How do unions work? How did they get in power and give us rights?
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A union is a group of people.
Imagine you want a build a big cabin. You have to carry logs and move big things around. These are too heavy for you to move around on your own. So you call friends, and they help you lifting and assembling the elements needed to build a cabin. You got the help of a group of people.
Now imagine that instead of a cabin, you want to get things that are related to the work you do. For instance, you know that you create valuable products using dangerous tools in a company, and you want some of the money from selling the products to be used to pay you money even when you can’t work because you got hurt when using the tools. If you ask for it on your own, you might be laughed at. But if you call your colleagues and you ask for it as a group, you can be taken more seriously.
The group resulting from your calling your colleagues in order to demand something related to your work is called a union. As time goes on, some groups turn into organisations with a strong structure. When unions started to go to governments instead of companies, some of the things they got granted were written into laws, that we call rights.
The thing that moves people to help someone do something they wouldn’t be able to do on their own is called solidarity. It is one of the things that make us human.
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