A Short History of Union Work

Unions have been an important social development with moral overtones in a primarily capitalistic milieu of the business world. But unions are themselves organizations of workers and officials and employee representatives, with complex drivers and motivating principles.

Unions formed mainly in reaction to industrialization and the oligarchic power concentrated inside a top tier of company leaders and business owners. When working conditions for children, women, and men assumed unreasonable proportions, persons employed in railroad, coal, and labor joined together to leverage work force power to gain improvements.

Unions have benefited employees in general, and their existence has generally guaranteed that companies and firms make general labor policies with their current labor contracts in mind. But the tenacity of many unions historically to strike (withhold skilled labor during high business volumes) can also lose contracts as well.

A strategy of retaliation against union movements includes lockouts, where the employer prevents solidified labor forces from entering the place of business and performing work. Collective bargaining maintains the interest of individual workers to collect wages and better working conditions, while extracting promises of durational commitments of work from employers.

Trade unions can heavily influence other types of activities through their political power, voting alliances, and general promotion of workplace or industry changes or conditions. Legislational support for laws and regulations that favor certain beneficial contract or work volumes lend a special interest air to trade union statements and activities.

Many industries have suffered under union control and created new industries or labor markets abroad due to domestic union influences. Political parties and the sway of national power can be affected when socialist movements employ labor unions to withhold votes or support for elected politicians or companies with government contracts to fulfill. For this reason, voting blocs including unions are often considered when political candidates measure their likelihood for election.

The growth in power for unions was a long painful journey. Speculation about the birth of unionism has been applied to the evolution of a medieval artisanal or craftsmen‘s guilds into the modern trade labor organization. But apprenticeship is not the goal of the modern trade union. Organized labor seeks to cement its own leverage by a larger member base.

Early unions were often illegal, as was any agreement to suppress wages. Emerging manufacturing competition demanded representation of the individual worker, and the pooled interests of the collective workforce was the force required to move the mountains of the early company titans whose word had previously been law. Work hours, time off, compensation, and other trade labor conditions were regulated by agreements made with the union organization's leaders.

But modern unions quickly became their own "animal", fostering growth for the organizational collective ahead of individual union members. Thus, the sword that protects the union member's job may prevent him from taking individual action. When political heft became a characteristic of union movements and activities, individual union members became wary of collective bargaining.

With the advanced legal system that exists today, workplace rights have become widespread even in non-union industries. But the groups of collective rights that govern trade labor still operate inside corporations with blue collar or largely hourly employee populations.