Unions are various organizations are formed by and for workers to practice collective wages, objectives, rules and benefits in a workplace environment. Unions started to grow mainly after the civil war as one of the reactions to contemporary industrial economy requirements.
Labor unions began forming in the mid-19th century, but because of their large scales and poor organization, soon collapsed. At its peak membership and power in the 1970's, private sector union membership sill continues to decline. Careful consideration on the necessity of union support in relation to union decline, influential generational aspects, and also external impacts as well as direction are detrimental in the success of unions in the 21st century. (Borjas, 2009)
There have been a lot of factors contributing to the success and failures of unions. Few of them include the federal and international labour laws, disagreements amongst workers as to form unions and what kinds of unions to form, the perception of unions amongst baby boomers, the impact of globalization and policies adopted by both the government and the unions to enable and form new unions.
Unions have held an important role in certain areas like the education, journalism, auto industry and politics of the country. And their role has had a direct impact on the way Americans work and lives- for better or worse. (Borjas, 2009)
The recent trend, spanning over the last 40 years with respect to unions, is of a decline in the strength and power of unions. Different factors have contributed to this trend. Unions are proposing changes to policies that would lead to resurgence but many businesses hope that it does not happen.
The trend toward De-unionization
During the past three decades, labor unions have been facing a lot of difficulties in recruiting new members. There are both some internal and external factors accounting for this trend. In this section a number of these factors would be discussed.
On a statistical note, labor union membership as a percentage of the U.S. working force, shows a decline as well. The study by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2005), the membership is down to 12.2 per cent in 2004 compared to 12.5 per cent in 2003. When these figures are compared with the data from 1983 (a year when the first such data was collected), the membership stood at 20.2 per cent. This shows a significant reduction. (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005)
The advent of Globalization has increased competition amongst industry stakeholders and the profits margins once enjoyed by companies are no longer there. Union members in the past demanded their rights from these profit margins. So with diminishing profits the bargaining power of Unions has faded and has led to a decrease in unionization.
As the labor unionism's strength and unity is directly influenced by its members and the effectiveness of the organization, the current retrenchments are directly weakening unions' financial base. The primary source of a unions' income is generated from their members to carry out their operations, thus retrenchment weakens their financial base. A researcher explained: "We are responsible for our members when employed and after more and more workers are retrenched, would we be in the position to take care of these people? We get our income from our members, if they are not employed then we don't have the funds to carry out our activities." For this reason a high unemployment rate gives employers leverage to undermine workers and their trade unions and they need to work. (Holger, 2004)
Furthermore, baby boomers are less inclined to support the unions than the people who belong to the category of mature and Generation X'ers. As baby boomers were born in the era during which the unionization in the private sector was on the decline (Holger, 2004)
Statistics...
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