Unions: Leader Leaders In The 21st Century

“Unions are one of the forces in shaping organizational practices, legislation, and political thought.p327” (Bowin & Brown, 2001). By definition unions are “an organization of employees united to act as a single unit when dealing with management work issues p. 326 (Bowin& Brown, 2001) organized group of workers that come together to make decision about their work conditions. Often times employees have a strong desire to form unions at work due to the feeling of powerlessness, underpaid, or poor working conditions. Leaders do not always care for unions due to their ability to drive the organization in terms of economical impacts, promotion, as well as other working conditions. Unions were created around the year of 1886 and continue to exist in today’s workforce.

There are many debates around the effectiveness of unions in the 21st century. Hagedorn, Paras, Greenwich, & Hagopian, (2016), found in the discipline of public health, contracts were unions were present created higher wages and benefits, limited the amount of hours employees could work, more protection against workplace hazards, as well as other factors. They go on to site the use of labor contra tar underutilized in the public health discipline. Southworth, & Stepan-Norris (2009), conducted a study a determined there was a decline in union memberships across many disciplines for reasons such as organizational strategy, financial resources, internal politics, worker attitudes, and competition. Leaders need to be willing to negotiated with unions as a means of maintaining a positive, safe work environment, and keeping the organization