The Benefits and Harms of Union Membership
1. The benefits of becoming a part of a union may include various employment advantages.
Employees associated with unions are less likely to experience exposure to unfair pay grades. They also have to worry less about being terminated on an unfair basis. Employees gain a competitive advantage over employers when they join unions as they do not have to stand alone against the employers. Instead, they form a group which increases employee power during negotiations. Union members experience a higher degree of motivation due to the lack of being unfairly treated by employers, and this, in turn, encourages them to work hard and contribute more towards their organization.
A major harm of being a member of the union is that an employee may have to conform to the union even if they are wrong. Furthermore, if an employee is on strike along with the union members, there is no guarantee that he/she will get the job back once the strike is over. Furthermore, employees may also experience a loss of their own salaries in case the strike turns out to be a failure. Employees may also experience an implicit form of discrimination at the hands of the employers for becoming a part of the union.
2. In some cases, the unions impose a heavier burden on organizations in terms of the compensation and rewards being paid to the employees. Organizations are motivated by this to close down their factories and shift their jobs to regions where the demand for salaries is lower. This act of the organizations has been labeled as illegal as well as unethical. Therefore, organizations are implicitly as well as explicitly required to enter a contract with the labor unions that they cannot close their factories to save the cost of labor. Organizations have to comply with the Act of National Labor Relations, which has clearly outlined in their section 8 and subsequent sections that an organization cannot threaten or actually close its plants in order to save labor costs. For example, during the period of 1956, an organization producing textiles experienced a lawsuit at the hands of the union after it had shut down its factory (Twomey 156). The motive for the shutting down was that the company did not want to deal with the union as they were negotiating for higher wages. The outcome of this case was the company held responsible for the act of indulging in biased employment practices.
3. Private organizations are profit-seeking and, at the same time, they have to remain competitive not only in the local industry but also in the international environment. Organizations in the United States are competing against international organizations that are located in regions such as China where the labor cost is low. Therefore, US-based organizations have to produce goods and services at a lower price to compete with products produced in China. In order to produce at a decreased cost, manufacturing and various other jobs are shifting to third-world developing nations such as Bangladesh and India. This is because labor costs are low in these regions as compared to the US. The high labor cost experienced in the US is also due to the labor unions that do not understand the competitive environment in which US organizations are operating. Labor unions continue to fight for higher wages irrelative of considering the international competitive environment. Abraham and fellow researchers surveyed over 2700 organizations and concluded that more and more jobs are being outsourced to foreign regions because of the increase in labor unions’ power in negotiating for increased wages (Abraham 23).
Work Cited
Abraham, Katharine G, and Susan K. Taylor. Firms' Use of Outside Contractors: Theory and Evidence. Cambridge, Mass: NBER, 1993. Print.
Twomey, David P. Labor " Employment Law: Text " Cases. Mason, Ohio: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2010. Print.
