The Use Of Union Dues For Political Activities Essay Example for Free

The Use Of Union Dues For Political Activities Essay A union is an association that represents workers well being to running their salaries, work hours and working conditions. The workers are involved in ensuring the unions sustain their activities with its due fees to pay for their services. Workers are mandated to pay union an outstanding amount are required to know the how their money is being utilized. The organization controlling the unions must give the employees with enough data on how their money is being used. The work of these unions levy for opinionated goings on continues to be a contentious issue for both community and private sector unions. This thesis will give an impression of the lawful issues of the use of union’s dues in America for both community and private sectors. Law protects all workers a right to join and get involved in union actions. Workers can negotiate and discuss with unions over service issues that affect the join workers about their operational terms. The bargaining items include issues like salaries, supremacy and penalizing procedures are some examples. The workers join the unions for various reasons including, when they feel:- o Are unhappy about some aspects of their occupation. o Sense that they are not involved meeting the required changes. o See the joining together as an answer to their troubles. The union best friend is bad operational system. If the managers listen to workers and let them dictate in policies that influence their jobs and treat them literally, then the workers won’t need to join the union. The manager who pay no attention to their employees well being and are dictatorial in their operational style often have their companies organized. Most job providers prefer to hire workers who have not joined unions, as the unions may limit the potentiality of the managers. This relates to decisions that openly affect joint workers working conditions. In the private sector for example a company may contract out part of its operations, and this may be legal but the effect of that pronouncement has to be discussed with the union. And if the senior workers are made redundant because of the decision to contract out, the contract terms must be evaluated to see the level of harm caused to the involved workers. HISTORICAL OVERVIEW I n the beginning of the 20th century, as the American economy was building up most employers created bad working conditions for workers. Most workers were from other nations to the US and they were not trained, could not communicate properly in English and had no money to pillow their jobs. Some were from the rural areas of America and were most occupants of the towns. They were misused because people looking for jobs were many. Due to economical growth, it resulted to understanding between the employers and employees. This understanding made people to loose their jobs, thus created poverty. During this period a private sector union was allowed to operate called the Wagner act of 1935 also called (National Labor Relations Act). The Wagner Act was enacted to guard employee’s rights and enable them to form join unions. This allowed them to have a right to be involved in such activities as strikes, picketing and collective bargaining. The Act also enhanced multiple employments as illegal, as the workers can not be interfered with or persuaded in practicing their rights to engage or not to engage in combined activities, dictate or interrupt the union activities, categorize workers to prevent them joining together forming an association, expulsion or placing charges against workers who file charges against their employers and or testify against their employees according to the Act’s provision, decline to negotiate with the union . The NLRB also formed a self governing organization to enforce American labor law and its primary actions were as follows:- o To identify the actual unit for cooperative bargaining in a company. o To manage documentation elections secret ballot that decided whether the workers were to be represented by a joint group. o To avoid and deal with illegal labor Acts. ‘The Taft – Hartley Act’ was enacted and represented a delicate change in connection between the unions and employers. The legislation was formed to bind some of the authority that the unions had secured under the Wagner’s Act; also it was made to defend the rights of organization and the workers too. The Taft Hartley Act is positive towards the employees concerns against unjust labor practices. Joint organizations cannot or persuade workers in the duty of their rights as provided under the Act, insight employees to discriminate each other especially those are not members of labor union for whatever the reason. Including:- failing to pay the union levy and joining fees as required to attain membership in the union, decline to negotiate with the management after a good number of employees have decided to be represented by a certain union group, persuade the associates and members to refuse to use products by companies involved in a labor dispute, and charge workers for extreme levy as a condition of relationship in a joint group. The Landrum Griffin Act has sustained this change in lawful surroundings and creating More limits in joint groups activities. The Act was enacted to protect joint members and their involvement in the activities and presentation of their joint groups. The Act controls how unions are managed. The Act has three sections including; o Bill of rights for union members, it assures clandestine and seasonal elections to choose their joint group representatives. It also gives the group members the right to take legal action against the union if it abuses their lawful rights. o Requires complete reports to the secretary of labor concerning all economical issues of the joint group. o Controls the persons who may be used or employed as union officers. Persons who are found guilty of illegal activities or may have investment interests that may not agree with interests of the joint groups are stopped from holding office. Most of the factors affecting the employees in the private sector are same as those affecting the public sector. The legal association between public sector and private sector employees and their bosses are legally not the same at federal and state level. The government is the supreme ruler and may be compelled by law to perform certain actions and provide some services. The administration officials have the permission to take legal action and make supposed decisions to ensure performance of those activities. Negotiation involves the sharing of decision making power between the administration and the joint groups. For instance; communal workers at a national level in the most states are forbidden to strike. In America the lawful history of the communal sector organizations has gone through major reforms. The communal joint groups can be categorized as being at the national level, state employee level and local county and municipal level. The community workers have no rights under the Wagner Act, with the exception of workers of the American Postal Service. The Postal Reforms Act in America has a private agency and legalized National Labor Relations Board to decide appropriate negotiating units, oversee version elections, and put in force the unjust labor practice of the Wagner