Human resources management concepts and practices

¶ … Human Resources

Labor unions have been around for decades and will probably continue to be around for decades more. These unions came into existence out of necessity. They fight the employment rights of the worker and this includes anything from better wages to better overall working conditions. Although labor unions seek to help the employer, they are favored positively by some and negatively by others. They are not always held in the highest esteem, but their role is important and even though they are disliked by some, they are respected by many others. Many respect the role that the labor union plays because of their negotiating power which is also called collective bargaining. Labor unions have more clout when it comes to negotiating than an individual worker or a group of workers.

There are differing views on labor unions. Many workers prefer to belong to a union because they feel that the labor union gives them a voice. If they are having issues with their employer that they cannot seem to remedy themselves, they can always go to their union representative for assistance. Unions also help workers by negotiating salary increases to ensure that their salaries are competitive with the general market. Also, workers can benefit from other services that the union membership offers such as discounts on various services such as insurance and even legal services (Berman et al., 2002).

Labor unions are not favored by everyone. Managers generally tend to have reservations about labor unions. Managers represent the company they work for and always have to be concerned with the bottom line. As such, they sometimes have to make decisions that are not popular with their employees. When instances such as this happen and the employee is a member of an organized labor union, he has a means of redress. He can take the issue to the union representative who will then fight the battle for him. The manager does not like this because they see the union as means of dividing the employee and the manager as well as tampering with the organizational change of the company (pg. 277).

The labor union organizational leader has his job cut out for him. Each side (labor union and managers) have preconceived notions about each other. Labor union leaders feel that managers are political and do not get the whole negotiating process because they are cheap. Managers feel that labor union representatives not nothing about the management process and that they know nothing about the big picture (pg. 278). In order for labor negotiations to be successful and for both sides to feel like at least most of their needs have been met, labor unions and managers need to set aside any preconceived notions and try not to be judgemental.

Membership in labor unions has decreased from 32.5% of the working population in the private section in the 1950's to about 13% in 2009. The public sector has not seen such a drastic decrease, but overall this means that the number of labor negotiations has also decreased (Kersie and Cutcher-Gershenfeld, 2009). While this may be true, the union leaders must be aware that the employees may have trepidation about joining the union because they want to know what the union will do for them and management will be concerned with how the labor union will affect the organization and workers as well as other things.