Union Organizing and Social Networking

It has recently reach to attention that Facebook, which is a social networking website, has been stale by unions as a organizing and communications tool. According to the Harvard business paper, in the trade union movement there are differences of opinion about how useful Facebook actually is. The problem with using this method is the risk of communications strategy when you rely on someone else to send your messages. Unions should not rely on social networking as the end all and be all of their communications strategy, although it can still be effective.

As union density has declined in the U.S. private sector, due in part to union wage and profit effects, some have turned their attention to the US public sector. Union’s effects on productivity vary with respect to the labor relations environment and degree of competition. Unions generally decrease profitability and then there exists slower growth in the union sector of the economy. What unions do to productivity is the key factor in assessing the overall economic impact of unions? So the question arises whether unionism is pleasurable or abominable?

Unions can be both good and bad depending on who is being affected. Supporters of unions see them as giving workers a collective voice and enhancing productivity and equality. Trade union activities can be conducive to higher efficiency and productivity. By balancing the power relationship between workers and managers, unions limit employer behavior that is arbitrary, exploitative, or retaliatory. Unions also reduce discrimination among women and ethnic minorities. Although sometimes neat, the compression of wage differences due to union activity may reduce efficiency, by sending wrong signals to workers about which skills are most needed and which industries and occupations have the highest productivity.

Among the negative effects are that unions do often act as monopolists, improving wages and working conditions for their members at the expense of capital holders, consumers, and nonunion labor. The higher wages unions win for their members either crop business profits or get passed on to consumers in the form of higher prices. Either result leads unionized firms to hire fewer workers, increasing the supply of labor to the unorganized sector and depressing wages there. Where wages for the relatively few workers who are unionized are pushed up, the actions of unions can adversely affect the distribution of income. In most developing economies only a small fraction of the working population belong to trade unions. Unions are likely to have positive effects on efficiency and equity, and their potential negative effects are likely to be minimized, when they operate in an environment in which product markets are competitive, collective bargaining occurs at the enterprise or the plant level, and labor laws protect the right of individual workers to join the union of their choosing, or none at all.

According to the Department of Labor, employees have a right to choose to join or not join a union, to join a particular union over another, and to resign from a union. The National Labor Relations guarantees nonsupervisory employees the right to organize a union, to choose their own representatives, and to bargain collectively with their employer for higher pay, better benefits, improved working conditions, and more relaxed work rules. Workers have the right to join a union if one exists or to help organize one if one does not exist. The law prohibits employers from punishing employees who exercise their right to join a union and participate in union activities. Workers in a company who want to form a union must ask a federal or state agency, such as the National Labor Relations Board, to fill an election to determine if a majority of workers want to be represented by a union according to the website http://jobs.stateuniversity.com/pages/65/Workers-Rights-RIGHT-JOIN-UNION.html.

Employees with supervisory roles are critical to the overall success of their organizations. Those employees who are effective at supervising others demonstrate many different leadership characteristics and styles of management. Supervisors in a unionized work environment need to understand the collective agreement and its contractual nature, as well as the role they play as members of management. To be effective in this role, managers and supervisors also need to know when and how to communicate with union representatives and how to ensure that the communication is productive, especially in the face of conflict. Front line supervisors are the front line defense against union organizing activity. The way these supervisors deal with employees every day can have a big conclude on whether or not your organization ends up dealing with a labor union.

Recognizing that supervisors can make or unmake companies’ union policies, companies can train these people continuously on how to be effective supervisors of people. Supervisors distribute work, allocate overtime, recommend promotion, demotion, and salary increases, and implement disciplinary actions. In the eyes of the people, the supervisor is management himself. The supervisor’s job as a front liner is critical to the union avoidance policy of the company. If he does not treat his people well, he is despot, plays favoritism, is not fair and firm to his subordinates; he can be a cause of dissatisfaction which can trigger unionization. Of course, it goes without saying that a supervisor must also be treated well and satisfied in his individual needs lest he sabotage the avowed no-union policy of the company or organizes or supports Labor Unionism himself.

Of the many differences between public and private sector collective bargaining, one of those potentially most important, but often ignored, is the unionization of supervisors and other managers. Private sector supervisors and managers lack representation rights.’ In contrast, public sector supervisors and other lower- to middle-level managers have the right to engage in collective bargaining in more than a dozen states, including many of the most highly populated. In these states, supervisors have exercised those rights in astronomical numbers. Research on the ask of public sector supervisory unionism has tended to focus on the interrelated constructs of loyalty, identity, and organizational commitment. This reflects both the legislative and judicial justifications for the exclusion of supervisors in the private sector. The logic of exclusion is rooted in the supposed need of the employer for the undivided loyalty of supervisors or other managerial employees. Union membership is assumed to take away, or at best divide, that loyalty.

Unionized supervisors are reported to speak freely and to assert their interests, leading to a more realistic and honest discussion of particular issues where their needs or views differ from those of nonsupervisory workforce, such as on performance appraisals,

For example, the unionization of supervisors appears to facilitate informal cooperation and problem solving in the workplace. The notion of a union rests on the proposition to level the playing field of management vs. employees. Unions gain their strength through numbers and concordantly adopt a pack mentality. It becomes less about what is right or sensible, sustainable and fair, and more about winning and sticking it to the men and women occupying the corner offices upstairs.

According to http://jobsearch.about.com/od/networking/a/facebook.htm there has been a significant increase in the use of Facebook users over age 25. More people with careers instead of college students were a large part of the increase. Many are using Facebook for professional and business networking in addition to social networking. Facebook gives you the opportunity to choose what you want to share, what you don’t want to share, and what you want to share with selected friends. The structure of Facebook has emerged over time. Users can create groups and discussion topics. These groups can grow, or be left alone to die, depending on the users and their participation.

Some people consider Facebook as a way to share too much information. But Facebook ensures privacy and disclosure control. The different elements of your Facebook presence, from elements of your profile to the visibility of your activities on the site, are under your control, and can be adjusted to suit your preferences. The privacy defaults tend toward openness and visibility but also have some bright checks and balances. Facebook tries in some areas not to impose structure on users and their interactions, and instead to let structure emerge over time. Anyone can form, name, or join groups on the site, and these groups grow and die organically.

Envisaging the future is, in large measure, a matter of interpreting and projecting the path from past to reveal. Fascination with history can be dangerous: it is all too easy to contrast a largely mythical golden age of commitment and solidarity with the troubles of the present. But learning from history can open up novel options; and times of crisis can encourage us to abandon once comfortable routines and search for new directions. In the future supervisors should strive to protect the interests of workers in such a world by being themselves truly open, democratic, participatory, fluid, networked, intellectual, aware, and global (and no longer hierarchical, authoritarian, anti-intellectual, bigoted, and parochial, as too many unions peaceful are now).

Some say that social networking wastes time. It can be, but it does not have to be. And, it does not have to be perceived as a time-waster. Facebook allows us to learn from each other and beget relationships with each other which take time. If you are working on building relationships locally or maintaining relationships locally, you must take time to do that. You talk with folks and you have coffee or lunch with them. You maintain those relationships by continuing to talk with, regain up on news about them, check on them, etc. Facebook is an online activity that will buy some time. In doing so, we will learn about each other, learn from each other, discuss issues and challenge each other.