Challenges Faced by Trade Unions and Solutions to the Challenges - Essay Example

Name: Course: Tutor: Date: Challenges Faced by Trade Unions and Solutions to the challenges Trade unions are important social institutions that perform significant social, political and economic functions. Trade unions achieved recognition from employers after very many bloody battles to get into this state. Trade unions have constructed a body of rights, about the working class using various methods of action such as direct action, legal and political methods. Trade unions are important components in the democratic system that bring into operation principles of democracy, for example, popular participation, leadership accountability to the members, involvement in decision making and union elections. Trade unions also create social processes through interaction and establishing collective identities and fights leading to its preservation. A trade union is useful in firms since it helps in reduction of transaction costs for employers through the performance of transmission functions and aggregation, management of disconnect and aids in contract implementation. Unions have a significant political and social existence regime of state-led industrialization. Unions grew through the state patronage since it helped the state in the developmental process efforts (Weathers 9). Liberalization, globalization and privatization model has changed all the initial functions of the trade unions hence bringing challenges to the field. Unions are however at risk of withering away since they face several challenges, and the trade unions’ response will determine the fate of their future. This paper seeks to explain the challenges faced by the trade unions and the responsive nature and efforts the trade unions take to face the challenges. Response to the challenges takes a good or a bad aspect as later discussed in this paper. Critical assessment and explanation of challenges and the responses appear in this paper. Challenges Faced by Trade Unions Economic reforms bring challenges to the trade unions within a country. Liberation, globalization and privatization model brought intensification between firms, therefore, triggering competition for capital and products. Market logic in the trade union setting displaced state intervention. Capital bargaining power of unions increase and the state face compulsions of market logic. Employers demand labor reforms from the judiciary on rights of workers. Managerial strategies from employers initialized new inventions hence weakening the union base. Sectors, for example, business outsourcing process, information technology, special economic zones and big retail outlets offer challenges to the union. These challenges are in details below. Economic reforms Politics of economic growth in a nation give prominence to markets. The reform process is done through government intensification. According to liberal trade policy, licensing system abolition increased competition extent since some important features such as reducing industries reservation for the public sector, allowing foreign exchange and liberalization of product market took part in the economy reformation. Competition is reducing union’s resources. Managerial strategies Labor market strategy in employment is aimed at cutting labor cost and employs more flexible labor. The response of Managerial strategy increase competition including a reduction in the core labor with an expansion in peripheral workers’ categories, employment reduction through coercive methods, sub-contraction of work, prolonged workouts and shift of production. The liberalization, globalization and privatization model lead to enhancement of bargaining of employers’ power. A greater mobility of elastic labor demand, capital and huge reservoirs of unemployed weakens the power and unions operations. High rates of lockouts continuations also bring huge problem in the trade unions. Employment generation and State Retrenchment The state re-defines labor market and industrial policy relations to take place in the public sector either on its own or sometimes under pressure from other lending institutions. The states also freeze on recruitment, imposing a longer period on agreement wage hence did hoarding surplus workers. The public sector reduces employment through this process. Employment creation is therefore shifted to the private and foreign capital. Informal sector assumes importance with a declination of the public sector as well as formal private sector. The elasticity of the employment in agricultural sector brings negatives in comparison to that of the manufacturing sector that is marginal. Privatization of public sector firms has brought about the reduction in employment, reduction in wages, worsening conditions for working and dilution of collective firms. Demand for labor reforms Neo-liberalization reforms in the trade unions have led to a weakening of the union powers, strikes outlines, privatization of public enterprises, freedom of hiring and firing workers, remove the prohibition on contact labor, law governance enablement, labor laws dilution, technological changes introduction and bonuses review. Foreign capitalists and domestic capitalists encounter labor market reforms. The government also pressures the trade unions to offer concessions to blunt the organization within a union. Capital friendly state The competition level is experienced globally between countries and within each country there is a competition based on the states. Some rules are being changed concerning the laboring subject to allow freedom in suiting the user needs. The governments are conservative giving permissions for union closures to reduce the competition barrier. Strikes also affect the capital state within an economy. This affects the trade unions since they lower the progress expectation in the benefits realization. Regional governments emphasize on the trading unions also increasing the competition of other