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Labor Unions: The Role Of Collective Bargaining In The United States

1008 Words5 Pages

Introduction Labor unions are legalized and organized associations that are made of professional workers and are aimed at ensuring that the interests and rights of employees are not violated. The activity of the union is currently centered on the collective bargaining over the safe working conditions, wages, and benefits of their members. Consequently, they also represent their members in times of disputes with management. Throughout the United States are many labor unions that align themselves under a larger umbrella of associations such as The American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations and the Change to Win Federation. Unions operate efficiently when the country’s economy is performing well; however, elements such …show more content…

Collective bargaining power refers to the process of negotiation between employees, either through representatives or personally, and the employer is expected to agree with the regulation of the conditions in the workplace (Travor & Kimberly, 2008). During collective bargaining, the interests of the employees are presented to the employer by the labor unions for which the employees are members. Bargaining consists of the development of working hours, training, wage scales, rights for participation, health and safety affairs. However, during the recession period, it’s obviously a difficult task because companies are receiving lower incomes (Chen et al., 2011). Those companies experiencing a decline will sometimes lay off the employees, however, if there is an agreement to sustain certain employees in the company, the firms would be forced to make an optimal decision wages. Therefore, labor unions find difficulty in the enforcement of the interests of some employees in …show more content…

After a strike, the employees’ performance becomes reduced significantly in their working field. Consequently, making the organization suffer from slow growth in their rate of production. If the concession of the strike involves only the return to work and does not focus on the needs of the workers, during the recession period, an organization must be prepared to focus on any form of reduction productivity, and the employees work effort. Another outcome is that strikes tend to intensify the relationship between the employees and employer creating a problem in both disseminating information and work coordination between them. Consequently, the result of poor communication between the employer and employees is a low performance, which may eventually lead to low

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