Unions Case

Employees join unions if they get mistreated or their expectation from their employer was not met. Tolich and Harcourt mentions in their report the biggest reason employee to join union was that, they wanted to receive protection from their employers, then was the collective contract or improved pays and condition, some joined as they has ideological reasons to join the union, and there were few joined due to they did not want to be an odd one out when rest of their co-workers joined unions. What motivated employees to join union, according to Mark Van De Vall who is a Dutch sociologist. He viewed that what motivated employees to join union were mixture of the personal needs which is split into egocentric or sociocentric. The specific environment which Van De Vall puts it as a crucial feature that will influence the employee's decision making on whether they will join or not in union. The image potential members have on unions as well as employers may have a bearing on decisions regarding on union membership. The advantage of being a union member is the power of numbers. Other advantages are increase in wages health care insurance, flexible working hours, overtime pay, pensions and holiday leave. The disadvantage being a union member are, union dues meaning union member get charged annual dues, if unions declares a strike, employees cannot work and will not receive pay check and employees will lose their bargaining power as union have a monopoly over the employee's negotiation with their employer. Benefits for the employers with the union involvement is that negotiation become simpler. If the workplace for the employees are unionized it can lower the turnover level and lower the turnover the organization saves business money, not hiring new workers and train them. The obstacles for the employers with the union involvement is that they lose flexibility on setting wages, spending more money on wages and have to spend large sum of money on wages due to employer and employee joined in a legal binding contract, cannot employ subcontractors on indefinite bases to decrease full time employees,

The reason why employees join unions is if they believe that they do not receive what they need or expect from their employer, they often turn to unions in hope that they could help achieve some sort of reasonable treatment. The difference between unionized employee and non-unionized employee is the collective agreement. In non-unionized employees are at the mercy of their managers who changes terms and condition of their employment whenever they want to change it mostly straining employees When employee joins union they have a written legal bound guarantees covering wages and benefits. Collective agreements gives unionized employees the rights and protections (Rasmussen, 2009). In 1999 a research note was done by Tolich and Harcourt they reported the results of their survey to the 55,000 members of the country's largest union, The