Welcome to weekly blog post 19. Today I am going to be talking about unions and how they impact workers and companies. I knew not very much going into this post but after some research I found some interesting things that I thought would be cool to share. 

Here are the key points that I found when looking at what a union is. It is an organization that helps to protect its employees and give them a voice in the company. Another main part of a union as kind of mentioned before is to give the employees negotiating power. If there was only one worker who thinks that change needs to be made then they likely have a very slim chance of change actually happening, however if entire staff or a workforce get together and speak their concerns then change is more likely. Overall it gives the employees more say and makes sure the work place is one where everyone feels they are safe and respected.

Now lets compare this to the past. Before 1944 it was illegal to create a union. This meant that whatever concerns the workers had were not heard and likely the employer did not care. Personally I think that is terrible as it probably lead to many working in unsafe, or unfair works places.

When looking at some unions I found this one about the NFL. It is called NFLPA which is a union for all the professional football players in the NFL. Now I the question you are probably wondering is why do football players need a union? Well apparently NFLPA protects wages, work hours, and working/training conditions for all of the athletes. In addition they also negotiate insurance and make sure the teams are using proper safety equipment for their players. They way this union works is by players of the NFL. Every players on each team will get to elect a representative to be on the Board of Player Representatives and then those players make up NFLPA and protect the players rights. 

I thought this union was interesting because I had never heard or even thought about athletes in unions or creating unions.

Another example of a union comes from the show Superstore. This comedy show is built around this store called Cloud9 and the episodes basically shows the day-to-day life of an employee at this store. However in some of the later season ( maybe 4th season ) there is a whole part that is about unions and how the employee’s of the store tried to form a union because of the unfair working conditions and rules the people at corporate had in place. It goes on to talk about how a union would benefit its workers and how it would make working at the store better.

 

 

That’s all for now