Labour Unions are a group of workers that come together to form an organization or union that gives them more power to demand more from their employers. The main purposes of a labour union are to achieve an area where both the workers and the employer are happy. A union negotiates with the employer for higher wages, safer working conditions, and job security. Labour Unions give workers a voice because it is formed from large number of workers therefore the employer has to listen and satisfy their demands otherwise the work quality will be low or they would go on strike. Labour unions are of major importance in the modern day economy because many different types of jobs have unions that protect them from poor standard of living. Many of the current unions contain so many members that they control the economy in terms of the extremely high wages and short work hours the workers demand which slowly reduce profits in the company. In Canada, two of the biggest labour unions with advantages and disadvantages would be the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW) and the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
The Canadian Auto Workers Union was established in 1985 to negotiate for the workers with the employers and to have an influence on the political, economic, and social issues that concerns the members of the union. One advantage of the Canadian Auto Workers Union would be providing its members’ family with high quality child care and child services. The funds opened up child care centres in Windsor, Oshawa, and Port Elgin. In addition, CAW has negotiated a contract from the Big Three to provide 10 dollars per child up to a maximum of 2000 dollars a year for the members’ children to go to child care centres. Also, the employees at child care centres funded by this contract receive above industry average salary. On the other hand, one disadvantage of CAW would be the immense power they have to keep demanding more unreasonable increases in their wages and working quality. Even though the Big Three Automakers were going broke, the CAW and its members still did not want to take a significant pay cut in order to save the companies to prevent thousands of job losses. Many workers in Canada work just as hard yet they do not receive the same amount of benefits and pay the CAW receives but the CAW is still resistant in reducing their salaries.
The Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE) is the largest union in Canada with over 600 thousand members. It has a long history of defending people’s jobs and services. The objective of CUPE is to improve the life of workers and allowing them to speak up to their employers without being afraid of getting fired. The members of the CUPE contain workers in most industries such as health care, libraries, and social service. One advantage of the CUPE is that they are very active in defending workers’ rights. During the 1990s, many workers suffered due to privatization and downsizing of businesses. Many employers wanted to broke the collective bargaining agreement with the workers. Also, lots of workers suffered job losses and reduced wages. The CUPE helped the members in defending their rights against the employers and the governments who supported the corporations. Oppositely, one disadvantage of the CUPE is the long and difficult strikes. In 2009, the garbage collection workers went on strike in the city of Toronto due to bad severance packages they receive from the city. The CUPE leaders know that the mayor of Toronto is a socialist therefore the mayor will benefit the union more than the city during negotiations. Also, exaggerated statements of the poor working conditions and benefits were made by the CUPE against the city in order to gain support to resolve the issue in their favour. This garbage strike resulted in many weeks where Torontonians had to put their garbage at public places, thus leading to rats and diseases being transmitted through the city.
Overall, the labour unions of Canada all have their many advantages and disadvantages. In my opinion, Labour Unions are not necessary in Canada. Unions only benefit a select group of people of whom the majority work for the government. The members of the union such as auto workers have better pay than people who go through university and work as hard as they do. Also, unions have caused hassles for many non-union citizens such as garbage collection, teachers going on strikes, and even causing big corporations to go bankrupt such as the Big Three. Workers should be paid according to the level of skill and experience the job requires not because they are in a union. In addition, companies should be able pay the workers as much as they want because it is a free market economy and it will enable them to hire more workers than to pay 80 dollars an hour for an assembly line worker.
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