Future of White Collar Unionism in United States



Future of White Collar Workers in United States

Introduction

Traditionally, unions have been institutions for industrial workers and employees doing manual work. However, the traditional model of unionism has been faced with many challenges such as service sector and government and rise in white collar employments and reduction in the employment of manual occupation and manufacturing. It is due to these occupational and industry structure changes, American union movement and unions in many other advanced countries have decreased over the years. White collar workers are distinguished from blur collar workers by the average salaries that they earn and nature of their work. Formerly, unions was a subject of blue collar workers, but over the years there has been an increase in the proportion of white collar workers in the labor force of many industrial countries, especially United States, which has led to increase in white collar unions.

Unions are established to give employees a platform where they can bargain the terns with management over wages and work conditions. The composition of trade unions has developed differently in different countries over the years. The percentage of workers represented in 1970s onwards fell quickly in United States, Japan and many European countries while maintaining and even increasing its strength in Canada and Australia. The main determinant of this reduction in United Sates is the increase of Services sector and advancement in personal incomes after the World war era. The growing importance of white collar employment is indicative of its potential for union growth but the potential is far from being materialized as white collar union institutions represent a small percentage of total union membership and also white collar occupation.

Despite the reduction in labor unions in private sector, the unions in public sectors have been growing at a constant rate. Unionization has seen a firm resistance by management which has been a factor in sluggish growth of private sector unions. Efforts on the part if management to stop union organization include sticks and carrots. Sticks include firing and harassment of aspiring union leader and non serious attitude to bargain on contracts while carrots include pay increases, incentives and participation in the revenues of the firm. There are many logical arguments that can be given of causes of management avoidance of labor unions that will be discussed later in the paper. There have been corruption issues associated with union leaders that have led to development of anti union sentiment among many Americans. The paper discusses the shift in union structure over the years and the cause of this shift along with the factors that have contributed to the management avoidance of union strength. The paper further explains the issues related to trade unions over the years and finally the prospects of white collar unions in the next decade.

Discussion

The percentage of white collar workers in labor force of United States amounted to 58.9% by the end of 1998 when compared to 17.6% in ...