What are worker unions, and why is there opposition?
In: Economics
Corporations exist to create profit. They usually sell a good or service to do so, but they are not in business just to create that good or service, they exist for the sole purpose of creating profit for its owners. A “publicly traded company” is one that is owned by its shareholders. These companies exist for the sole purpose of creating profit for its shareholders. A private corporation has owners that actually work for the corporation. These companies exist to create profit for the owners that are working for the company.
Since the corporation exists solely to create profit, they will do so in any way they can. Some/most corporations have exploited their workers in search for more profit. For example, they will cut benefits like healthcare, or cut their contribution to the workers retirement funds, they may even attempt to break the law by making you work more hours than you are getting paid for. This is all in search of profit.
The workers are in a bad position. If one worker stands up to their boss and says “we need more money per hour to continue working”, the boss can easily fire just one worker and replace them.
There is power in numbers. The workers realized “he might be able to fire one of us, but it would hurt the companies profit if he fired ALL of us!”. So the workers joined together and became a UNION. This means they stood up to the boss and said “if you fire one of us, ALL of us are leaving”. This gave power back to the workers. This also gave the workers the ability to say “hey boss, if you don’t pay us more for our jobs, we will all stop working and strike”.
Unions are the reason that we have laws to protect the workers in the USA. They are the reason we have child labor laws, overtime, safety regulations and so on. Any law on the books that protects workers rights was likely from a union pushing it to become a reality.
So why is there opposition?
Simply because it takes away from the purpose of the business, to make profit. If the workers need protective glasses to work in metal factories, this would cut into the profit of the company. If the workers received higher pay, this would cut into the profit of the business. So everyone who is set to benefit from the business profiting (mostly the owners) will push back against unions.
We can see this happening right now with Starbucks. Some locations have unionized and gotten better working conditions/hours/pay for its employees. While the corporation itself pushes VERY, VERY hard against the unions forming. If the corporation hears that its workers are talking about a union, they are likely to fire that employee. This scares workers into not forming the union for better working conditions.
There is also opposition from some undereducated workers. Unions have expenses, sometimes they have to hire lawyers, sometimes they have to go to court, these things cost money. Some workers see this expense, without seeing the benefits provided, and are against the union before it forms because they don’t see how it benefits them.
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