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Impact of labor unions on employee productivity
Impact of labor unions on employee productivity
The Impact of Unions on Organizations
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In the article, “Bangladeshi Garment Workers Fight Back”, North argues in favor of unions that protest against low wages and most importantly, poor working conditions in garment factories. The root of North’s discussion was the Rana Plaza collapse in Dhaka, Bangladesh, which was one of the world’s deadliest industrial disasters ever to hit the garment industry. Later, North describes how poor working conditions negatively impacts worker’s lives because the cost of living were increasing, but wages were not and nor were working conditions improved. (North, 2013) Throughout the article, garment workers share their experiences about their workplace safety to North. They discuss poverty and their fears of going to work everyday. This article not …show more content…
First, North’s language is charged with emotion as he successfully appeals to emotion because of the number of workers he interviewed. He provides original research because he had visited the country and had conversations with survivors. This type of research that involves interviewing people who have experienced the event is effective because it makes readers feel sympathy and compassion towards the deceased and injured. Second, for reasons/evidence, North incorporates statistical data to further educate readers. For example, he mentions the amount of causalities and the dates associated with the Rana Plaza collapse that ultimately gives the readers a sense of how tragic the collapse was. In addition he effectively compares the biggest importers with one another giving readers a sense of how different they are. For example, he states that H&M and Zara signed the Accord, however the biggest US importers such as GAP and Walmart had offered less money to help working conditions. (North, 2013) Third, North mentions similar events to the Rana Plaza attack including other building collapses and regular fires such as the one that destroyed Tazreen Fashions factory in 2012 (North, 2013). These facts further make readers believe that surely Bangladeshis are in a huge
On July 13, 1900 Joseph Aschs’ new building plans in New York City are approved and by January 5, 1901 the building is complete. In 1906, the eighth floor of the Asch building is bought by the Triangle Shirtwaist Company who opens a factory there. Three years later, a letter is sent to the management of the Triangle Shirtwaist building from a fire prevention expert. He suggests they that a discussion about evaluating and enhancing safety measures. Unfortunately, management does not take the letter seriously and “the letter is ignored.” (Linder, “Triangle Shirtwaist Fire Trial”) The inhumane work conditions in the factory led to the decision of twenty-five ILGWU workers to declare strike against th...
When someone thinks of the poor they instantly imagine a homeless man sleeping in a cardboard box or the nearest garbage can, but the working poor especially in the inner-city is commonly overlooked by society. However the working poor, in this case the working poor in the inner-city, are people advancing to try and make their lives better. They are taking minimum wage jobs so that they can barely afford a roof over their heads. Within Katherine Newman?s novel No Shame In My Game, she studies the working poor in the inner-city to draw conclusions about how to help them and dispute common stereotypes and the images people commonly view. Newman?s conclusions along with the way she had conducted her case study will be evaluated for her positive and negative points while searching for any biases she may have portrayed within her novel.
Making only about “ base pay of $2.15 an hour” (Ehrenreich 399) and then having to share the money from personal tips with the other busboys and dishwashers making it hard to get by. Using the data she collected on her excursion to find information for her book, Ehrenreich experienced the hard life of the economy we all live in. Hard to get by, and even harder when there is children, a house, and food to worry about. SOhow then does anyone get by? Community, there are many communities that are full of poor and homeless people. People living in their cars and working minimum wage jobs that only pay for the gas in their car and maybe food from the Mcdonalds dollar menu. Understanding this problem communities pull together and put up institutions to help feed and give resting spots for those living in tough times. Taking the research Ehrenreich found, everyone could learn and understand how lucky they are if they are not working minimum wage jobs, but jobs that pay way wages enough to have a house and raise children without having to eat at soup
The leaders of big business didn’t give workers the rights they deserved. In the text, Captains of Industry or Robber Barons?, it states, “Workers were often forbidden to strike, paid very low wages, and forced to work very long hours.” This evidence is a perfect example of the dehumanization of workers. The employers treated their workers like interchangeable parts, which were easily replaced. The big business leaders started paying less attention to the working conditions, and more to the production rates, and money. They didn’t care about worker’s family or the worker’s wellbeing. Due to the horrible working conditions, the workers were more likely to be injured, and sometimes, die. The capitalists didn’t give their employees the rights and respect they deserved, because to them they were just unskilled, cheap labor. If the workers were unhappy, they would easily replace them with other unskilled workers. That’s why they were considered interchangeable parts. This evidence shows the big business leaders only cared about money, and didn’t treat their workers
Today we see the labor reforms put in place along with organizations that hold business to safety precautions like OSHA, Occupational Safety and Health Association. Today, worker’s fight for higher minimum wage but outside of America, there are worker’s fighting for the same rights we did back in the 1900’s. Back in 2013, in Bangladesh, a series of fires occurred. This raised questions about safety and treatment of workers. Within a few months, the government allowed the garment workers to form trade unions along with a plan to raise the minimum wage. And soon after, the United States pushed for Bangladesh to improve their labor standards. All of this happened within half a year, where back in the 1900’s it took over 50 years, starting with the coal miners. Without the workers as a sturdy base for the business, the company with crumble and fall. And without those businesses to help the economy grow, the government will cease to
What the article said about the issue under investigation was, why the risk of poverty is so high. It talks about time, over year’s individuals face many unanticipated events., households split up, workers lose their jobs, family members become sick, and so on that become financial emergencies (Rank 504.) It always mentions how there is little government help to tide households over during these financial emergencies that the individuals are having. The labor market is another issue when it comes to poverty, this is because the labor market fails to provide enough jobs that pay well enough for people to make a living. The number of workers in the labor market is far greater than the number of jobs that pay a living wage. Between 9 and 33 percent of American household heads were either in non living wage jobs or looking for work. The structure of the labor market ensures that some families will lose out and will run a significant risk of poverty. United States employment rates are fairly low when compared to European
Life in the early 1900’s wasn’t easy. Competition for jobs was at an all time high, especially in New York City. Immigrants were flooding in and needed to find work fast, even if that meant in the hot, overcrowded conditions of garment factories. Conditions were horrid and disaster was inevitable, and disaster did strike in March, 1911. The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York set on fire, killing 146 workers. This is an important event in US history because it helped accomplish the tasks unions and strikes had tried to accomplish years earlier, It improved working conditions in factories nationwide and set new safety laws and regulations so that nothing as catastrophic would happen again. The workplace struggles became public after this fire, and the work industry would never remain the same again.
