The Effects of Globalization on the US Labour Market

Questions: 1. The decline of union membership in the United States raises questions about whether unions will continue to exist in their present configurations. What do you think are the major problems with unions that are costing them membership? Do you think that unions will survive, or do you think they will have to change? What do you imagine unions will look like in the future? Why? 2. Globalization impacts all business, foreign and domestic. How does globalization impact a union in the United States? Is the impact positive or negative? What aspects of globalization do you think will have the greatest impact on unions? Why? Answers: 1. Several issues result in a decline in the membership of unions in the United States. Workers have a negative perception of unions, believing that they are not out to help. American workers view these unions as irrelevant. For instance, employees expect unions to protect them from layoffs during poor economic times. However, the unions do not shield them. Additionally, they fail to assist members who experience benefit or salary reductions as well as poor working conditions. For this reason, there is a poor public image of these unions in the eyes of the American workers as explained by Wachter (2014). They view unions as corrupt and inefficient especially from the typical cases of bribery and embezzlement cases concerning union leaders. Since American workers feel that unions no longer protect their rights and interests, they turn to the government instead. The government protects them and ensures that the companies they work for give fair remuneration. Workers turn to the governm ent to offer them pensions and health care, protection from discrimination and other unfair working conditions. For these reasons, union membership in the United States keeps declining. Unions will not survive in the United States unless they change their operations to match the expectations of the American workers. Labor movements should find ways of reversing the negative perception of the public. Rather, they risk further membership decline due to irrelevance. Unions should adapt their activities to the current centurys workplace by replacing collective bargaining with a model that focuses on employee and employer value creation. Unions will close in the future because the American employees have no confidence in them. It might happen that companies will discourage their employees from applying for membership because their operations and activities are obsolete in the 21st century (Pulignano, Lucio Walker, 2013). 2. Globalization affects American unions in different ways. For example, it pushes for interaction and collaboration in businesses and individuals. The working class experiences significant pressure from global economic trends. Unions in the United States have a role to play in ensuring that workers receive fair wages for their work (Feng, Hu Li, 2013). However, globalization affect this idea in that it forces a system of reduced wages, primarily for the unqualified workers. Since it was a laid-down policy, the unions could not change it; therefore, the policy weakened the participation of unions in the affected companies. Globalization has a high impact on collective bargaining, an aspect of operations that the unions employ (Feng, Hu Li, 2013). Collective bargaining takes a downward trend to imply a decline and in the use and application. One result of decentralization in bargaining is the increase in variability in employee wages as well as wage inequality. The impact is a negative one because it weakened union power to regulate wages for employees. Again, there is reluctance in the government on the issue of collective bargaining for the past years. The poor adherence and maintenance of collective bargaining imply an increased level of vulnerability for employees who depend on unions to promote their rights (Hessami Baskaran, 2015). Collective bargaining responds slowly to globalization. It also slows every other determinant of collective bargaining. The implication is that globalization depresses union growth and membership. Another negative effect of globalization is that it led to higher fees for union membership. Therefore, employees find it costly to join unions. Globalization made it easier for high-skilled laborer s to cross national borders. References Feng, L., Hu, W., Li, Z. (2013). The Effects of Globalization on the US Labour Market: Service Sectors Considered. World Economy, 36(12), 1542-1565. doi:10.1111/twec.12088 Hessami, Z., Baskaran, T. (2015). Has Globalisation Affected Collective Bargaining? An Empirical Test, 19802009. The World Economy, 38(12), 1880-1911. Pulignano, V., Lucio, M. M., Walker, S. (2013). Globalization, Restructuring and Unions: Transnational Co-ordination and Varieties of Labour Engagement. Industrial Relations, 68(2), 261-289. Wachter, M. L. (2014). The striking success of the National Labor Relations Act: the NLRA has brought labor peace and improved workers' negotiating power, which may explain why union membership is declining. Regulation, (1), 20.