Unions in the Workplace

Unions have been faced with declining membership for some time now and with corporations expanding in size and power, the need for unions to merge and consolidate the resources they have left, is growing more and more urgent.  Public sector unions have managed to hang on to defined benefit pension plans and decent wages, but trends toward outsourcing and privatization are putting those gains at risk also. 

 To add to the pressure, corporations are using the growing income level gap to target public sector unions who have managed to hang on to better working conditions.  The same corporations who used the pitiful working conditions of offshore manufacturing to erode the middle class in North America are now inciting the workers left in entry level jobs to resent the protected status of the higher paid unionized worker.

Corporations are not advertising the growing trend of returning those off-shore jobs due to government instability, poor quality standards, and increasing awareness of workers in those countries.    Instead they are using government stooges to advocate for union busting legislation such as the right to work bills currently being proposed and sometimes enacted.

If corporations are successful in eliminating unions as an organizing movement against their agenda, we can expect to see further widening of the income gap as CEO's continue to accumulate their own wealth at the expense of the people who generate it for them.

Unions, for their part, are going to have to be smarter at the game than they have been.  Strikes and demonstrations have been effective at forcing individual companies to pony up at the bargaining table and improve collective agreements covering union members.  The effect on the public though, has been to provide fertile ground in which to plant the seed of anti-union sentiment.

If a company is intent on providing a workplace that attracts and retains talented and productive workers, a unionized workforce can be an efficient way to administer that group.  Having a sole individual responsible to voice the concerns of all employees can free up a lot of company resources and permit the important issues to rise to the top.  True, there is a company cost, in that policies and procedures need to be documented and enforced, but a well run company would do that in any event.  

There needs to be an element of trust between the company and union, and both need to reinforce with each other that they have the same long-term goal, the health and profitability of the company.  That focus can get skewed in a public sector environment, where profitability is not the prime motivator, but it should be replaced with service metrics that are benchmarked and well documented.

As the economy in North America limps back to an upward trend, unions need to concentrate less on pounding the table and demanding increases for their own members and more on a public relations battle that will see overall conditions improve in the working persons life.  To do otherwise may cause labour to win a battle or two, but ultimately lose the war.