View Single Post
Old 10-27-2007, 11:04 AM
  #2  
bla bla bla
Gets Weekends Off
 
bla bla bla's Avatar
 
Joined APC: Mar 2006
Position: rj 700/900
Posts: 506
Default

19th century unionism
The National Labor Union was the first national union in the United States. It was created in 1866 and included many types of workers. This union did not include Chinese, and partially included blacks and women. This union won the right to an eight hour workday in government jobs. After this union crumbled, the Knights of Labor became the lead.
The Knights of Labor was founded in the United States in 1869. Eventually over 700,000 workers joined the Knights.
The American Federation of Labor (AFL) was founded by Samuel Gompers. By 1904, AFL-affiliated unions had a membership of over 1.4 million nationwide. Under Gompers's leadership, the AFL advocated an approach known as "business" or "pure and simple" unionism, which emphasized collective bargaining to reach its goals. Demands were centered around improvements to the immediate work environment, like better wages, hours and working conditions.
In France, Germany, and other European countries, socialist parties and anarchists played a prominent role in forming and building up trade unions, especially from the 1870s onwards. This stood in contrast to the British experience, where moderate New Model Unions dominated the union movement from the mid-nineteenth century and where trade unionism was stronger than the political labor movement until the formation and growth of the Labour Party in the early years of the twentieth century.

Unions today

Structure and politics
Union structures, politics, and legal status vary greatly from country to country. For specific country details see below.

A rally of the trade union UNISON in Oxford during a strike on 2006-03-28.
Unions may organize a particular section of skilled workers (craft unionism), a cross-section of workers from various trades (general unionism), or attempt to organize all workers within a particular industry (industrial unionism). These unions are often divided into "locals", and united in national federations. These federations themselves will affiliate with Internationals, such as the International Trade Union Confederation.
In many countries, a union may acquire the status of a "juristic person" (an artificial legal entity), with a mandate to negotiate with employers for the workers it represents. In such cases, unions have certain legal rights, most importantly the right to engage in collective bargaining with the employer (or employers) over wages, working hours, and other terms and conditions of employment. The inability of the parties to reach an agreement may lead to industrial action, culminating in either strike action or management lockout, or binding arbitration. In extreme cases, violent or illegal activities may develop around these events.
In other circumstances, unions may not have the legal right to represent workers, or the right may be in question. This lack of status can range from non-recognition of a union to political or criminal prosecution of union activists and members, with many cases of violence and deaths having been recorded both historically and in the current day.

Unions may also engage in broader political or social struggle. Social Unionism encompasses many unions that use their organizational strength to advocate for social policies and legislation favorable to their members or to workers in general. As well, unions in some countries are closely aligned with political parties.
Unions are also delineated by the service model and the organizing model. The service model union focuses more on maintaining worker rights, providing services, and resolving disputes. Alternately, the organizing model typically involves full-time union organizers, who work by building up confidence, strong networks, and leaders within the workforce; and confrontational campaigns involving large numbers of union members. Many unions are a blend of these two philosophies, and the definitions of the models themselves are still debated.
Although their political structure and autonomy varies widely, union leaderships are usually formed through democratic elections.
Some research, such as that conducted by the ACIRRT, argues that unionized workers enjoy better conditions and wages than those who are not unionized. On the other hand, in a free market worker productivity is the single most important factor in determining wages, not union membership. In a free market, there can be very little difference in wages between union or non unionized workers.

Shop types
Companies that employ workers with a union generally operate on one of several models:
A closed shop (US) employs only people who are already union members. The compulsory hiring hall is an example of a closed shop — in this case the employer must recruit directly from the union.
A union shop (US) or a closed shop (UK) employs non-union workers as well, but sets a time limit within which new employees must join a union.
An agency shop requires non-union workers to pay a fee to the union for its services in negotiating their contract. This is sometimes called the Rand formula. In certain situations involving state public employees in the United States, such as California, "fair share laws" make it easy to require these sorts of payments.
An open shop does not discriminate based on union membership in employing or keeping workers. Where a union is active, the open shop allows workers to be employed who do not contribute to a union or the collective bargaining process. In the United States, state level right-to-work laws mandate the open shop in some states.

