Collective Bargaining - Assignment Example

Not only do the Unions concentrate on the working conditions of an employee but also create a sense of connectedness and solidarity to an employee while at the same time help to solve crucial organizational problems by educating their members and help reduce the problem of rational ignorance and hence stand on behalf of each of their members. Analysis In the United States, Labor unions have been in existence from the early the days of the republic, although; by then they were just local craft unions.

Craft unions are unions with few members who mainly work in the same skilled occupation of a specified area. They are these types of Unions that existed in the United States until the end of the Civil War (1861-1865) when stronger and more powerful Unions came into existence. Amongst the big Unions that emerged in the United States are; Knights of Labor, American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industry Organization (Toke & Za?ris, 2008). The Knights of labor was officially founded in 1867 by Uriah Stephens and unlike the craft Unions that existed then, it was one big union that included all workers irrespective of the kind of work one did.

It did not mind whether one was skilled or unskilled, neither the race nor national origin mattered. It had a place for members of all kind and these made it attain membership of about 700000 by the year 1886. Some of its strikes and collective bargaining led to wage increment to its members (DTI, 2001). Success to this collective bargaining tactics meant that even its member’s relation to that of its employers was good and in return the workers did put more effort in production. Although it brought success and nourished in collective bargaining of its members and created significance progress in labor relations, it created a bad reputation for itself when seven policemen and one civilian died in one of its riots in Haymarket, Chicago where it was held responsible and blamed for the deaths and hence lost its reputation.

American Federation of labor was founded by Samuel Gompers in the year 1886, he was a cigar maker. This was not really a union as such but an association of the existing craft unions where the craft unions still maintained their identity within the association. To be a member of a craft union, one had to be skilled in a particular trade of that particular craft union to join the federation through the craft union. It mainly concentrated on economic issues such as better working conditions, higher wages and shorter working hours.

Although it had no place for the unskilled worker, its success progressed to a level where it had about four million members in its name by the year 1920. Since it brought people of the same skills together, this was an advantage to the employer too. Better skills could be nourished and attained to the advantage of the employer (Toke & Za?ris, 2008). Since the American federation of labor excluded unskilled workers, there emerged Committee for Industrial Organization which later changed to Congress of Industry Organization.

It was founded between 1935 and 1938 by John. L. Lewis who deserted from American Federation of Labor. Its agenda was to find vertical unions within industries and include all its workers regardless of the job they performed within the union. These led to stiff competition for members amongst the unions and eventually CIO and AFL merged in 1955 to form AFL-CIO since they were all now recruiting all types of workers, skilled