Why We Need Unions

Why We Need Unions Photo from news.unioncircle.comfundamentally function to protect workers from companies and other organizations seeking to abuse their power by ignoring (or even eliminating) workers rights. They truly embody the phrase strength in numbers, as workers who are members of a union can collectively bargain for fairer wages, enhanced benefits, better work environments, or all of these aspects combined. Another important benefit of unions is that they give workers the chance to negotiate at the same level as that of upper-level management and executives, in part because a group of unified workers backed by an organization dedicated to preserving workers rights is far more powerful than a single worker doing the same.We must not forget that a workers overall performance and morale is usually connected to fair treatment in the workplace. Imagine if you had unsafe or unsanitary working conditions, were denied adequate breaks, werent paid on time, or received less payment than is required by law. At some companies, you might even be dealing with all of these situations. How motivated would you be to arrive at work everyday and perform efficiently? Not very. Like any other institution, there exist unethical companies that not only act unfairly toward employees; they also violate employees rights as guaranteed by law in their treatment. I wholeheartedly agree with Kevin Drum, a political blogger for Mother Jones, when he states that unions are also the only large-scale movement left in America that persistently acts as a countervailing power against corporate power [and]that persistently acts in the economic interests of the middle class.After all, it has often been discovered that when union membership declines, economic inequality increases. Meanwhile, eras of increased union membership correspond to raised wages for lower- and middle-class workers, therefore increasing income equality. This is obviously not in the interest of everyone, but it is in the interest of a gr eat deal of the U.S. population. There have been many conversations about increasing income equality in the recent past, and one way to help this process along is to educate workers not to mention the general population about unions. They are not communist. They are not out to take away anyones wealth. They exist simply to ensure fair treatment of workers as well as decent, livable wages. As Kevin Drum argued recently, the decline of unions over the past few decades has left corporations and the rich with essentially no powerful opposition. No matter what doubts you might have about unions and their role in the economy, never forget that destroying them destroys the only real organized check on the power of the business community in America.