Are strikes or other industrial actions an important weapon to Trade Unions?
349360
The strike is perceived as the only weapon a union has. Strikes and threats of strikes are used against the employer, but back-room dealing, propaganda and manipulation are used against its own members.\n\nTake, for example, the recent rhetorical device, "It's not about salary, it's about benefits."  Why?  Because benefits are not meted out according to any merit evaluations by the employer.  They are strictly on seniority to the extent they differ at all from one member to another.  That is, the costs of increasing benefits and a salary increase can be comparable, but the union will hype the benefits over the salary factors, because those are more malleable in the union bosses' hands.\n\nAnother reason for benefits fights instead of salary fights is that the salary range is often public information in the course of negotiating a contract.  People reading the paper may say, "Geeze, they're already making more than I do; what are they whining about?"  They do that less with benefits packages, because there is much variation there; not a simple figure which can easily be compared to one's own condition.  \n\nWhen our local bus company was having threats of strikes, the first thing the union did was say no one may work overtime.  This meant that some runs were canceled (two in a row on our line, which made me very mad, sitting at the station unable to get home) and they could cause disruption without actually going on strike.  Also, this destroyed the one thing a driver can do VOLUNTARILY to increase his take-home pay; work overtime.  The one thing where individual choice (the willingness to work longer hours) makes a difference.
150752
(1) Misuse of retirement funds.  (2) Unfair picketing or other strike tactics.  (3) Dishonest voting procedures.\n\nOh; were you talking about the government being the bad guys, and not the union?  Sorry.
604619
Unions started as a very essential function. Before they came about workers were forced to work inhuman hours, had few perks, rights and pay scales were close to slave wages. Back then people worked dangerous jobs in horrible conditions and were gratefull just to have a job. \n\n\nSince then Unions have instead of safeguarding those gains often felt they had to push for more and more. There comes a point when they push too far than can be reasonably given by a company or trade. Many unions have reached that point or gone beyond. The successfull unions are the ones that recognized when to back off and when to press. They kept a balence of workers needs and the profitability of the enterprise in focus. \n\nUnions have suffered major blows in the last decades. Some put themselves out of biz with increasing demands on companies at the verge of bankruptcy. Unions are partly at fault for many jobs being shipped overseas. \n\nSome Unions have commited suicide. The Air trafic controlers strike and the umpires strike are two examples. Poorly timed strikes that cost the unions all credibility. While the Air traffic controlers had a legitimate gripe, they had other means to address it and should have used those means. The Baseball players strike has damaged baseball severely as another example. Millions of fans never returned and MLB as a sport is on a precipace as it's fan base is aging out and new fans not being generated. It's just too expensive for the poor and middle class to attend games any more. So it is the wealthy and bachelors who are the bulk of the audience today. \n\nUnions also suffer from actions not their own making. The cost of doing biz in the US has skyrocketed while the economy has continued to decline for decades. Whole industries have ceased to exist in the US. This of course wiped out the unions that organized workers in those fields. \n\nCorruption and strong mafia ties have hurt the rep of the Unions over the years. Many non-unionized industries want nothing to do with unions in part because of this. \n\nThe very public failures of unions have also led many non-unionized industries to be rabidly anti-union. Entire states are strongly against unions for many reasons not just big biz bribes. \n\nBig Biz of course hates unions and have been actively working toward their demise for years. \n\nIt is an employer's market right now. Hard to unionize somebody like walmart employees when Walmart can go out and replace an entire store's staff in a single day. There are far too many people out of work today for a union not in a very specialized field to hope to succeed. \n\nAs for illegals. Unions until recently hated them as they actually undermined many trades unions. Illegals came in and took over carpenter jobs, plumbing, and many other heavily unionized jobs and did it for wages that were a fraction of what union workers got for the same thing. This cost many unions large chunks of their membership. As a means of survival unions are now actively recruiting illegals. This is a desperate act because by joining a union they price themselves out of the market and will be instantly replaced by a non-unionize illegal or if the wage scale goes up a legal US citizen will again be able to work that job and compitition from legals will knock out the illegals. The unions though want to collect those union dues so they'll recruit anybody they can for as long as they can.
998448
In India, trade unions are legally allowed. But in many parts of India, the workers don't have enough knowledge to start union activities. Worker rights are violated in most states due to illeteracy and general worker feeling that they are the employer's slaves.\n\nHowever, partially due to communism, few states have better working conditions and stronger unions. In some case the unions are more stronger than I would like. Examples are the state of Kerala and the state of West Bengal. The investors are shrewd and they stayed away from these two states. \n\nI think the most popular unions in india are CITU, INTUC and AITUC. Some links:\n\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centre_of_Indian_Trade_Unions\n\nhttp://www.citu.org.in/\nhttp://members.rediff.com/intuc/\nhttp://www.intuc.net/\nhttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:AITUC-affiliated_unions
571521
because it is the largest, and membership means that if employers mess with one small group, this massive union will do something about it, and people will definitely listen. also, they probably have pretty good benefits for their members.
