Labor history
A union (labor union in
American
English; trade union, sometimes trades union, in
British English) is a
legal entity consisting of
employees or
workers having
a common interest, such as all the assembly workers for one employer, or all the workers in a particular industry. A union is
formed for the purpose of collectively negotiating with an employer (or employers) over
wages, hours and other
terms and conditions of employment. Unions also often use their
organizational strength to advocate for social policies and legislation favorable to workers.
The political structure and autonomy of unions varies widely from country to country. American and European unions are founded
upon democratic principles and leaders are selected through an election process while in China, the union is controlled and run
by the state.
History
The concept of trade unions began early in the
industrial
revolution. More and more people left
farming as an occupation and began to work
for employers, often in appalling conditions and for very low wages. The labour movement arose as an outgrowth of the disparity
between the power of employers and the powerlessness of individual employees.
Unions were illegal for many years in most countries. There were severe penalties for attempting to organize unions, up to and
including execution. Despite this, unions were formed and began to acquire political power, eventually resulting in a body of
labour law which not only legalized organizing efforts, but codified the relationship between employers and those employees
organized into unions. Many consider it an issue of fairness that workers be allowed to pool their resources in a special legal
entity in a similar way to the pooling of capital resources in the form of
corporations.
Today a government-imposed ban on joining a union is generally considered a
human rights abuse. Most democratic countries have many unions, while most
authoritarian regimes do not.
Unions not guilds
Unions are sometimes mistakenly thought to be successors to medieval
guilds. Although
guilds also existed to protect and enhance their members' livelihoods, guilds were groups of self-employed skilled craftsmen who
had ownership and control over the materials and tools they needed to produce their goods. Guilds, in other words, were
small business associations.
A union, in sharp contrast, is an organisation of hired workers who, generally speaking, own and control only their own
ability to labour, not the tools or materials they work on. While industrial era unions could and often did consist of highly
skilled factory workers, a break with the past during the
nineteenth century was that unions could be constituted for essentially unskilled workers, including
poor agricultural labourers.
Shop types
Companies that employ workers with a union generally operate on one of several models:
- In a closed shop, a business may only hire workers who already belong to the union. The compulsory
hiring hall is the most extreme example of a closed shop - in this case the employer
must procure new employees directly from the union.
- In a union shop, a business may hire anyone, but workers must join the union within a designated amount of
time after they start work (this is known as a "closed shop" in British English)
- In an agency shop, workers may choose to not join the union, but must pay a fee to the union for its
services in negotiating their contract. This is sometimes called the
Rand Formula.
- In an open shop, a business may employ anyone it likes, regardless of their union status, and workers are
not required to associate with a union at all.
The Problem of International Comparison
As labour law is very diverse in different countries, so is the function of unions. For instance in Germany, only open
shops are legal. This affects the function and services of the union. On the other hand, German unions have played a
greater role in management decisions through participation in corporate boards and co-determination than have unions in the
United States.
In addition, unions have very different relationships with political parties in different countries. In many countries unions
have formed long-term relationships with a political party which is intended to represent the interests of working people.
Typically this is a
left-wing or
socialist party, but there have been many exceptions. In the United States, by contrast, while the labor movement
is historically aligned with the
Democratic
Party, the labor movement is by no means monolithic on that point; the
International Brotherhood of Teamsters has supported
Republican Party candidates on a number of
occasions and the
Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization endorsed
Ronald Reagan in
1980, shortly before he
destroyed it and banned all of its striking members from employment as air traffic controllers in
1981. In the
United Kingdom the labour movement's
relationship with the
Labour Party is fraying as
party leadership embarks on privatization plans at odds with what some perceive as workers' interests.
Finally, the structure of employment laws affects unions' roles. In many western European countries wages and benefits are
largely set by governmental action. The United States takes a more
laissez
faire approach, setting some minimum standards but leaving most workers' wages and benefits to collective bargaining and
market forces.
Trade unions in Britain
The legal status of trade unions in the
United Kingdom was
established by a
Royal Commission, which agreed that the
establishment of the organisations was to the advantage of both employers and employees. Most British unions are members of the
TUC, the
Trades Union Congress, and where appropriate,
the
Scottish Trades Union Congress and
the
Irish Congress of Trade Unions,
which are the country's principal
national trade
union centers. The
Labour Party arose from the organised
labour movement and still has extensive links with it.
Margaret
Thatcher's governments weakened the powers of the unions in the
1980s and some within
the British trades union movement criticise
Tony Blair's Labour government for
not reversing some of Thatcher's changes since taking office in
1997.
Labor Unions in the U.S.
Most labor unions in the United States are members of a larger umbrella organization, the
AFL-CIO, or the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations. The AFL-CIO advocates for
policies and legislation favorable to workers in the United States and Canada. The AFL-CIO also often works with other
international and national unions on global trade issues.
Labor unions are tightly regulated and overseen by the United States Department of Labor under the authority of the
National Labor Relations Act, passed in 1935. To
join a union, workers must either win voluntary recognition from their employer or have a majority of workers in a "bargaining
unit," as determined by the federal government, vote for union representation. In either case, the government must certify the
existence of the union.
Once the union is certified in a workplace, it has the sole authority to negotiate the conditions of employment. The terms and
conditions of employment are spelled out in a legally binding contract between the employer and the union. When disputes arise
over the contractual agreement, most contracts call for the parties to resolve their differences through a grievance process to
see if the dispute can be mutually resolved. If the union and the employer still cannot settle the matter, either party can
choose to send the dispute to
arbitration, where the case is argued before a
neutral third party.
The
Taft-Hartley Act, passed in
1947 over the veto of President
Harry Truman, severely limits
the powers of unions in the United States, and remains in effect. Closed shops are forbidden; union
shops are allowed within the limits allowed by the statute and subject to additional conditions imposed by the
National Labor Relations Board and the courts.
Jurisdictional strikes (where two unions each claim work that they believe should be assigned to the workers they represent) and
secondary boycotts (boycotts against an allegedly neutral company that does business with another company with which a union has
labor dispute) were made illegal. Unions are no longer allowed to donate money to federal political campaigns.
Most importantly, the bill provided the executive branch of the Federal government with the ability to obtain legal
strikebreaking injunctions if an actual or impending strike "imperiled the national health or safety", a test that has been in
practice interpreted loosely by the courts.
Many U.S. unions lost much of their prestige when links to organized crime were discovered. Union membership has been steadily
declining for the past decade or so in all but the public sector (that is, unions of government employees).
Right-to-work statutes forbid unions and companies privately agreeing
to contracts with one another.
Hiring halls are legal, but a contract where a
business agrees to let a union be its sole provider of labor is illegal - therefore all hiring halls operate on a voluntary
basis.
Other
Some countries such as
Sweden have strong, centralized unions, where every type of
work has a specific union, which are then gathered in large national unions. The largest Swedish union is
LO, Landsorganisationen. LO has over 2.1 million members, which is more than a fifth of Sweden's
population. The largest organization of trade union members in the world is the Brussels-based
International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions, which today has 231 affiliated organisations in 150 countries and territories, with a
combined membership of 158 million.
News
There are several sources of current news about the trade union movement in the world. These include
LabourStart and the official website of the international trade union movement
Global Unions (http://www.global-unions.org).
See also
