Random excerpt: in “The Office”, the warehouse crew wanted to unionise and Jan from corporate shuts it down by threatening to fire them. What can the unionisation of workers do and if it’s that important, how can corporations make it optional?
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Let’s say I’m the boss of the factory, and I tell everyone that they now have to work 10 hour days or get fired. If just one person says no, and decides to stop working in protest, I can fire that person and hire a new one. But if everyone gets together and says “No, we’re all going to stop working until you bring us back to 8 hour days and make it optional to work 10 hours.” then the boss is in trouble. He can’t just replace everyone, he won’t have anyone to train the new people, and his business will suffer. It could take weeks to hire enough people to replace the entire factory, and during those weeks he wouldn’t be making any money at all. So, he is forced to undo his change and go back to 8 hour work days.
That’s the basics of a union. All (or a majority) of the workers get together and are able to negotiate for better working conditions, because if they threaten to all stop working, to go on strike, then the business will suffer and have a hard time working without them.
Many businesses dislike unions, as they feel that some can go too far and make it harder for the business to make money because the workers are demanding more than is fair. Other businesses dislike unions because they don’t like feeling like they’re in absolute control of what happens at the workplace, and the workers have more power.
Some people feel that unions can go too far, and dislike that part of being in a union is giving a portion of your paycheck to the union, generally going into a fund so that if people have to go on strike, there’s money for them to survive off of while they strike and stop working. Others feel that unions are a crucial part of business, and dislike that they’ve gotten a bad reputation, feeling that large companies have been trying to make unions look bad so that people aren’t as interested in them anymore.
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