Week 4: Labor Relations
Discuss the role of unions in the history of American labor. Are unions today good, bad, or needed for companies? Defend your position.
In your second post, discuss how Continuous Improvement is impacting healthcare, banking, retail and/or government. Merger of Lean and...
Week 4: Labor Relations
Discuss the role of unions in the history of American labor. Are unions today good, bad,
or needed for companies? Defend your position.
In your second post, discuss how Continuous Improvement is impacting healthcare,
banking, retail and/or government. Merger of Lean and Six Sigma are interesting topics
you can explore here.
, Professor & Class –
Discuss the role of unions in the history of American labor. Are unions today good,
bad, or needed for companies? Defend your position.
I have always had a good perception of unions in American labor. Some people
have other perceptions. I have lived in the Orlando area for almost 20 years now,
and I have done numerous papers through previous classes that discusses how dire
(embarrassing) the average wage-earner makes in this part of the country. Using a
barometer of rental prices, the average wage-earner would have to work 85 hours a
week to afford the lowest-priced apartment. Orlando is a primarily a service-
dominated industry area – but the wages paid are some of the lowest in the country.
Unions that represent employees for two of the largest employers in this area
(Disney and Universal) are instrumental in ensuring that workers are getting wage
increases commensurate with the generous profits and revenue stream that Disney
and Universal are achieving. I do believe without the efforts of these unions,
workers at theme parks would be making far less that mandated by the collective
bargaining process that unions have been able to achieve.
So, in this area I believe unions efforts are good and needed for companies. In
other areas of the country (Silicon Valley for instance), I don’t believe unions would
be needed.
For unions to remain relevant is to pursue a strategy that any business must
consider – expand their efforts. As the text suggests, unions must consider
expanding into areas where there has been no prior union footprint or presence.
Mello, J. (2015). Strategic Human Resource Management (4th Ed.). Stamford, CT:
Cengage Learning. (547)
Peters, X. (2019). New report says Orlando area minimum wage earners have to
work 85 hours a week to afford cheapest apartments. Retrieved
from https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2019/06/20/new-report-says-
orlando-area-minimum-wage-earners-have-to-work-85-hours-a-week-to-afford-
cheapest-apartments (Links to an external site.)
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Collapse SubdiscussionStephen Ludden
, Stephen Ludden
Nov 19, 2019Nov 19, 2019 at 4:18pm
Manage Discussion Entry
Darrell - You make some excellent points in favor of unions. I do agree with some of
the points that you provided, but am generally opposed to unions from a business
perspective. Unions were founded in an age where labor laws did not necessarily
protect some classes of individuals and those individuals were being taken
advantage of. In today's world, there are a large number of labor laws that protect
individuals from these predatory practices. In my opinion, unions essentially take
businesses hostage with labor being provided in order to acquire more pay or
benefits on a regular basis for the workers. This causes businesses to raise prices
for consumers in order to make adequate profits. This is not fair to the consumers,
especially consumers that rely on the item for survival (e.g. electricity or water).
Unions also typically make it extremely difficult to fire someone who may be clearly
incompetent in their job description due to tenure or other reasons.
Collapse SubdiscussionDarrell Gordon
Darrell Gordon
Nov 20, 2019Nov 20, 2019 at 10:21am
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Stephen - I certainly agree on your last point. With the collective bargaining
agreement, as far as being able to fire employees - it is almost impossible to carry
out that action. Even in clear cases where is no question that the employee
behavior is egregious, the rules/steps to finalize the termination of said employee is
extremely time-consuming at the very least.
Collapse SubdiscussionStephen Ludden
Stephen Ludden
Nov 20, 2019Nov 20, 2019 at 4:11pm
, Manage Discussion Entry
Yes, and this leads to a less efficient business model which costs the consumer
more money overall. The collective bargaining aspect of things is a very solid
concept on paper, but in practice is not great for the business. Especially when
people take advantage of the system and hold the employer hostage with acts that
are generally unacceptable. If applied correctly, the union system would be
beneficial for most labor groups but there are always people that will want more and
take advantage of the system. It is up to the leaders of the union to guide the
workforce appropriately / morally in these situations.
Collapse SubdiscussionEdward Miller
Edward Miller
Nov 20, 2019Nov 20, 2019 at 7:43pm
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Stephan and Darrell,
Both of you make excellent points.
I am going into an interesting situation. I've come from a (distribution) operation
where we spent a bit of time trying to "Union-bust" team members by giving them
the facts on how Unions operate and how a lot of the perks they had would no
longer be applicable if a union came in to the operation. Recently, I've accepted a
new position at a company whose workforce primary is made up of Union workers.
Adapting to the rigidness of a workforce that has set responsibilities and duties is
going to take some getting used to for someone like me -- who has worked with
company employees who you can use in any capacity needed in order to perform
the job. While I do see the benefits of being Union (job security, usually better
benefits), the trade offs of being rewarded based on merit, opposed to how good of
worker one truly is, doesn't quite make sense to me. It's definitely going to take
some getting used to.
Stephen Ludden
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