food for thought.
Y’all, so much love, happy business building, and I’ll see you on the next one.
