Employees Need Labor Unions

828 Words2 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Labor union effects on workers'lives

Horrible working conditions in factories have been around since the industrialization era. Although most conditions have changed for majority of the industries, the meat packing industry has yet to experience these improvements. Fast Food Nation publicizes the problems for the employees inside meat packing plants. The affects of the terrible working conditions that employees are put in due to careless employers are shown in Fast Food Nation, which can be addressed by stronger labor unions. The book exposes every aspect of the fast food industry, good and bad. Eric Schlosser, the author of Fast Food Nation uses these aspects to present all of the problems going on throughout the country. In chapter eight, he exposes the side of the fast food culture that no one ever bears in mind, the employees’ well being. In order to raise awareness, he interviewed workers, went inside a packing plant and viewed the average day of meat packers. The most grotesque descriptions of the fatalities and thoughts from their insensitive employers’ are exhibited. Schlosser depicts the horrid working conditions employees are in while on the job, ones that can have safer regulations through stronger labor unions. Employees’ lives are constantly being put at risk, day by day: “ Lacerations are the most common injuries suffered by meatpackers, who often stab themselves or stab someone working nearby” (Schlosser 173). No matter what time of day, both meatpackers and cleaning crewmembers suffer from all types of injuries that occur on the job. Employees are forced to work side by side as they cut and clean the meat. They deserve to have a safe working environment, without having the constant fear of being killed. A strong job union formed by the ... ... middle of paper ... ...gal, and if it occurs, the employers can be taken to court. Although having strong labor unions within a job isn’t beneficial to the careless employers, the employees are able to have better working conditions. The fear of reporting an injury or a simple complaint isn’t going to end with someone losing his or her job, his or her life, or his or her family. Despite the fact that it’s nearly impossible to make someone care about something, job unions have the ability to control the wages they receive, working conditions, protection, and their treatment. The employees that work in fast food nation have the ability to come together and fight for what they believe is right, without fearing the loss of a job. Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. "The Most Dangerous Job." Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. 169-90. Print.

Show More
Related

  • Management Should Have the Right to Allow a Union in the Workplace or Not

    1470 Words  | 3 Pages

    History shows that there has been conflict of power within the workforce between union and management. This essay will discuss if management should have the right to determine whether a union should operate within their workplace. It is necessary first to discuss the roles of unions and management in the workplace and discuss both points of view on the power distribution between unions and management in the workplace.

    Read More

  • The Pros and Cons of Labor Unions

    689 Words  | 2 Pages

    Union efforts to improve the lives of workers consistently met with resistance, oftentimes violent, from businesses, police and the government throughout their turbulent history; and yet unions have persevered and were able to improve working conditions. The National Labor...

    Read More

  • Labor Unions and Democracy

    1324 Words  | 3 Pages

    Factories were known for their ill treatment of their employees, long hours and dirty and unsafe conditions. In 1866, unions started to form to improve working conditions for the workers. A fundamental problem faced by democratic societies is as long as people live their lives individually and go their separate ways and be selfish individuals, they are unlikely to meet collectively to resolve issues. There needs to be meaningful unity among people to alleviate this problem to get people obliged to one another, so there is a willingness to sacrifice for shared goals. Bonding of its citizens creates a democracy. Unions seemed to offer the middle class a chance to become a crucial part of fostering institutions of constitutional democracy. The unions have went through several transitions, but have always worked for the working force. I will discuss the history of the various unions, their wins and losses, and the struggle of the employee to achieve democracy in the workplace.

    Read More

  • The Positive Impacts of Labor Unions

    846 Words  | 2 Pages

    Have you ever wondered what life would have been like if labor unions never existed? Labor unions were originally formed to help improve the worker’s low wages, their horrible working conditions, and lower the hours they work a day. “ Unions are powerful by the power of members acting together, linking arms, figuratively and literally, taking a stand , and forcing their agenda on either their employers or political representatives” ( Asher 650).Unions are only powerful if everybody is working together, if one person does something wrong, the whole organization fails. Labor unions formed after the Civil War as a response to the modern Industrial Economy. Labor Unions impacted workers everywhere by helping increase wages, better working conditions, and better benefits.

    Read More

  • Rhetorical Analysis Of Fast Food Nation

    1254 Words  | 3 Pages

    Many people do not realize that the jobs in the fast food industry are very dangerous. These are the jobs that no one realizes what it’s like behind the scenes. The workers face high rates of injury in the factories and in fast food restaurants, so we feel like we shouldn’t support the fast food industries. In chapters three and eight of “Fast Food Nation,” Eric Schlosser uses pathos to highlight the fact that fast food jobs are difficult as well as dangerous. The jobs involved with fast food are so dangerous that more regulations should be reinforced more firmly, as well as more laws should be put into place.

    Read More

  • McDonalds' Success during the 1970s

    1183 Words  | 3 Pages

    Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001.

    Read More

  • Mcjobs Analysis

    516 Words  | 2 Pages

    In the non fiction text, McJobs, Eric Schlosser, the author, takes us through a world behind that huge smile on a red box. Fast food is really changing the face of America, and its getting really, really, fat. Fast food restaurants are bad in so many ways, they are often called fresh, but most “fresh” things have been frozen, fast food restaurants also affect the environment, and in addition, they encourage the exploitation of teen workers.

