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Union Membership In Today's Labor Market

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Recommended: Unions in 1800

Abstract This paper details a history of labor unions that includes highlighting the major events that created unionism as it is known in today’s society. This history has been the groundwork for unionization today. The history leads into a discussion about the current state of unions and how to form a union in today’s labor market. Furthermore, it discusses missed opportunities that have been laid forth for unions to capitalize on. These missed opportunities have aided in the declining membership of unions. Lastly, the future of unions is research as well as recommendations regarding how to renew and restore union membership in today’s global and technological generation. These recommendations include: educating college students about the …show more content…

Union membership is at an all-time low according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 11.8 percent of the workers are union members (Gutierrez 2014). This low statistic is attributed to business power, political power, and outsourcing, as some of the reasons, is coupled by the ever changing standards of union formation. Forming unions in today’s society is much harder than history has told, this means yet another obstacle for unions to fight through in order to stay alive. Outlined next is the process for union formation. Today’s society has much work to do in order to allow for the survival of unions. They must capitalize on opportunity and look to the past to change the …show more content…

Secret ballots are the idea that employees can decide, by secret votes, first if they want union representation and secondly if they want representation from the petitioning union. This process would occur automatically every few years or so. This is the idea that it would be easy to start union representation and it would be equally as easy to get out of this type of representation if they so choose (Estreicher pg. 1615, 2014). This type of voting could increase union membership because of the ease of representation. It is as simple as saying yes or no to the current union at hand. This can increase membership because it is not binding, it is not forever. There is less risk associated with this type of union representation, than there is

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