How do unions work? How did they get in power and give us rights?
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Unions work by collective bargaining power. If all the workers (in Union) agree to strike or walk out on a company, they have a much larger affect on the business than single people striking without organisation. Using this you can use this power to change your working conditions for you and others.
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.
The power comes from the power of the strike. If one employee gets fed up and threatens to walk out, so what? He will be replaced. But, if the entire crew walks out, it shuts down the operation. If all the employees in other operations within the company join in solidarity with their union brothers and also walk off the job, the entire corporation can be brought to a standstill. If the company wants to run its operations, it will have to make an equitable deal with the union and get them to go back to work. Strikes are not to be taken lightly, and there is always pain on both sides, but it is the only power a union has.
Unions derive power from three things primarily:
1. Strength in numbers. By banding together and agreeing to bargain as a collective, workers can demand certain baselines for compensation under threat of strike. This means more stable, predictable compensation all around, but it also typically means that high performers don’t get rewarded as much as they otherwise may.
2. Legislation and courts that protect unions. Businesses with cheapskate standards can respond to a strike by firing the entire workforce and hiring extremely cheap labor to replace them, usually immigrants, for pennies on the dollar. This kind of thing is almost certainly a breach of contract and/or illegal, but business-friendly judges and legislatures have either turned a blind eye to it or explicitly codified it as legal.
3. The ability to compel dues. By requiring that even non-union members pay dues if they work for a union shop, unions can ensure that there isn’t a back door for management to make a bunch or non-union hires and “eliminate the positions” of the union members, thereby depriving the union of its funds. This ability has been eroded in “right to work” states, where legislation basically voided large parts of a union’s power. The argument is that it’s unfair to ask non-members to pay because they may politically disagree with the existence of unions and do not want to support them, but this is a pretty disingenuous characterization. Those workers still benefit from the union’s existence, namely the protections it provides.
You may notice that all these pillars have basically been destroyed in the last 30 or so years, and you’d be right. Ever since Reagan fired air traffic controllers for striking, it’s been open season on unions, and no one really seemed to care. It’s no coincidence that ever since then, wealth growth has concentrated mostly at the C-level, and growth for non-supervisory workers basically stalled relative to inflation. There are some industries which are exceptions (software, engineering, etc.), but it’s a lot harder to be a non-college-educated worker these days.
So the basic answer to your question is that unions derive power from sources that have largely been cut off.
I went from walmart (infamously nonunion, managers are trained to squash any union like talk, etc) where I was always just 2 rungs under the store manager, to fred meyer/Kroger (which is union), and let me tell you, I dont miss walmart one bit, some of the people, sure. And dont get me wrong there are growing pains, but, overall, it’s a much more relaxed atmosphere
I just came here to say that I read the title as **How do Unicorns Work?** Says something about my state of mind before the holidays…
If you want to see how unions should work, take a look at [trade unions in Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trade_unions_in_Germany). At their core, unions are supposed to be an organization of the workers who collectively bargain with the company, companies, or among themselves in the case of independent trade unions, to set pay structures and compensation, as well as establish working standards and treatment.
I suggest looking at the Germany trade unions because the relationship between unions and corporations in the US has always been very combative whereas the relationship between unions and corporations in Germany has been very cooperative, to the point where union representatives sit on the board of directors for many companies. I think the closest unions/corporations in the States have gotten to that level of cooperation was during the airline downturn after 9/11.
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No matter how tough and strong you think you are, you’re never as strong and as tough as you and a hundred of your friends.
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