Shockingly in a decline over 2 decades, is the involvement and recruitment into unions. In ‘Unions, Norms and Rise in American Wage Inequality,’ an article written by Bruce Western, Harvard University, and Jake Rosenfeld, University of Washington, it states that male union membership has decreased form 34% to 8%, and women union membership decreased 16% to 6%. Also during this time, inequality in wages had increased over 40%!
Recently, Chicago faced its own teacher union on strike for the first time in 2 decades. A Cause: Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, pushing teacher evaluations to be based 40% on standardized testing. The argument of the union? An equal environment for not only teachers to educate, but their children to be educated in.
Can we deny that this isn’t the truth? Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has suffered tremendously over years due to ignorance. Suffering from lack of funding for materials, facilities, and overcrowded classroom. 8 of 100 CPS students go on to receiving a 4 year degree; it is no wonder why the union has taken a stand. To facilitate students to do better isn’t just in teacher motivation, but in the environment where the children are learning.
Though during this time, the children weren’t attending classes. 29,000 teachers unavailable during this time; this raises the issue of the well-being of students during this time.
The big underlying question being:
Is the union model succeeding in providing an organization with quality improvement, or causing organizations to stagger?
In the education system, the mayor can be seen as the top of upper management. Using the Chicago education system for example, you have the low performance of CPS, as opposed to the higher performance of Charter and Private schools. Why? The incentives of these charter and private schools are, from one-point, caused by incentives from a non-union, competition where teachers are incentivized to over perform for higher standardized test scores to achieve bonuses. But, in retrospect, the quality of these Charter and Private schools are also “better” across the board. Another point, not all Chicago youth can access these charter and private schools due to cost. 1/3 of CPS student are in poverty.
Lets look at a corporate view.
In a recent article from Wall Street Journal ‘American Airlines Flight Delays Pile Up,’ written by Susan Carey, the article explains that union pilot from American Airlines have been in dispute with corporate due to alleged “work slowdowns and pilot sickouts.” These issues leading to delays in flights, and negative statistics.
From the Pilot Union: Delays are due to mechanical problems such as fuel leaks.
From American Airlines: Delays are due to minor maintenance problems such as malfunctioning coffee machines written up at the time of scheduled flights.
With American Airlines in bankruptcy court, the judge has granted American Airlines with authority to cut pilots for labor costs and increased productivity.
Ultimately, for organizations it is how well you are providing a service or product. Are your customers receiving a quality service? If unions are to protect the laborers, are the laborers still working in best interest in the organization, or are they looking at personal interest? You be the judge.
Sources:
(http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/soc/faculty/western/pdfs/Unions_Norms_and_Wage_Inequality.pdf
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Unions-Education-and-The-by-Betsy-L-Angert-120923-207.html
http://abcnews.go.com/Business/chicago-public-school-teachers-highlight-perennial-debate-teacher/story?id=17202417#.UF_f-KNrjUy
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444083304578014550524246128.html?mod=WSJ_business_whatsNews