should unions be given the right to strike?

Question

are the trade unions exploiting their right to strike?is it a mistake to have granted them the right to strike?give your opinions....

Answer 1

You're lumping all unions together. There are Industry Unions (like Teachers, Airline Pilots, Autoworkers, etc) and Craft/Skilled Trades Unions (like Ironworkers, Pipefitters, Boilermakers, etc). Big difference! Many of the Craft Unions are Full Referral, hold & manage Health Insurance & Pension Funds, have Apprenticeships, etc.

In this day and age with a plethora of non-union and people willing to work scab, it's a really big deal if a Construction Union strikes. It hurts everybody - company, union, & workers. Workers don't get wages, Unions don't get dues and have to spend a lot of time & headaches at the negotiating table. Companies have the opportunity to hire scab if they can find enough workers who are able to do the job. In Skilled Trades, it's pretty hard to find say 200+ trained, tested, and certified workers in the area to man a job immediately. On Industrial Construction sites, any wasted time means millions of $$s wasted (do you realize how much it costs to rent a crane?)

Pretty naive of a couple of answerers to say that the Labor Laws and OSHA solve all the problems and unions are no longer needed. Completely untrue. If it's financially beneficial to a company to cut corners on safety -- they will, they do it all of the time. OSHA regulations aren't specific enough to cover every contingency. Real Life Example: OSHA rules state that a worker a certain number of feet off the ground must be tied off. It DOESN'T say what type of safety harness. The job my husband is currently on, the contractor went cheap on the yo-yos. The lines don't retract all of the time and get hung up on the iron, they retract unexpectedly and jerk workers off balance. A safety line doesn't do a da** bit of good if it doesn't catch until you've already hit the ground 180 feet below! Workers complained to the company, nothing happened. The Union got involved, it got fixed.

Answer 2

Unions exploit their right to strike in many cases, but it was not a mistake to have granted them the right to strike in the first place. When unions were first formed, they went on strike mostly because of unsafe working conditions. That's a valid concern that should be addressed by every employer. The problem is certain unions have brainwashed their members into believing (a) the executives are all greedy, corrupt individuals who don't care about the little guy and only want to make more money for themselves, and (b) the union members are somehow entitled to an exhorbitant salary despite the fact that they bring no special education, training, or experience to the table.

There are certain unions in skilled trades that require you to have some type of formal education or apprenticeship or certification to be a member of that union AND to be allowed by law to do that job (like electricians). I have no problem paying an electrician well above minimum wage for his/her work because it requires a knowledge base and skill set I don't have, and an electrician provides a valuable service by doing electrical work for me and ensuring it's done properly and safely. By contrast, however, the United Auto Whiners get paid a king's ransom (READ: A starting UAW line worker makes over three times the minimum wage) to do a job a trained monkey can do. The UAW is the only place I know where a janitor can make a salary of $85,000 a year. With all benefits included, that janitor makes around $115,000 a year. Sorry -- NO JANITOR ON THE PLANET is worth that much, but the UAW gets away with it because of the union rules and laws.

And people wonder why the state of Michigan is in the toilet and why the American auto industry can't compete with the Japanese?!?!! Corporate greed isn't to blame -- take a good look at the UAW and you'll find out just how lazy they are and how much they expect for marginal work.

Answer 3

The only time unions don't have the right to strike is when they gave up that right in their negotiations. A strike is when a bunch of people don't go to work to make a point. You really can't force people to show up for work--all you can do is fire them. But by being a large force of no shows, they are not easily replaced, and that is how you take the power back from an employer that doesn't care about its employees.

I'm not sure where you are from or what strikes you are talking about, so I can't make a judgment on whether they are exploiting their right or not. In the US, you will only usually see labor unions in particular trades that have been exploited in the past or working against companies who haven't treated employees well. It costs money to join a union--most people don't join unless they need the union to make the employer treat their workers right.

Answer 4

They have the right to strike. To be denied this right would in essence make them "toothless". They don't strike for no reason, they strike over issues which the company does not wish to move on. When they strike they do suffer hardships, no pay no benefits etc. Look back in history as to why unions were necessary to come about, "the greed of man". Some plants operate without unions and are plants with good harmony between the workers and mgmt. This is not so in all cases, unfortunately there is still a need to have unions.

Answer 5

You can't take it away from them. That is the POINT of a union - a collective of workers acting together so that the company has to sit up and pay attention. The company COULD sack the lot of them - and then what? You have to hire a large majority of your workforce from scratch, and you'll make no money until you do - and that is assuming you will find people who will come and work for you after the very highly published sacking of a whole union. The union is the worker's safegaurd against exploitation.

If you have a rule within a company that no unions may be formed, then the company could make highly skilled workers work for minimum wage. For instance they could make someone who's got a college education, and an excellent degree do work which presently is worth a high wage - and then say "you all now earn minimum wage. If you don't like it, leave" - unions are banned so they cannot strike, and the protection given to individuals by the union to voice their opinion has gone - so most accept this incredibly unfair state rather than get sacked, whilst the few 'mavericks' who wish to have a decent wage for their work are sacked.

'But they could work for another company' you say. Wrong. If it is now universal policy that unions may not strike then once one company has said their workers earn minimum wage, what is to stop a similar company making exactly the same decree? The company makes more money - the workers can't do anything about it, the fatcats get fatter, the working and even middle classes have their faces stamped on - we go back 150 years as a society.

Answer 6

They aren't given the right to strike, and some unions aren't allowed to strike. Of the ones that are, they fought for that right, the briefest study of the struggle of the unions in this country show a dire lack of concern about working conditions, wages, job security, and the balance of power in the employer-employee relationship.
When there is a meeting of equals, everyone benefits, when one side, or the other has all the power, no one wins.
Unionist died in battles with thugs hired by industrialists who wanted to spend no money at all on cleaning up the air their factory workers breathed, despite so many deaths from 'white lung'. The miners died of shoddy cheap practices insisted on by the owners, and those that lived could die of 'black lung'. No one gave these people anything. They fought and died for it.

Answer 7

That is the whole point of unionization. The right to strike if the employer is exploiting or causing potential harm to workers. Take that right away and the workers may as well be in a quilting bee or something.

Answer 8

By US law some unions do not have the right to strike ever(Railway Act of 1932) and the President or Congress both have the right to deny any group the right to strike at any time if they feel it is in the best interest of the country (Ronald Reagan and the Air Traffic Controllers).

Answer 9

As a firefighter, I can't go on strike. If I did, some people with U.S. Marshall written on their jacket could show up and arrest me. Even a police officer is allowed to go on strike, but not us. I guess it's far easier to train a police officer than it is a firefighter. Personally, I love my job and can't understand why anybody would want to strike. There are other ways to get what you want.

Answer 10

There have been laws on the books for dozens of years, making labor unions not only unnecessary but actually are a cancer in our society. Today, labor unions are simply extortionists who hold the company who pays their salary, hostage. They make us non-competitive in the world and breed frivolous law suits and conflict between employers and employees.

Unions won't go away, just like affirmative action; maybe there was a day that they were needed but once they have been corrupted by socialism, they will never, ever go away.

Liberals use labor unions to say and do things they don't want to go on record but totally support. Liberals are in love with any group that will harm our economy; that's why they support trial lawyers, enemies of the USA, labor unions, terrorists etc; liberals want to bring down our society and economy so they can tell you that capitalism does not work, so they can replace it with socialism.

It would make liberals very happy to reduce the USA to 3rd world country status, They don't think we deserve to be the world leader so they support anything that harms our way of lfe.

The definition of a liberal is a socialist in denial.