The Future of Unions in America
1. Abstract
“The trade union movement represents the organized economic power of the workers. It is in reality the most potent and the most direct social insurance the workers can establish.”(Samuel Gompers ,1904)The paper tries to analyze the popularity of unions in America. Analysis of different reasons for popularity of unions is discussed along with why membership in unions have gone down and recent trends in unionism in the USA is discussed . The paper also tries to understand that labor movements have always tried to protect the interest of employees and workers but somewhere during the time the influences of capitalism and political lobbying disrupted the movement of the same .
2. Introduction:
Unionism is a strong contender for equity in the fast expanding and dynamic labor market of the USA. With the numerous employment laws, hundreds of labor related cases that appear before the EEOC it is imperative that unions should be made a part of labor philosophy but it is seen the membership in unions is gradually decreasing .( Sirocchi, A. (2005 )
The ALF-CIO announced in their convention that organizing workers into trade unions are the best ways of collective bargaining for those who have not been covered under the Wagner Act or the NLRA. Recognizing the importance of this, employees have to now understand that unless they are members of some union, their grievances will not be listened to. There e have been fundamental changes in the Employee free choice act and this has driven import the fact that workers need to have, “ the full unabridged, unmitigated freedom to form unions and bargain collectively.”(Stewart Ackuff,2013)
The economic crisis is partially due to the fact that unions have not been able to be formed freely and to due to collectively bargain. Almost three decades of continuous grievances of workers has led to a very weak demand in consumer segmentation has led to , stagnant wages, and an…