Resistance Of Employers To Unionization In The United States: A Historical Perspective

Is the increasing resistance of employers to unionization a new phenomenon or simply a return to the historic relationship that has existed between unions and management in the United States?

In the United States, the history of resistance between employers and labour has led the employees to involve in the trade unions. Labour Unions are the legally recognised representatives that state the problems and work related issues of the workers (Berman et al. 2015). In United States, the labour union works on the collective bargaining. They raise the issues regarding regular wages, benefits of the workers and about the working environment. In past, the fundamental differences of goals, values, and philosophies between the trade unionists and the capitalists or the business owners.

In US, the unions were emerged in the mid-19th century influenced by the industrial revolution and then become most active in social and economical context in the decade of 1980 (Shafritz et al. 2015). The businesses were facing various issues in that time and the union were helping the workers to get proper justice. However, after few days when the global trends were introduced and the employers changed their policies, then these unions become less active. Along with this, the implementation of Fair Employment FEPC has made the employment procedure smoother. According to Berman et al. (2015), the percentage of union members is decreasing regularly. In 1980, the percentage of involved union members were 22 and in present day it decreased to 11.3%. It shows that the resistance of employers to unionization has decreased before but in recent time, it is increasing again.

Therefore, it can be said that the unionisation has emerged to help the employees to take away their rights from the capitalists. Moreover, the American Trade Unions has not in a good term with the capitalists in beginning but became friendly after some time. However, now it is acting against them again to remove the uneven situation of the employees.

References

Berman, E. M., Bowman, J. S., West, J. P., & Van Wart, M. R. (2015).Human resource management in public service: Paradoxes, processes, and problems. Sage Publications.

Shafritz, J. M., Ott, J. S., & Jang, Y. S. (2015). Classics of organization theory. Cengage Learning.