THE MAIN PURPOSE OF A LABOR UNION / TUTORIALOUTLET DOT COM THE MAIN PURPOSE OF A LABOR UNION / TUTORIALOUTLET | Page 100

The main purpose of a labor union is for the working individuals to
have a fair wage and benefits. Not all countries have unions, or even
allow them. However, between those that do, not all of them have the
same type of labor practices. The unions in the United States usually
represent a mass amount of workers within an area. Other main
factors of unions in the United States are: negotiate workers‘ wages
and benefits, workers have the ability to strike, various fair practice
labor laws are set in place (hindering discrimination, ensuring
seniority based promotion, etc.). Japan is a county that we often do
business with and have many multinational organizations that we are
both apart of. While many of Japans business practices are respected
and sought after by the United States, their labor unions got off to a
rocky start. Japan does currently have labor unions, however they are
often broken into smaller groups than those in the United States. Like
unions in the United States, they are able to negotiate a fair wage. In
a multinational company, Japans union practices are not ones that
would have a negative impact on our unions or reducing our
unionization (Griswold, 2010). With these two countries, the
differences are very slim and are cultural based differences in how
they operate. Japan is one country that HR would not be hugely
impacted in a multinational organization.
I am currently a member of my first union. I have been a member for
almost 2 years. We are the largest union in the state of Illinois, and
we are made up of a strong force of important state workers. We
include, DCFS workers, police officers, prison guards, child support
workers, DMV workers, etc. We have been in contract negotiations
for 2 years, with no end in sight. We have been operating outside of a
state budget for that entire timeframe. The union and the governor
cannot come to an agreement. It has been argued that we were at
impasse, it has also been argued that the governor walked away from
negotiations. We have been to federal court and had a judge
determine if we were at impasse. We have voted to authorize a strike,
pending further negotiations. We are currently awaiting further