I am very familiar with unions. A very close friend of mine actually tried to unionize his company for a lot of the reasons that were listed in the lecture this week. There was dissatisfaction with certain aspects of the job, especially pay and the lack of promotion opportunities. There wasn’t fair pay and there really wasn’t a clear path for advancement, so he did try to organize a union. A lot of my research didn’t really differ from what the lecture talked about because it was pretty spot on in this case. Like the lecture mentioned, typically more than 50% of employees have to support the union for it to move forward through a vote or authorization cards. Unfortunately in his situation it never even got to that point.
On the other hand, I did talk to a friend of mine who works at a union job. I work in construction, and a lot of contractors are unionized. One thing he mentioned is that he often gets Fridays off or stops working once he hits 40 hours for the week. In contrast, at my non-union job if I hit 40 hours I’m usually just expected to keep working. So there are definitely some advantages to that structure.
There are also some downsides. A portion of your paycheck goes toward union dues, and some sources mention that advancement can sometimes favor seniority over performance.
Overall though, there are still a lot of positives to having a union. If I had to choose between working somewhere with a union or without one, I honestly think I would lean toward the union option. When I was in the military it wasn’t unionized, but promotions and pay increases were very clear. You knew exactly what you had to do to move up. I liked that structure, and unions seem to provide something similar with clearer expectations for pay, promotions, and overtime.
https://www.laborsoft.com/blog/pros-and-cons-of-labor-unions
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