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- As workplaces evolve, unions remain essential in advocating for workers ‘ rights, ensuring fair treatment, and fostering a supportive work environment. Unions play a pivotal role in addressing the unique needs of employees, providing a platform for voicing concerns, and securing essential benefits.
www.theworkersunion.com/understanding-unions/
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- Unity is strength. Unions enable workers to come together as a powerful, collective voice to communicate with management about their working terms and conditions – and to push for safe, fair and decent work.
- Better terms and conditions. Workers who join a trade union are more likely to have better terms and conditions than those who do not, because trade unions negotiate for their members through collective bargaining agreements and protect them from bad management practices.
- More holiday. Unions won the right for workers to have paid holidays. The average trade union member in the UK gets over 25% more annual leave a year than a non-unionised worker.
- Higher wages. You earn more in a unionised workplace. Trade union members in the UK earn on average 10% more than non-unionised members. This is the power of collective bargaining.
There are three key reasons: Individuals in the UK have the legal right to be accompanied in certain situations by a trade union representative – whether or not the organisation recognises a trade union (see below for definition of what ‘recognition’ means).
Developing effective working relationships with trade union representatives and members can help organisations to build a positive employment relations climate. This factsheet explores the role and influence of trade unions and looks at the current level of union membership in the UK.
As workplaces evolve, unions remain essential in advocating for workers‘ rights, ensuring fair treatment, and fostering a supportive work environment. Unions play a pivotal role in addressing the unique needs of employees, providing a platform for voicing concerns, and securing essential benefits.
- Introduction
- The Coronavirus Economic Crisis Is Not Close to Over
- Coronavirus Impacts Disproportionately Affect Black and Hispanic Workers
- How Unions Help Working People Broadly
- Policy Solutions For Strengthening Workers’ Bargaining Rights
- Endnotes
- References
The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed a reality that U.S. workers have long confronted—U.S. labor law fails to protect working people. For decades, union leaders and workers’ rights advocates have called on policymakers to reform a badly broken system, warning that the erosion of unions—and of worker power more broadly—was contributing to extreme econo...
The coronavirus recession came swiftly. In February, the unemployment rate was at a 50-year low of 3.5%. The unemployment rate began rising in March, and in April, as fear of the virus and social-distancing measures shut down nonessential parts of the economy, the unemployment rate shot up to 14.7%—with the Bureau of Labor Statistics noting that th...
The challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic have been felt broadly, but not equally. Low-wage workers have experienced vastly greater job loss due to the fact that low-wage jobs are concentrated in sectors that are getting hit particularly hard because they involve more social contact (such as restaurants and bars, hotels, personal services, events, an...
While the coronavirus pandemic has underscored the importance of unions for working people, the benefits of union membership pre-date the pandemic and extend to a broad swath of the U.S. workforce. The following findings show just how diverse the unionized workforce is and how the union-led wage and safety benefits help advance the goal of a fair a...
Bold and comprehensive action is needed to restore and strengthen workers’ ability to join with their co-workers to form unions and build collective power to bargain with their employers over safety practices and other important workplace issues. What follows is a partial list of possible reforms, with an emphasis on steps Congress can take to stre...
1. The phenomenon of unions narrowing the Black–white wage gap isn’t new. Starting in the mid-1940s, Black workers began to be more likely to be in unions and to have a larger union premium than white workers. 2. See question 14 in the BLS’s “Frequently Asked Questions: The Impact of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Pandemic on The Employment Situation f...
Becker, Craig, and Nicole Berner. 2020. “Request for Reconsideration of, and Postponement of, the Joint Employer Rule.” Letter submitted on the behalf of AFL-CIO and SEIU to National Labor Relations Board Chairman John F. Ring. Law 360,April 20, 2020. Berkowitz, Deborah, and Paul K. Sonn. 2020. Protecting Worker Safety & Health in the COVID Crisis:...
Dec 15, 2021 · We know that unions promote economic equality and build worker power, helping workers to win increases in pay, better benefits, and safer working conditions. But that’s not all unions do. Unions also have powerful effects on workers’ lives outside of work.
Learn about why unions are important; how they can promote transparency, resolve workplace issues, and offer benefits; and worker data.