Diversity of international unions
As labor law varies from country to country, so is the function of unions. For example, in Germany only open shops are legal; that is, all discrimination based on union membership is forbidden. This affects the function and services of the union. In addition, German unions have played a greater role in management decisions through participation in corporate boards and co-determination than have unions in the United States.
In Britain a series of laws introduced during the 1980s by Margaret Thatcher's government restricted closed and union shops. All agreements requiring a worker to join a union are now illegal. In the United States, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 outlawed the closed shop, but permitted the union shop unless the state government chose to prohibit it.
In addition, unions' relations with political parties vary. In many countries unions are tightly bonded, or even share leadership, with a political party intended to represent the interests of working people. Typically this is a left-wing, socialist, or social democratic party, but many exceptions exist. In the United States, by contrast, although it is historically aligned with the Democratic Party, the labor movement is by no means monolithic on that point; the International Brotherhood of Teamsters has supported Republican Party candidates on a number of occasions and the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (PATCO) endorsed Ronald Reagan in 1980. (However, when PATCO went on strike in violation of their "no strike" contract, President Reagan ordered them back to work. Those who didn't return to the job were fired and replaced, effectively destroying PATCO.) The AFL-CIO has been against liberalizing abortion, consistent with a Republican position, so as not to alienate its large Catholic constituency. In Britain the labor movement's relationship with the Labour Party is fraying as party leadership embarks on privatization plans at odds with workers' interests.
In Western Europe, professional associations often carry out the functions of a trade union. In these cases, they may be negotiating for white-collar workers, such as physicians, engineers, or teachers. Typically such trade unions refrain from politics or pursue a more ordoliberal politics than their blue-collar counterparts.
In Germany the relation between individual employees and employers is considered to be asymmetrical. In consequence, many working conditions are not negotiable due to a strong legal protection of individuals. However, the German flavor or works legislation has as its main objective to create a balance of power between employees organized in unions and employers organized in employers associations. This allows much wider legal boundaries for collective bargaining, compared to the narrow boundaries for individual negotiations. As a condition to obtain the legal status of a trade union, employee associations need to prove that their leverage is strong enough to serve as a counterforce in negotiations with employers. If such an employees association is competing against another union, its leverage may be questioned by unions and then evaluated in a court trial. In Germany only very few professional associations obtained the right to negotiate salaries and working conditions for their members, notably the medical doctors association Marburger Bund and the pilots association Vereinigung Cockpit. The engineers association Verein Deutscher Ingenieure does not strive to act as a union, as it also represents the interests of enineering businesses.
Finally, the structure of employment laws affects unions' roles and how they carry out their business. In many western European countries wages and benefits are largely set by governmental action. The United States takes a more laissez-faire approach, setting some minimum standards but leaving most workers' wages and benefits to collective bargaining and market forces. Historically, the Republic of Korea has regulated collective bargaining by requiring employers to participate but collective bargaining has been legal only if held in sessions before the lunar new year. In totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany Trade Unions were outlawed. In the Soviet Union, unions have typically been de facto government agencies devoted to smooth and efficient operation of enterprises.

Impact of unions
Proponents often credit trade unions with leading the labor movement in the early 20th century, which generally sought to end child labor practices, improve worker safety, increase wages for both union and non-union workers, raise the entire society's standard of living, reduce the hours in a work week, provide public education for children, and bring a host of other benefits to working class families
In the United States, the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1928 established a national minimum wage, guaranteed time and a half for overtime in certain jobs, and prohibited most employment of minors in "oppressive child labor," a term defined in the statute.The transformation of labor law put into motion by unions is today considered particularly important for groups that are most likely to suffer discrimination in the labor market. On average, women in Britain earn 20% less than men for the same work, but women who are union members earn 24% more than those who are not. In the People's Republic of China, where independent trade unions are illegal, the pay gap between men and women has actually increased in recent years despite the booming economy.


Our country has survied as long as it has because of checks and balances within the constitution, constantly balancing the control.

Unions are very important to create a balance of power between employer and employees.
bla bla bla is offline