Analyze the contemporary challenges facing the u.s. labor movement and Essay

Analyze the contemporary challenges facing the u.s. labor movement and the solutions to revitalize it and help defend workers interests - Essay Example In the middle of the last century labor unions included almost half of the working population. Moreover there was a special department in the US Department of Labor, which took stock of strikes. Now labor unions comprise only small part of American workers and only some part of those workers are the employees occupied in private sector. The main reason is a shift, which took place in the relationship between employers and workers. For centuries labor unions struggled for good conditions for employees. In contemporary world employees are in competition with each other in order to get a better job. American corporations long ago realized that it is more efficient to hire purposeful, responsible, and interested in their job people. Accordingly people, who get a job today, automatically receive all those privileges labor unions had struggled for. Moreover, many corporations give their workers a possibility to become co-owners, offering them an opportunity to get low price stocks of the o wn enterprises. Thereby membership in labor unions for many Americans became senseless. As a matter of fact labor unions cannot find their place in the new system of labor relationship. In the course of time fundamental economic changes had happened in the country. The traditional heavy industry, a stronghold of labor unions, gradually becomes the thing of the past. According to Turner, ‘if unions can not hold their own and adapt to changing circumstances in the core industrial work force, the traditional bastion of labor strength, it is difficult to imagine that national prospects for unions elsewhere can be promising1’. Labor unions also have not been taken in the extremely developing industry of high technologies, and have not been widely accepted in the services sphere. So we can agree with the statement of Robert Baldwin, who claims that one of the factors that contribute to weakling