    Read More

  • Labor Unions

    3061 Words  | 7 Pages

    Labor unions have been in America for a very long time. There are many unions in a myriad of different fields. Labor unions were and are used to allow for equal treatment of workers. Employers always want to maximize their profits and they try to give the least to get the most in return. For reasons such as this is why unions were formed. Generally a union boss is appointed or hired to protect the rights and privileges of the employees. The union boss is generally very representative of the demographics of the workers. The leader of the employees needs to know what they want and what is fair for them and this is why he tends to represent one type of work force, such as the teachers union. This type of representation is made easier when most of the workers come from the same background. Background meaning family size, education, race, etc. Labor unions have helped shape the American work force, as have the backgrounds of the men and women who have worked in them. America was founded on diversity and the freedom to choose. Many different backgrounds have found their way into America and labor unions. As stated earlier, labor unions have people of the same background in them. America’s first settlers were generally of the same background and because of that, so were the members of the first labor unions. As the United States expanded so did the work force and the diversity in it. Diversity and understanding the challenges and benefits is what enables America to be great. In the pages of this paper we are going to look at the change in the make-up of labor unions by the entrance of African-Americans and how they have influenced America and the labor unions for the better. This paper is and expansions on my paper “A Shield Against the Power of Industrial Capitalism”.

    Read More

  • Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal

    1379 Words  | 3 Pages

    Schlosser, Eric. Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. New York: Perennial, 2002.

    Read More

  • Labor Unions

    1289 Words  | 3 Pages

    Throughout American history, labor unions have served to facilitate mediation between workers and employers. Workers seek to negotiate with employers for more control over their labor and its fruits. “A labor union can best be defined as an organization that exists for the purpose of representing its members to their employers regarding wages and terms and conditions of employment” (Hunter). Labor unions’ principal objectives are to increase wages, shorten work days, achieve greater benefits, and improve working conditions. Despite these goals, the early years of union formation were characterized by difficulties (Hunter).

    Read More

  • Fast Food Nation Summary

    1394 Words  | 3 Pages

    “Out of every $1.50 spent on a large order of fries at fast food restaurant, perhaps 2 cents goes to the farmer that grew the potatoes,” (Schlosser 117). Investigative journalist Eric Schlosser brings to light these realities in his bestselling book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal. Schlosser, a Princeton and Oxford graduate, is known for his inspective pieces for Atlantic Monthly. While working on article, for Rolling Stone Magazine, about immigrant workers in a strawberry field he acquired his inspiration for the aforementioned book, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal, a work examining the country’s fast food industry (Gale).

    Read More

  • dfa

    1430 Words  | 3 Pages

    Workers in the fast food industry face strenuous and inadequate conditions in their workplaces for little pay and long hours. Fast food chains purposely hire socially marginalized workers because they have limited skill-sets and are ideal contenders to endure such conditions. Meatpackers are frequently injured on the job; they suffer stabbings and lose limbs, as well as the sanitation workers who clean up after in the slaughterhouses. The employees in the restaurants experience poor working environments while the physical laborers risk losing their lives in such dangerous surroundings. Improvements are vastly needed in the fast food workplaces and actions can be taken to provide considerably better working circumstances such as enforcing stricter health sanitation laws, specific instructions for handling food, higher pay for workers, and safety regulations involving machinery.

    Read More

  • Fast Food Nation, by Eric Schlosser

    1927 Words  | 4 Pages

    One of the most shocking books of the generation is Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation. The novel includes two sections, "The American Way" and "Meat and Potatoes,” that aid him in describing the history and people who have helped shape up the basics of the “McWorld.” Fast Food Nation jumps into action at the beginning of the novel with a discussion of Carl N. Karcher and the McDonald’s brothers. He explores their roles as “Gods” of the fast-food industry. Schlosser then visits Colorado Springs and investigates the life and working conditions of the typical fast-food industry employee. Starting out the second section, Schlosser travels to the western side of Colorado to examine the effects presented to the agriculture world in the new economy. Following Schlosser’s journey across the nation, he leads everything up to slaughterhouses and the main supply of income for fast food franchises – the meat. After visiting the meat industries in America, Schlosser explores the expansion of fast food around the eastern hemisphere – including the first McDonalds in Germany. Throughout Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser presents in his point of view and informative tone, a detailed disscussion of the conditions using various examples imagry and flowing diction/syntax to help support and show his audience the reasoning behind the novel.

    Read More

  • the bullshit the fast food industry feeds us

    1106 Words  | 3 Pages

    The subtitle to Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation: The Dark side of the All-American Meal brings to our attention the list of dirty laundry that exploits the poor by putting the lower class people in poor working conditions, keep the employees from being able to form a well-organized union, and causing physical harm to an employee’s body due to factory style methods the methods that this industry use in order to better benefit the company; not the workers. To sum these problems that are hidden from the citizens, “There is shit in the meat.” To be honest what really goes on in most of these working environments the public would be consummately against and would demand a change in how these companies run their workplaces.

    Read More

  • Problems of the Food System

    2097 Words  | 5 Pages

    Works Cited Schlosser, Eric. A. Fast Food Nation. N. p. : Harper Perennial, 2001. Print.

    Read More

More about Employees Need Labor Unions

Open Document