Labor Unions
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| The National Labor Union was one of the first labor union organizations. |
Labor unions are an organized association of workers, often in a trade or profession, formed to protect and further their rights and interests. Labor unions have been caught up in the argument on whether we should still keep them or let them be terminated. Many have argued the pros and cons of having labor unions.
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| The Obama administration is showing support for labor unions. |
Some people argue that labor unions benefit workers in the United States overall. John McCain, the United States senator stated, "I think the unions have played a very important role in the history of this country to improve the plight and conditions of laboring Americans. I think that like many other monopolies, in some cases [there] have been serious excesses." This quote from John tells us that laboring unions have had a good impact on workers and it helped them to protect their rights. Cynthia McKinney who is a former U.S. house representative states, "Yes. The rights of workers to organize and form unions is an important right essential to protecting adequate wages, worker safety and health, and job security. Through proposed legislation that would undercut job training and apprenticeship, remove rights to organize and collectively bargain, and restrict union speech activities, efforts continue to rescind and restrict traditional rights of workers. I oppose these and other efforts to roll back the existing rights of workers, and I will continue to protect the necessary ability of workers to organize and strive towards better wages, benefits, working conditions and training." With this, it is telling us that labor unions have led people to a better life and it lets them have their rights, and a safer environment. The labor unions allow workers to get a good payment and be more safe at their jobs. Without labor unions, people wouldn't be able to have good income or have their own rights. They would not be able to speak up and they wouldn't have a good safe working place with good conditions. All of these things will cut back if labor unions were demolished. Labor Unions bring a great amount of benefits for American workers. If it weren't for these labor unions, people's wages would be low and it would be insufficient for anything. Barack Obama once stated, "...[A]s I look out on this crowd and as I travel across this country, the one thing I know for certain is that labor unions are still mobilizing. Labor unions are still organizing. And you're still fighting to give America's working people a voice in Washington. I'm tired of playing defense. I know the AFL-CIO [American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organization] is tired of playing defense. We're ready to play some offense. We're ready to play offense for a decent wage. We're ready to play offense for retirement security...We're ready to play offense for organized labor. It's time we had a President who didn't choke saying the word 'union.' A President who knows it's the Department of Labor and not the Department of Management. And a President who strengthens our unions by letting them do what they do best - organize our workers. If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union." This also supports labor unions. From this we can see that labor unions do benefit American workers because without labor unions, the people will not have wages that they deserve or the rights that they deserve. Labor unions allow the people to have better job security and people should have the right to create these organized unions. Labor unions have their pros as well as cons. (1)(2)
Some of the cons of having labor unions are holiday pays, eight hour workdays, and overtime pay. During holidays, there would be no work or job for the teachers so they wouldn't be able to earn any money for a good week or more. In addition to that, we have many holidays like this. For example, Spring Break, Winter Break, Mid-Winter Break, Thanksgiving, and etc. All of these holidays lets the teachers just stay at home with no payment. This is a major letdown if you need urgent money, you wouldn't be able to gain it and it leads the students to have less education because of it. Students only have five days of school and they have holidays almost every month so there isn't a long period of teaching. The problem with the eight hour workday comes for workers who are in the middle of an important piece of work or project. They will have to stop working and pick it up the next day just because their working hours are up. This will interrupt their process and it delays everything as well as productivity. The eight hour work hour backfires because if you were on a urgent important mission and you were only allowed a certain amount of time to do it, it will hold you back from doing more things and this prevents you from being as successful as you would want to be. In a union controlled business, there will always be a limited amount of working hours and this limits a lot of work to be done and delays processes that can make people unsatisfied at the results. You can't even argue that overtime will boost productivity. If businesses don't have enough money to pay someone to work overtime then most teachers aren't going to do overtime occasionally though you will have the few teachers that genuinely care for their students. If students were in need of urgent help and needed teachers to tutor them, there won't be any because there wouldn't be enough money to pay teachers for this. This will effect the learning and education of students and make the students have a hard time with their school work and their grades will drop. This will also have an effect on the school's publicity. Nowadays, there isn't even summer school for students because there isn't enough money to pay the teachers for teaching during the summer so options for struggling students are decreasing. The graduation rates are declining due to the lack of money allocated to rewarding teachers for working overtime. (3)
In conclusion, my opinion is that labor unions should cease to exist because they are causing harm for innocent people out there. It allows the workers to gain benefits and abuse the system; how many people do you think are abusing food stamps at this moment? You have to wonder just how many teachers are really willing to stay behind and tutor students out of the kindness of their hearts when there's no benefits, obviously greedy selfish humans will not do something they see no benefit from. Students don't have as many resources as before I mean really how do you expect the poverty-stricken families across America to afford a tutor. Students shouldn't have to face so many struggles in the already corrupt education system. In addition to that, the eight-hour workday promotes inefficiency. It disrupts workers from being productive seeing as some people just count the time till their next break. Workers don't require distractions like this that take them away from their work, this is especially bad for those who get in the "zone" and then are taken out of it due to some random scheduled break, their efficiency is utterly demolished. An exceptional successful business company will not allow or appreciate this inefficient way of doing things. Therefore, labor unions aren't doing as much as they once had. It is only a certain amount of people that profit from this. What occurred in the past will repeat itself in the future thus is the nature of history and why we study it to try and avoid this ill fate. This all leads to inefficiency, and political corruption. (3)
Resources:
1. http://2008election.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=1944#nader
2. http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/articles/unions.html
3. http://www.redstate.com/diary/chicagobluesgirl/2012/06/02/why-unions-are-no-longer-good-for-america/