states. Administratively, states introduce more and more trading unions to help speed up and improve competition of the marketed products globally. Role of Judiciary Judiciary delivers work oriented jurisprudence since the introduction of the trade unions as an instrument for social justice promotion. Judiciary consistently changes several judgments with time hence the curtailing establishment of labor rights. The judiciary actions affect the rights of the laborers such as the right to strike. Strikes at a time ensure proper management of the firms and once laborers are denied these rights, tough times follow their working. Supreme courts in the countries pronounce harsh rulings o the striking workers through threatening them to lose their jobs if the strike is not called off. Reversed and confusing judgments follow the rulings since at the same time the laborers have their rights to express their views. Developments in judicial actions affect unions. Politics into Trade Unions Alliance between political parties in collaboration with the unions affiliated strains since conflicts arises now and then due to the issue of the reforms introduction. When political parties become ruling parties in a country tend to introduce reforms that mostly conflict with their labor wings interests. The issue also aims at redefining union politics hence initializing tensions in the trading unions. Organizational challenges and numerical constraints In most cases trade unions face four extensive organizational challenges. These are slow employment growth, sustenance of workers’ interest, loss of membership through closures and trying to organize un-organizable and unorganized. Workers organization takes the base of unions’ operations. Trade unions also require building a good social relationship with its environment. Through this, the workers get a good modern segment of working effectively in the trade union. Trade unions functionality is based on a factory setting. Organization in the factory yields good results. The organizational system helps to plan on all employees on contract wages, employment contracts building, and visible negotiation with employers, mobilization and strikes o any economic agent (Gold 13). These characteristics lack in most cases. Response of Trade Union to Challenges Responses to the above outline challenges by the Trade Unions depends on simple factors such as organizational innovations, flexibility in the strategies and ideology, intellectuals support and social agents support. This section analyzes the strategies set forward by the unions to face these challenges. Broad Based Unity Unity is a key factor in strategizing in fighting public sector units. Unity of the unions helps them negotiate with the government on the troubling issues to have a favoring situation. The national platform can only listen to a group of strategized parties with a common initiative. If the initiative is right, the government employs its power to solve the discussed problem. Coordinating bodies have also been created to help in working with coalitions. New economic policies discontent creation produce favorable conditions for the trading unions. Tension between political affiliation and organizational logic Trade unions recognized neo-liberal environment economy threats the interests of the working class that’s initializing a fighting strategy to stop this. As a result of political affiliations in the Union, conflicts and tension arise from the movement. These include division in the union’s movement, lack to take the consistent stand and differences within the organization due to the centralization of the activities. The trading unions have set class struggle and union militancy to help fight with the challenges. Protesting against some reforms has also taken a root in fighting the challenges. A larger Agenda Trading unions have shifted focus from industry-specific and local issues to those issues in connection with set policies hence making them evident in their actions. Focus on issues such as relocation of factories, law amendments, pension fund, employment eradication, and upgrade of economic policy, retrenchment reducing prices for essential goods and stopping closures of industries has helped the trading unions have a more outlined agenda to work with to face the challenges affecting them currently. Efforts based on persistency of the trading unions and wide agendas have greatly contributed to rectification of several measures in labor reforms. Informal Sector and Trading unions The greatest challenge to trading unions is the inactive efforts to broaden the organizational base. Trading unions have operated for long in the formal sector of the economy that always favored their outcomes but brought a lot of battles since it was a small arena for unionization. The trading unions did shrink in the small sector, but efforts to reconstruct the informal sector are on through several set strategies in the development of the expansion activities. These efforts include creating organizational units within the unions, an extension of legal aids in the informal sector, constitution demand for the commission function ability in the informal sector operations and organizing of public demos to sensitize agencies (Lipton, 8). Conclusion Trade unions are essential components of free and democratic society. Trade unions help to counter the power of the authoritarian and capital forces (Gumbrell McCormick and Hyman 38). Unity of the trading unions has become the mother of all trading crisis though there are several reforms to preserve and encourage formal terrain by safeguarding workers’ rights that are under attack. The power of the states has been regulated by the unions’ movement. Moreover organizational innovations have emerged as a result of trade union adequacy and involvement in new ideologies and strategies put forward. Trading unions have been able to fight many challenges affecting them although some other new challenges are building up. Read More