Unions, the hope of the workers

medicineman

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A Trade Union (Labour union) ... is a continuous association of wage-earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment."[1]
Over the last three hundred years, trade unions have developed into a number of forms, influenced by differing political and economic regimes. The immediate objectives and activities of trade unions vary, but may include:
  • Provision of benefits to members: Early trade unions, like Friendly Societies, often provided a range of benefits to insure members against unemployment, ill health, old age and funeral expenses. In many developed countries, these functions have been assumed by the state; however, the provision of professional training, legal advice, and representation for members is still an important benefit of trade union membership.
  • Collective bargaining: Where trade unions are able to operate openly and are recognised by employers, they may negotiate with employers over wages and working conditions.
  • Industrial action: Trade unions may organize strikes or resistance to lockouts in furtherance of particular goals.
  • Political activity: Trade unions may promote legislation favourable to the interests of their members or workers as a whole. To this end they may pursue campaigns, undertake lobbying, or financially support individual candidates or parties (such as the Labour Party in Britain for public office
 

medicineman

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Unions IIHistory
Beginning in the eighteenth century, much of Western society (with most changes occurring earliest in Britain) witnessed a transformation from an agrarian culture with craft-based production to a culture shaped by the first industrial revolution. Some of the changes brought on by this new order, such as new work methods and downward pressure on traditional wage structures,[2] sparked rising alarm in the crafts and guilds of the time, who feared encroachment on their established jobs.
Additionally, the rapid expansion of the industrial society was to draw women, children, rural workers, and immigrants to the work force in larger numbers and in new roles. This pool of unskilled and semi-skilled labour spontaneously organised in fits and starts throughout its beginnings,[1] and would later be an important arena for the development of trade unions.
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[edit] Origins and early history

Trade unions have sometimes been seen as successors to the guilds of Medieval Europe, though the relationship between the two is disputed. [3] Medieval guilds existed to protect and enhance their members' livelihoods through controlling the instructional capital of artisanship and the progression of members from apprentice to craftsman, journeyman, and eventually to master and grandmaster of their craft. They also facilitated mobility by providing accommodation for guild members travelling in search of work. Guilds exhibited some aspects of the modern trade union, but also some aspects of professional associations and modern corporations.
Additionally, guilds, like some craft unions today, were highly restrictive in their membership and only included artisans who practiced a specific trade. Many modern labour unions tend to be expansionistic, and frequently seek to incorporate widely disparate kinds of workers to increase the leverage of the union as a whole. A labour union in 2006 might include workers from only one trade or craft, or might combine several or all the workers in one company or industry.
Since the publication of the History of Trade Unionism (1894) by Sidney and Beatrice Webb, the predominant historical view is that a trade union "is a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their employment." [1] A modern definition by the Australian Bureau of Statistics states that a trade union is "an organisation consisting predominantly of employees, the principal activities of which include the negotiation of rates of pay and conditions of employment for its members." [4]
Yet historian R.A. Leeson, in United we Stand (1971), said:
"Two conflicting views of the trade-union movement strove for ascendancy in the nineteenth century: one the defensive-restrictive guild-craft tradition passed down through journeymen's clubs and friendly societies,...the other the aggressive-expansionist drive to unite all 'labouring men and women' for a 'different order of things'..." Recent historical research by Dr Bob James in Craft, Trade or Mystery (2001) puts forward that trade unions are part of a broader movement of benefit societies, which includes medieval guilds, Freemasons, Oddfellows, friendly societies and other Fraternal organisations.
The 18th century economist Adam Smith noted the imbalance in the rights of workers in regards to owners (or "masters"). In The Wealth of Nations, Book I, chapter 8, Smith wrote:
We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and everywhere in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate... [When workers combine,] masters... never cease to call aloud for the assistance of the civil magistrate, and the rigorous execution of those laws which have been enacted with so much severity against the combinations of servants, labourers, and journeymen. As indicated in the preceding quotation, unions were illegal for many years in most countries. There were severe penalties for attempting to organise 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 legalised organising efforts, but codified the relationship between employers and those employees organised into unions. Even after the legitimisation of trade unions there was opposition, as the case of the Tolpuddle Martyrs shows.
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.
The right to join a trade union is mentioned in article 23, subsection 4 of the UDHR, which also states in article 20, subsection 2. that "No one may be compelled to belong to an association". Prohibiting a person from joining or forming a union, as well as forcing a person to do the same (e.g. "closed shops" or "union shops", see below), whether by a government or by a business, is generally considered a human rights abuse. Similar allegations can be levelled if an employer discriminates based on trade union membership. Attempts by an employer, often with the help of outside agencies, to prevent union membership amongst their staff is known as union busting.

[edit] 19th Century Unionism

In France, Germany and other European countries, socialist parties and anarchists played a prominent role in forming and building up trade unions, especially from the 1870s onwards. This stood in contrast to the British experience, where moderate New Model Unions dominated the union movement from the mid-nineteenth century and where trade unionism was stronger than the political labour movement until the formation and growth of the Labour Party in the early years of the twentieth century.
 

medicineman

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Unions IIILabor unions in the United States
Main article: Labor unions in the United States
Labor unions in the United States today function as legally recognized representatives of workers in numerous industries, but in recent years have seen their greatest growth among service sector and public sector workers. Activity by labor unions in the United States today centers on collective bargaining over wages, benefits, and working conditions for their membership and on representing their members if management attempts to violate contract provisions. Although down from the peak membership they achieved in the third quarter of the twentieth century, American unions also remain an important political factor, both through mobilization of their own memberships and through coalitions with like-minded activist organizations around issues such as immigrant rights, trade policy, health care, and living wage campaigns.
Labor unions in the past have been infiltrated by members of organized crime, such as the Mafia. Organized crime had been active in some Teamster locals, particularly in the garment industry in New York City, as early as the 1920s. Labor racketeers made inroads in other cities, such as Chicago, Cleveland, Kansas City and Detroit, in the 1930s. Jimmy Hoffa and other Teamster leaders made strategic alliances with organized crime, in deals that benefited both the Mafia and its associates, who obtained sweetheart contracts, and the union leaders, who received kickbacks and other forms of assistance. Jimmy Hoffa would later mysteriously disappear. Hoffa's son, James P. Hoffa, is the current president of the Teamsters. For more information, refer to Teamsters: Organized crime's influence. The US labor movement has gone through major changes in the last year with the departure from the AFL-CIO of five major unions led by the Service Employees International Union into the Change to Win Federation. The face of the labor movement is also changing. For the last twenty years women have made up the majority of new workers organized and union growth has been significantly higher among workers of color and immigrant workers than among white male workers.[10]
 
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