Crisis For Working Poor
Crisis For Working Poor
For many years now America's working poor have been gradually sliding down the economic ladder. Possibly not sliding down but not moving upward at all even though the cost of living including housing, food, school, etc., keep rising. A few reasons that this might be occurring is because of the decline in unions, out sourcing of jobs and the introduction of a cheaper migrant work force.
Unions are perhaps the most important thing in maintaining an employee's well being. Unions were started to end the horrible working conditions in factories and provide job security to those injured on the job. Not only did unions accomplish that but they also established a minimum wage, hours allowed to work for minors, health benefits as well as many other things. However among the private sector workers, only 8.2 percent are union members today, only about half the rate of two decades ago. This severely limit's the ability for unions to push for higher wages and benefits, making them less noticed as a relevant economic force.
Recently there are talks about making unions less powerful. The federal board that oversees union elections is going to rule on the "card check" issue, which was used to unionize tens of thousands of communication workers, hotel workers, people who make auto parts as well as many others around the country. In the card check process, an employer agrees to recognize a union if a majority of employee's sign pledge cards. That means they don't cast ballots like in a federally supervised vote. Many times the agreement comes with a promise by the employer to stay neutral throughout the recognition process. Under those conditions the union is rarely voted down.
The traditional National Labor Relations Board election process is a highly litigated system with a system of complaints and appeals. Do to that only about half of the elections are won by unions and many times the campaigns to unionize are...
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