Union

Examples of Union in the following topics:

• Labor Union Impacts on Equilibrium

  • The primary activity of the union is to bargain with the employer on behalf of union members and negotiate labor contracts.
  • In order to achieve these goals unions engage in collective bargaining: the process of negotiation between a company's management and a labor union.
  • However, the reality of unions is more complex.
  • As an organized body, unions are also active in the political realm.
  • One tool that unions may use to raise wages is to go on strike.

• The Decline of Union Power

  • While more than one-third of employed people belonged to unions in 1945, union membership fell to 24.1 percent of the U.S. work force in 1979 and to 13.9 percent in 1998.
  • Dues increases, continuing union contributions to political campaigns, and union members' diligent voter-turnout efforts kept unions' political power from ebbing as much as their membership.
  • Automation is a continuing challenge for union members.
  • The shift to service industry employment, where unions traditionally have been weaker, also has been a serious problem for labor unions.
  • As if these difficulties were not enough, years of negative publicity about corruption in the big Teamsters Union and other unions have hurt the labor movement.

• Impact of Unions on Unemployment

  • If the labor market is competitive, unions will typically raise wages but increase unemployment.
  • For example, in a unionized industry, rather than each employee negotiating his or her own vacation time with the employer, a union will negotiate with the firm in order to create a contract governing vacation time that applies to every union member.
  • While unions have many goals, their primary objective has historically been to achieve higher wages for members of the union - that is, those who are already employed in an industry.
  • Critics also argue that if some industries are unionized and others are not, wages will decline in non-unionized industries.
  • The above arguments focus on how unions affect unemployment by negotiating for higher wages, but unions may also affect unemployment in other ways.

• Depression and Post-War Victories

  • The Great Depression of the 1930s changed Americans' view of unions.
  • In 1938, the AFL expelled the unions that had formed the CIO.
  • Union membership soared.
  • Taft-Hartley also required unions to disclose their finances.
  • Unions gained a new measure of power in 1962, when President John F.

• The 1980s and 1990s: The End of Paternalism

  • But relations between unions and their employees grew testy during the 1960s and 1970s.
  • Labor unions could do little to restore the former paternalistic relationship between employer and employee.
  • Union membership generally declined through the 1980s and 1990s, with unions achieving only modest success in organizing new workplaces.
  • With union membership and political power declining, dissident leader John Sweeney, president of the Service Employees International Union, challenged incumbent Lane Kirkland for the AFL-CIO presidency in 1995 and won.
  • Kirkland was widely criticized within the labor movement as being too engrossed in union activities abroad and too passive about challenges facing unions at home.

• Introduction to Labor in America: The Worker's Role

  • In this environment, labor unions gradually developed clout.
  • Unions prospered in the years immediately following World War II, but in later years, as the number of workers employed in the traditional manufacturing industries has declined, union membership has dropped.
  • They also have fought union organizing campaigns and strikes more aggressively.
  • Politicians, once reluctant to buck union power, have passed legislation that cut further into the unions' base.
  • Meanwhile, many younger, skilled workers have come to see unions as anachronisms that restrict their independence.

• The Labor Movement's Early Years

  • Since the early labor movement was largely industrial, union organizers had a limited pool of potential recruits.
  • Sometimes they signed workers to what were known as yellow-dog contracts, prohibiting them from joining unions.
  • Violent strikes during this era resulted in numerous deaths, as persons hired by management and unions fought.
  • The principle of the "open shop," the right of a worker not to be forced to join a union, also caused great conflict.
  • Workers felt secure without unions and were often receptive to management claims that generous personnel policies provided a good alternative to unionism.

• The Growth of Government

  • The rising costs of taxes to pay for expanded government services, as well as the general American distaste for "big government" and increasingly powerful public employee unions, led many policy-makers in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s to question whether government is the most efficient provider of needed services.
  • Public sector unions, not surprisingly, adamantly oppose most privatization proposals.

• The Postwar Economy: 1945-1960

  • As the Iron Curtain descended across Europe and the United States found itself embroiled in a cold war with the Soviet Union, the government maintained substantial fighting capacity and invested in sophisticated weapons such as the hydrogen bomb.
  • At the same time, labor unions won long-term employment contracts and other benefits for their members.

• Economic Systems

  • An economic system consists of a matrix of social institutions (law, political institutions, religion, etc), agents (individuals or actors), organizations (corporations, unions, charitable org, not-for-profit firms, etc) and society.