Labor Unions

Introduction

The union represents the interests of its members, negotiating with the employer wage increases and working conditions during collective bargaining. If the employers cannot reach an agreement, the union may call a strike or take any other action to pressure the employer. In some countries, a union is the economic arm of a broader social movement, which may include a political party and a cooperative. The concept of a labor union in America recognized for the permissible level and is employee union in the USA is considered as a representative of employees in a number of industries in USA (Alvarez, pp.539-556). 

The most striking unions could be found among employees of the public sector organizations, like the profession of teaching and police. The different activities of labor unions in America in these days focused on combined bargaining over benefits, wages, and working conditions for their membership and for their representing members, if, at any time, the management of the company makes an attempt to breach the terms of the contract (Weil, 1992). Even, though, the employee unions are comparatively much smaller than the employee unions in the decade of 1950's, the employee unions still play a very crucial role in the political scenario of America through the mobilization of employees under them, and through alignment with the other organizations.

Evolution and Development

The unions were in response of workers to the most pernicious effects of industrialization. The first trade unions formed in Western Europe and the United States in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, in response to the development of capitalism. As the factory system was developing, many people left the countryside in search of scarce jobs in large urban centers. This excess supply of labor increased the dependence of the working class. To reduce this dependency is created the first trade unions, especially among the artisans, threatened with their work, and already had a tradition of unity in the guilds. These groups had to face opposition from governments and employers, who considered illegal associations or conspirators who sought to restrict economic development.

During the nineteenth century, these barriers were eliminated due to legal judgments and enactment of laws favorable to unionization, but the first trade unions were unable to overcome the great economic depression of the first half of the nineteenth century and disappeared. Both in democratic countries as in non-democratic unions opposed the nineteenth-century capitalism, defending other alternative models such as socialism, anarchism and syndicalism, and after the 1917 Russian Revolution, communism. In the early nineteenth century miners, ports and transport were the basis of trade unions of the time (Baird, pp. 163-186).

The unionized workers in America enjoy more work related benefits, and especially wages, as compared to the non-unionized workers in America. The data, which was collected in the Current Population Survey (COS) in March 2002, has shown that the unionized employees were approximately 16.4 percentage points ahead than the alike non-unionized employees, in the employee-provided health insurance plan. The unionized employees were more likely to participate in the employee sponsored retirement plan, and they were approximately 18 percent ahead ...