Unions in America Today Literature & Language Essay (Essay Sample)

Unions in America Today
Name
Institution
Unions in America
In America, labor unions have a legal recognition and they continue to hold an important position in the championing of workers’ interests through activities such as advocating for improved working conditions and terms, collective bargaining for better pay, member representation in trade disputes and cases such as wrongful dismissal and so on. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS] (2015), unionized workers in America earned about 30% more than their nonunionized counterparts. Despite this, the percentage of unionized workers in America is still small at 11.1% and this is lower than in the year 1983 where the rate of unionized workers was 20.1% (BLS, 2015). Unions in America Today have a higher impact in the public sector compared to the private sector. According to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (2015), union membership in public-sector workers was 32.5% where as in the private sector, union membership was 6.7%.
In the private sector Unions have a lower bargaining power due to their dismal and dwindling member numbers and also because of the tendency of private firms to shift to low cost labor markets where workers are not in labor unions, this cannot be the case with public sector organizations. The picture painted by these statistics indicates that the relevance of Unions in America today is falling and more so in the private sector.