The Future of Unions

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DeVry University, Keller Graduate School of Management *

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586

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Economics

Date

Feb 20, 2024

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docx

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The Future of Unions: UAW Raquel Campo HRM 330: Labor Relations Professor Aimellia Siemson DeVry University

Unions have a really important role in the experience an employee has in the workforce. According to AFL-CIO, a union can make a difference in how much you make, the quality of your benefits, safer work environment and how much of a voice you have. (AFL CIO, 2023) There are a lot of different unions locally and some that are industry related. One of those unions, which I will be speaking about, is United Auto Workers (UAW). UAW is a company that was founded in 1935 and represents workers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. The union has 400,000 members and 580,000 retired members and is known for organizing strikes to get better outcomes for their members. (Walrath-Holdridge, et al., 2023) The purpose of this research is to consider a specific union and figure out what the union could do to stay present in the business world as well as explaining how unions could stay relevant, needed and be supported. I chose this company because of how long they have been around. I am curious to see how much they have done in their time. Have they stayed the same? Have they made changes? What has been their impact and is it positive or negative? I see a lot of news about them currently, so it is intriguing to me. Do they hold a lot of power? What is their political influence? It is because of all the questions that I have, why I chose to proceed with this particular union. I am hoping to get my questions answered and see if there are any other opportunities for improvement. In order to really talk about this topic, I want to review general information about unions. I have learned things about unions throughout the years and even the past couple of weeks. Some of what I have learned isn’t in the union’s favor like needing to pay dues, but I have also learned good things like unions sticking up for their members. There has definitely been a mix of good and bad I have heard about unions. In order to understand how unions formed, what they are all about and how they have changed, I am going to be doing a lot of research. I started off researching what specific union I wanted to discuss in my research. There were a lot that came to

mind like Teamsters and United Nurses Association, but I wanted a union that I could learn a lot about and that I didn’t know much about. Also, I an curious since I have been seeing them in the news a lot lately. Now that I picked which union I am discussing, I am going to move on to digging deeper. I will be using my course textbook to review what I have learned about unions so far and continue to learn about how labor unions are important. Other things I will look at are the strategies that unions use to be successful, how they use that in the workplace, how they use bargaining to get their members what they want and what that contract would look like. Then, I want to compare that to what UAW has done in the past and what they are doing today. I seen an article about the United Auto Workers and how they are currently on strike. Going on strike is something this union is known for. I want to know why that is. Is it because they usually get what they want? In their experience is this a successful strategy? Should businesses be worried to have their employees as part of the UAW union? In this article, it says that they have a list of demands which include fair wages, things about pension and the right to strike. (Isidore & Yurkevich, 2023) Is it expected that they will be able to come up with a contract that addresses all of those concerns? Does this affect the members negatively or positively? I will be going through each of their strikes from the past and present to figure out why they went on strike, what were their terms, were their terms met, was the strike successful and were the members affected? I will also research the future of business and where it is headed. Are they pushing for laws that go against the unions. Do employees no longer care about unions and why? How can labor unions improve their brand to be well suited for employees? How can they put themselves in a good light and remove the perception that they are something negative. Is UAW in a good position to be successful? Do they embody what a good labor union should look like? What aren’t they doing that they can start doing and what do they do well that they can continue. My

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