A union is an association that is formed by people who have shared interests. Moreover, it’s created by individuals who work together so that they can promote common interests. They use the union to negotiate a better wage, better working conditions, foster a better employer-employee relationship and also help settling their grievances. Depending on the agreement, a labor union can be a general union, one that represents workers in the same industry such as nurses and teachers or a house union which only represents workers in one company and has no association with any other union. A house union is risky and is in some cases considered illegal. Labor unions are part of history and profoundly affect the relationship between the employer and the employee.
Organized labor unions started as early as 1792. They began in the form of what is now referred to as craft union. A Craft union represents workers who are skilled in craft-based activities. Philadelphia shoemakers met in 1792 to discuss issues affecting them. They were against the long and low paid working hours, low wages and child labor. It’s after this that organized labor took root. Knights of Labor was the first national labor union. It was formed in 1969 and had over seven hundred thousand members. Its decline was due to a riot in Chicago. Craft unions came together in 1886 and established the American Federation of Labor. A section of workers, mainly unskilled broke away from the AFL to build their organization, Congress of Industrial Organizations. Today, the two have 12.2 million members nationwide and are affiliated with 56 unions.
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"Dealing Union And Employee Management".
Organizations are motivated by several goals. They key objective being enable employees get respected and accorded human dignity in their work places. Workers need to feel appreciated, protected and fairly treated in the office. They should be protected from all forms of harassment. Another critical goal of organized labor aid workers perform with fair and competent management. Workers often find themselves in a situation where the administration is unfair to them. Long hours of work per week, unreasonably short leaves and unbearable working conditions are a form of unfair treatment. Management can also be incompetent and not know how to handle the people working for them. Such management is prejudicial to the staff because they end up being assigned jobs they cannot handle. Workers should also be given a reasonable share of the wealth they generate. It should be achieved by providing fair wages to the staff. Where the profit margin increases, salaries should also be increased. They should also be given reasonable bonuses where applicable. After all, a company is only as large as the people in its employ.
Over the years, there have been several mishaps in the workplace that workers have not been protected from because of the lack of labor unions. One of them is the employment of children in factories in the early 1900s. The factories cared little for the safety of their staff. Children from low-income families couldn’t go to school and started working. Robust laws against child labor did not exist at the time. Children were paid less money than adults for the same jobs, and so factories made massive profits off their backs. In the end, workers formed union and child labor was outlawed. Adding to that, the collapse of the Rana Plaza in Bangladesh and the fire in Triangle Shirtwaist company that lead to the deaths of 146 women in 1911 are other instances of harsh working conditions. Because a door was bolted to deter theft in the company, many of the women were trapped and couldn’t escape. Had there existed a strong labor union at the time, such an incident could have been prevented. In as much as the Bangladesh incident could have been the result of a freak accident, it could also be due to a decline in labor standards.
When it comes to forming a trade union, the National Labor Relations Board oversees the process. It is tasked with managing labor-management issues and providing guidelines for unionization. Workers can join an existing union or form their union. If they opt to form their union, they are required to sign authorization cards to show that they are willing to form a union. Its only after a majority of the workers sign the cards that can a union be formed. The cards are then given to the NLRB. Only the NLRB can grant permission for a union to be established. NLRB approves a union election. As far as the NLRB is concerned, only employees who are an appropriate bargaining unit (ABU)can form a union. To be an ABU, workers need to have similar interests, similar positions in an organization, work close geographically and not be part of management. Company management is not allowed to be part of the union. If the requirements are met, the NLRB will allow the election to be held. It is also the role of the NLRB to preside over the union elections.
Forming a union has many benefits to workers. The union bargains for fair wages, and better working conditions for the workers. It is the employees who have a legal responsibility to participate in these negotiations. In addition to that, the union gives the workers options should talks fail and protects their jobs if they take action against their employers for failing to treat them fairly. Workers on strike cannot be fired and replaced, that is the law. Activities that workers can take against their employers include strike; it is when the workers fail to show up for work. They can also boycott company products or services and convince others to do the same. In some cases, workers show up for work but do not work; they spend their days in the facility doing nothing. In the past, before unions became popular, strikes would usually lead to stand-offs between the workers and the authority. Often, the standoffs became violent; multiple workers would become injured or killed. Labor unions protect the workers from violence by the administration as such an act would be unlawful.
In conclusion, unions are essential in protecting the interests of the workers. Workers can quickly form a union and have a voice in the workplace. Unions can never be a thing of the past. There are always emerging issues that require workers to be able to fight for their rights without fear of intimidation as would be the case in the absence of a union. Predicaments such as even pay for equal work still need to be addressed, and unions should be involved. It is important to note that unions have been vital in addressing significant issues such as child labor. Before the rise of organized labor, factories exploited child labor because it was cheap. Today, existing laws are against child labor. Workers can now use labor unions to reap benefits from their hard work. Some companies make millions but pay their employees peanuts. Organized labor has come a long way and is only getting stronger. In future, labor unions should hopefully be more inclusive, especially when it comes to women. They should also offer basic and specific training to the workforce for more productivity in the work place.
