Union Organizing

The United States has a fairly strong history of unions and labor rights. Workers in the United States enjoy more rights and freedoms than do workers in many other countries, including the right to form and become members of unions. However, over the past 40 years, union membership has declined, and it continues to do so. People join unions for a variety of reasons, including increasing pay and benefits, especially good health care coverage and retirement plans. There are certainly both good and bad components to unions and unionization of organizational workforces. The most prominent unions are those whose members are public sector employees such as teachers and police officers. If employees decide they want to join a union, what steps do they take? Usually, the employees will go through a union organizing process. In this process, employees will select a union to represent them and then ask for a vote of employees concerning whether or not they desire to be represented by the union. A combination of strongly pro-labor NLRB rulings and mandates has recently made it much easier to organize new bargaining units.