Week 10 – Blog: Individual Assignment

Because of my political ideology, I am very pro-union, and I almost certainly will join one when given the opportunity. From a societal standpoint, I believe that unions are extremely important. I believe in flattening out hierarchies and giving power/compensation to those that create value for society. This is almost always the workers in unions and not managers/executives. I believe that management will always do what is best to generate more revenues and limit expenses. While it is accepted that this includes keeping your workers happy by offering fair compensation, this is only done because it is more expensive to lose good employees. Because of this underlying motivation of managers, I believe that lower-level workers need to band together and create strength in numbers. I fully believe in utilizing the leverage that workers have, as business and profits are built off of the backs of their labor. While everybody would like to believe that they will be exceptional at negotiating for themselves, I see much more of a benefit to unionizing and negotiating for the group in a structured and well thought out way. My dad has vastly different political stances from me and thus, is not a part of a union. My mom was a part of a union when she still worked as a teacher before I was born. I asked her about her experience, and she said that she was not a member long enough to reap any major compensation, but that the union did a great job at earning good benefits for the teachers.