The ABA Worker's Union

Another month, another union victory in ABA!

This historic victory is both the second union in Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA) this year and the FIRST private sector union to include both BCBAs, BCaBAs, and RBTs.

Despite a grueling union-busting campaign, the workers held strong. Anti-union propaganda was shared on a daily basis, with lies, coercion, intimidation, and fear-mongering dominating our days for 2 months.

All good BCBAs know that those tactics don't cause lasting behavior change. You know what does? Solidarity.

We're changing this field, one worker at a time. People over profits!

Solidarity Forever! ✊

We'll be launching a weekly study hall for anyone interested in an informal review of the RBT or BCBA task list. This is in conjunction with our sister-site, www.aba.rocks, which aims to break down barriers to accessing information in the field for anyone in the field.

If you're interested in coming, the meeting link will always be: https://meet.google.com/mke-hiqm-rxz 

Anyone interested in sharing their time and experience is welcome, as is anyone who'd like to ask a question or dive into a topic. Bring coffee and patience - we'll practice finding sources for each question and creating a summary document to describe what we talked about and why we came to a given conclusion.

ABA Workers at the Verbal Beginnings center in Rockville, Maryland, won their union vote 33 for and 1 against. 

Workers in this field have proven what was previously only possible. In addition to this historic vote, another group in Richmond, Virginia, is rapidly approaching their union vote within the month. 

When we organize, we win - and by standing not just with ABA workers, but united with the working class as a whole, we can affect change outside of our industry and internationally. 

ABA Workers stand in solidarity with the undocumented workers fighting for their right to exist in the United States, with every worker internationally whose wages suffer while their bosses prosper, and with our allies within the field struggling to survive the hellscape that is the profit-driven healthcare and mental healthcare system.

Congratulations to the workers of Verbal Beginnings in Rockville, Maryland - leading the way in our fight for dignity, respect, and a voice at work!

Announcement: Next General Meeting 03.30 @ 12:30 PM EST.

Our third general meeting is on Saturday, 03.30.25, at 12:30 PM EST. If you'd like to be sent a link, join the Signal Chat to stay connected, or hit the "join" button on the top right to keep in touch via email.

Here's our agenda for today's meeting - reviewing last week's content + continuing organizing:

• Worker Education: Union 101
• Workplace Mapping
• Importance of 1-on-1 Conversation
• Example Petition
• Research Study Q&A on RBT Experiences
• Roundtable discussion

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Announcement: Next General Meeting 03.30 @ 12:30 PM EST.

Our third general meeting is on Saturday, 03.30.25, at 12:30 PM EST. If you'd like to be sent a link, join the Signal Chat to stay connected, or hit the "join" button on the top right to keep in touch via email.

Here's our agenda for today's meeting - reviewing last week's content + continuing organizing:

• Worker Education: Union 101
• Workplace Mapping
• Importance of 1-on-1 Conversation
• Example Petition
• Research Study Q&A on RBT Experiences
• Roundtable discussion

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Announcement: Next General Meeting 03.08 @ 12:30 PM EST.

Our third general meeting is on Saturday, 03.08.25, at 12:30 PM EST. If you'd like to be sent a link, join the Signal Chat to stay connected, or hit the "join" button on the top right to keep in touch via email.

Here's our agenda for today's meeting - reviewing last week's content + continuing organizing:

• Worker Education: Union 101
• Workplace Mapping
• Importance of 1-on-1 Conversation
• Example Petition
• Research Study Q&A on RBT Experiences
• Roundtable discussion

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Announcement: Next General Meeting 03.08 @ 4:00 PM EST.

Our third general meeting is on Saturday, 03.08.25, at 4:00 PM EST. If you'd like to be sent a link, join the Signal Chat to stay connected, or hit the "join" button on the top right to keep in touch via email.

Here's our agenda for today's meeting - reviewing last week's content + continuing organizing:

• Organizing Updates & Troubleshooting
• Union Basics: what's a union, how does one form one, and how do they work?
• Roundtable Discussion + Q&A
• Presentation slides for today: 03.08.25 Slides

Looking forward to seeing you there!

We had our first educational session on Union Organizing 101. Folks came with action in mind - we discussed the basics of organizing and addressed the following content areas:

👉 The slides can be accessed here.

• What is a union?
• How to organize a union?
• What can a Union Win with guest presenters with the AFSCME and SEIU
• BST! We're behavior analysts, so of course we practiced having organizing conversations in role-play format

We concluded by creating organization-specific signal groups and action steps for organizing at ABA companies, large and small! Join our national organizing Signal group for more information and to stay connected.

Announcement: Next General Meeting 03.01 @ 4:00 PM EST.

Our second general meeting is on Saturday, 03.01.25, at 4:00 PM EST. If you'd like to be sent a link, join the Signal Chat to stay connected, or hit the "join" button on the top right to keep in touch via email.

Our Agenda was created at the last general meeting:

• Organizing Updates & Troubleshooting
• Union Basics: what's a union, how does one form one, and how do they work?
• Roundtable Discussion + Q&A

Looking forward to seeing you there!

The ABA Worker's Union held its first general meeting today.

We aim to establish a union for all workers in Applied Behavior Analysis. Workers from Florida, Oregon, California, Oregon, and New Jersey met to discuss the current state of the field, discuss past and current unionization efforts in the field, and make a plan for future meetings and workgroups.

In future meetings, we'll discuss creating a technician/paraprofessional/RBT workgroup, a BCaBA workgroup, a BCBA workgroup, and a coordinating committee to unify the effort across all three certification tiers in ABA. We are coordinating a social media push across platforms to reach out to more workers and continue to gather and answer questions about unionization efforts in this field.

We need your help. As we continue to grow, each worker that enters the fold increases our ability to connect with more workers and build a network of resilient organizers dedicated to changing the playing field for all workers in Applied Behavior Analysis.

Your voice matters. Your vote matters. Your union, for all ABA workers!

Reminder: General Meeting 02.02 @ 2:30 PM EST.

Hey! Our first general meeting is tomorrow (02.02.25) at 2:30 PM. If you'd like to be sent a link, join the Signal Chat to stay connected or hit the "join" button on the top right to stay in touch via email.

Unions have fought for real gains for workers.

They won us the 8-hour workday and the weekend and kept children in schools and out of the mines and the fields.

Modern unions fight to protect members from deportation, advocate for teachers who recognize their student's gender expression, and protect nurses from pathogens by giving them adequate staffing ratios and PPE in hospitals.

Our collective power as workers can protect us from the worst of capitalism and give us the power to fight against authoritarianism.

We can strike in solidarity with teachers, nurses, and therapists to demand change.

We can bargain with employers to ensure our voices are heard and our needs are met.

The future of ABA is on the line. If we want to continue to change the world with behavior analysis, we need to change the world for behavior analysts.