135318
Like most unions, it was formed to get workers a better deal.  Better hours, pay and benefits.  Arguably now a days, though, it allows them to be lazy and greedy.  People don't like the teamsters as they are expensive and work slowly.  However, because of the power they hold, most work done by major cities has to be done by the teamsters.  \n\nSo, the significance in labor is that is shows the power people have whent hey work together (and, in my opinion, that power corrupts).
1149711
Unionization from a management perspective is something that makes life more complicated. One of the good things that unions do is they fight so that the balance of wealth is more even (in that you don't have a ton of minimum wage employees with a CEO making billions). \nExamples:\nWalmart - employees paid next to nothing, CEO making billions, no unionization\nGM - employees paid reasonable wages, CEO still making a ton, but not quite so much, strong union\n\nIn essence, unions exist to force management to offer reasonable salary/benefits/working conditions for its employees. There isn't really a positive consequence for management... only for workers. If the management is reasonable though, there will be no need for a union - and there are companies like that.
38511
Here is a nice site for you to look at.  It is for a large union that include many different workers from different fields.  Good luck.
748946
Strikes, boycotts, infiltration, sabotage, etc.  You have to organize; forget the pacifiers you're told to believe in.  Those in power are organized and have a lot of money.  If we have the numbers, we'll have the same amount of money.  We outnumber these worms 100 to 1 and can crush them like grapes.
690802
Unions are meant to not get fired, generally. Look at the teachers union. None of them get fired. Noramlly you won't get fired unless you go on strike.
427180
http://www.laborrights.org/actions/index.php?section=details&campaign=19\nhttp://www.unionvoice.org/campaign/Nestle/explanation
526528
This should not be an unfair affair in the working place and rules should basically be the same for all paid employees.  I see this happening today more and more.  Corporations are in for the maximum profit and take advantage of the workers anyway they can.  Unions were supposed to be the buffers between abusive corporations and helpless workers.  If you have a union then tell your union representative otherwise I don't think you have a chance.  You can easily be replaced, if many complain, then they take the jobs abroad where they can buy the government and we can intimidate them with our power, remember, we pay taxes to do that.
878640
Most people today have really no idea what the unions fought for and gained for working people both here in the US and in the UK where I am from origonally, we have a standard of living now that makes people think they really don't need to pay for protection from their employers, what they don't realise that in the last twenty years or so there seems to have been a shift in the balance where employers are now being able to get away more in terms of benefits and general treatment of workers, in the UK the unions were very strong right up until the early eighties, then Mrs Thatcher basically changed certain laws which virtually put a strangle hold on the unions makeing them less effective and changing peoples attitudes towards unions, people were then asking "why do we need unions, they can't do anything" so now you have a generation who don't know any better,  do not understand and as you say take for granted their current standard of living, admitidly in the seventies the unions, especially in the UK became so powerfull that the balance of power was firmly in their favor and resulted in many industries being damaged by this resulting in a total loss of confidence in British products at home and abroad.\nWe are now in a new industrial era both technologically and politically, western countries such as the US and UK have to be twice as efficient and inovative to be able to compete with the new developing countries like China and India, where people have nothing in terms of workers rights, and employers can just about do anything they like.\n\nBut I fully agree with your sentiments, explotation of workers back in those dark days of the early to mid part of the last century seem along way behind us, but could quite easily be back over a space of time that workers today would never even notice it happening, history informs us of the mistakes we make so we hopefully do not repeat the same things twice,  therefore the history of explotation on ordinary working people should be part of the education system.
437189
An alliance of workers?  I would have to say a union. Many industries (I think maybe factory workers, people who build cars, pilots, etc.) have worker's unions. Unions help them get higher pay and better benefits.
622953
I agree that it should be your choice whether you choose or not.\n\nI'm in Australia, and I realise that unions can do some good things, but I dislike many as they are big big bullies!\n\nI've worked in many places where unions have played a big part in the workplace, and there was often a bit of a demarcation line between those who belonged and those who didn't.  I considered joining on a couple of occasions, but the actions of these unions always put me off.  In one case, someone went to a meeting that was to affect all staff, but as she wasn't a union member, she was asked to leave, despite being allowed to attend an earlier meeting on the same topic!  This promotes disharmony in the workplace and is grossly unfair for those who choose not to belong for a multitude of reasons.
287346
If you mean, "do we no longer need labor unions in the US"...Well, I'd say the moment corporations ensure a reasonable wage that keeps up with inflation, safe working conditions, a fair work week with pay for overtime, access to group rates on health insurance and retirement plans (even if employee paid), occasional time off to care for sick family members, the opportunity to go away for 6 weeks to have a baby and still come back to work, and so on--all out of the goodness of their corporate hearts--then yeah, we can do without labor unions.  \n\nAnd the weather in hell today is...?
253903
Your question assumes that unions have a lot of power. How do you justify this assumption, especially in the current economic environment?  Unionized workers fear outsourcing, benefit cuts, lay-offs and shrinking membership roles. Where's the power?