Why Do Employees Be Unionized?

There are a multitude of reasons why workers to decide to join or attempt to create a union. The overwhelming majority of employees seek to unionize because of dissatisfaction with one or more conditions of employment. Among them, the most common areas of employee discontentment usually originate from disagreement with management over compensation, benefits, managements’ response to grievances, high levels of job stress, and low job security. While dissatisfaction with one of these areas alone is not enough to compel workers to join unions, it is usually a good indication that a push for unionization may be coming. In order to completely understand why workers unionize, we must first examine how employees become a part of a union. Workers
Many employees believe they can achieve higher levels of pay and benefits from collective representation, and the statistics support their belief in most instances. “Among full-time wage and salary workers, union members had median usual weekly earnings of $1,004 in 2016, while those who were not union members had median weekly earnings of $802” (United Stats Department of Labor, 2017). This represents a 25% increase in median weekly earnings for union members over non union members. Of course, there are many other factors to consider that may delegitimize this statistic, such as: The profitability of the industry workers are in, the seniority and experience of workers, and the cost of living in the geographic region. Therefore, this difference in income cannot be taken at face value, but must be weighted with the other factors that influence compensation, such as seniority, experience, and industry. Unfortunately, the Bureau of Labor Statistics does not analyze income by industry or any of these other factors, which makes it harder to know just how effective unions
The union was started in 1965 and lead by Marvin Miller, “a highly respected economist for the United Steelworkers of America” (History of the Major League Baseball Players Association). The expertise of Miller was invaluable in the formation of the Major League Players Association as the players previous attempts to organize in 1885, 1900, 1912, and 1946 were all unsuccessful. “In 1968, Miller helped players negotiate the first-ever collective bargaining agreement (CBA) in professional sports. The agreement raised the minimum salary in baseball from $6,000 -- the level at which it had been stuck for two decades -- to $10,000 and set the tone for future advances” (History of the Major League Baseball Players Association). This is an astounding 66% increase in minimum salary that the union was able to win for the players through collective bargaining. The Players Association has since helped increase the minimum salary to its current level of $535,000 (Minimum Salary). While this alone is a great achievement, the union has continued to fight over the years to win various rights for the players, including the ability for them to enter arbitration over contract disputes. One of the biggest benefits the union has won over the years is ability of players to enter free agency, where they can sign with any team they wish, instead of being bound to