Act. THE USE OF UNION DUES FOR POLITICAL ACTIVITY F ederal employees have started negotiating over the terms of their employment. This is due to Lloyd La Follette Act. The Civil Service Act and it gives power to set wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment. It is prohibited that national workers or their joint groups from dictating in salaries, either before congress, its committee or before heads of executive agencies. It appears that on the collective negotiating events of the community unions at both the national and state levels have more officially authorized than their private partners. The national workers have a right to organize and form unions. National workers also have a right to present their views on salaries and terms of employment to companies which h they worked for. It is an illegal practice to discriminate an employee on basis of color, race, nationality, sex, age, political status and marital status. It is also an offence to interfere with exercise of employee rights or to take disciplinary actions against a worker or categorize an employee because of union activity, or to persuade a regulation that differs with a collective negotiating agreement. An important variation in the legislation is the absence of the right to strike among the federal level employees. While the use of the unions levy for the political activity has always been frowned upon in both the community and private sectors, thus the issue of has remained a major topic of the debate. Thus, many people argue that unless closely monitored, the joint groups will continue to utilize their members levy for political activity in regardless of the lawful constraints; for example the American Supreme Court has illegalized the use of union for political activity. The Supreme Court defined the term â€Å"agency fee† and this ruling applies to both communal and private sector workers. The joint group may require all the workers covered by a union security agreement t pay an â€Å"agency fee† which is designed to cover the cost associated with collective bargaining, contract administration and grievance administration procedures. The recent presidential promotion has once again highlighted the issue of the union dues being utilized for supporting purposes. Congress and many states have enacted or tried to enhance new laws to more lawful constraints in this area. On the one hand, many argue that all that all that is needed is for the current laws as interpreted by the courts are implemented and imposed and no extra legislation is needed. If an employee does not want his or her money used for political purposes, then they have the authority to block this from occurring. Another survey focuses on the pubic sector. The results show that much has been done to make services accessible, but how typical they are across the other sectors. Websites in the US commercial sectors including airlines, newspaper, banks, supermarkets, sport, retail and telecommunications have at some percentage achieved their goals. This ending therefore suggests that the private sector not superior than the communal unit when it comes to web accessibility. ESTMATED VERSUS ACTUAL CONFORMANCE The strategy study requested the respondents to estimate the proportions of sites in each member state that already conform at various levels. Only a few people said that they had data, about the public sector versus community. The most parallel information returned related showed a conformance with the public sector, where there were six clear estimates. The most states cannot know the actual conformance of their member states and those can offers low estimates, which makes it clear that they are not coming up with good standards. If we estimate the site studies are representing the administration websites in the states, they shows that there is a recognizable gap in data and comment in between the strategy planning and actual results. Changing this data difference should improve effectiveness of all related strategy interventions. This could be realized more independently by the member states but there may be positive outcomes through union efforts. The internet accessibility observatory project may provide a mechanism for such collaboration and its main objective is to contribute to better accessibility for all citizens and to improve the standards for online services and resources. Recommendation for public policy makers is to develop response mechanisms for closing the data gap between the strategy planning and actual results may provide a mechanism for such collaboration. To produce a strategy for improving awareness throughout the nation by reviewing all the examples of engagement, shows that this study is for improving awareness of web accessibility. Most of the sites studies are those put in place to provide the administration services. They are basically the government sites which offer some degree of interaction or transaction rather than purely informational sites. Provided this situation and the general move towards greater degree of transaction in the government services and web accessibility are more complicated sites might be not easy to make and keep them accessible or create awareness. In the event there is no statistical association between the accessibility and either of the key measures used in that report for online complexity or the availability of the government data online. It is urged that the underlying administration system is in that respect for more significant number of checkpoints and help in meeting a range of others. Position of salary protection laws differ from state to state. Washington is the first state to pass the salary protection law which was supported by a majority of supporters. In other states like California and Oregon took a different position took a different position. The plan allows and requires joint groups to seek annual written permission from each member before utilizing their dues to support a political activity. Conclusion The discussion over the use of union levy for the supporting activity will continue. Even if the laws are clear that the employees can avoid their money from being used for political purposes, this issue remains contentious. It is wise to say this remains a major issue with closeness of the recent presidential election as an example we see the republicans are always in the favor of salary protection legislation while the democrats opposed. Experts suggested that the power of the joint unions as a political voice had gone down. The recent figures on the campaign contributions suggest this conclusion may not be true. Therefore it is safe to assume that this issue will continue to be debated in congress and in state legislatures to every corner of the country. References Official Title and Summary retrieved on 2nd April 2008 available at www.sos.ca.gov/elections/bp_nov05/voter_info_pdf/entire75.pdf Should we restrict political use of union dues? / Political choice retrieved on 2nd April 2008 available at www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2005/05/06/EDGKDCKGA01.DTL 55k Cached Similar pages Note this The Worker Paycheck Fairness Act: Ending the Involuntary Use of retrieved on 2nd April 2008 available at www.heritage.org/Research/Labor/BG1156.cfm 58k Labor Relations :: Education :: Glossary retrieved on 2nd April 2008 available at www.massnurses.org/labor/education/resources/glossary3.htm 72k