..., p.6). She assures herself that she will not become malnourished nor without transportation (2001), and thus will never truly experience real fear for survival, or the possibility of being overwhelmed with the impossibility of her situation. She, unlike her coworkers, will always have a way to escape, a life to go back to. The life that awaits her is likely one that those she is working with fantasize about without any hope to attain it. This is the only real weakness in a harrowing window into the lives of those living below the poverty line, that she cannot truly feel what it is like to truly not get by in America.
In the novel Poor People, written by William T. Vollmann asks random individuals if they believe they are poor and why some people are poor and others rich. With the help of native guides and translators, and in some cases their family members, they describe what they feel. He depicts people residing in poverty with individual interviews from all over earth. Vollmann’s story narrates their own individual lives, the situations that surround them, and their personal responses to his questions. The responses to his questions range from religious beliefs that the individual who is poor is paying for their past sins from a previous life and to the rational answer that they cannot work. The way these individuals live their life while being in poverty
The injustice that transpires within these workspaces evoke disparate responses from concerned citizens. From reading Bob Jeffcott’s article “Sweat, Fire, and Ethics,” the reader is challenged to urge their governments and educational institutions to condemn the exercise of exploitation of sweatshops be demanding evidence of improvements in working conditions. In Jeffrey D. Sachs excerpt “Bangladesh: On the Ladder of Development,” the working conditions of the women factory workers in Bangladesh is revealed yet the reader is persuaded to support these sweatshops because it is the only opportunity that these women have to gain a better life for themselves and their families. Upon reading both pieces, it is evident that sweatshops do not necessarily need to end completely, yet the business strategies employed within these facilities that negatively affect the workers must be monitored and addressed by the government in order for these companies to abandon labor
In The Working Poor: Invisible in America, David K. Shipler describes about the lives of United States citizens who live within poverty. He highlights the U.S.’s disregard for its working poor, the nature of poverty, and the causes of poverty faced by low-wage earners. Shipler performs an amazing job with describing the factors that play their parts into the lives of U.S. citizens who live are poor and within poverty.
In Prisoners of Poverty by Helen Campbell, it is illustrated that factory workers, such as the one interviewed in the document, have very little time to cook or eat and even less money with which to buy food. The poor not only had little money with which to buy food, but poverty-stricken individuals could not buy cooking implements nor fuel either. In Promoting Nutrition, Mary Hinman Abel points out that families have very little money to use, so she built her cookbook upon the idea that a family of six only had 78 cents with which to buy food every day. The author says that the proposed audience for this book is a mother who either has no job or is a factory worker, proving that factory workers—unskilled laborers—were at the bottom of the economic
Stories about life 's struggle to survive in everyday America can make one think twice of the American dream. In David Shipler’s book The Working Poor, David tells many different tales of people living in poverty and also analyzes what 's wrong and why. The book’s portrayal of the poor is not for the meek however, as one reviewer exclaims, “Through a series of sensitive, sometimes heart-rending portraits”, (Lenkowsky). In the book a lot of American ideologies are turned on its head as The Red Phoenix explains how our poor are viewed as, “Wealth and decadence are the tell-tale signs of hard work and brilliance paying off, while poverty is a sign of laziness, irresponsibility and a disposition or work-ethic undeserving of the
Americans do not realize the amount of clothing we wear on a daily basis is actually made in Cambodia, such as Adidas and even the Gap. The women that work for these sweatshops in Cambodia sew for 50 cents an hour, which is what allows stores in America, such as H&M to sell inexpensive clothing (Winn, 2015). The conditions these Cambodian workers face are a noisy, loud, and extremely hot environment where people are known for having huge fainting attacks. When workers were on strike a year ago, authorities actually shot multiple people just because they were trying to raise their pay. There is plenty of evidence of abuse captured through many interviews of workers from different factories, and is not just a rarity these places see often or hear of. Factories hire children, fire pregnant women because they are slow and use the bathroom to much, scream at regular workers if they use the toilet more than two times a day, scam hard working employees with not paying them their money they worked for and more, and workers are sent home and replaced if 2,000 shirts are not stitched in one day. Expectations are unrealistic and not suitable for employees to be working each day for more than ten
A woman who had lived an unsteady life throughout her childhood was negatively affected as an adult by the things that she had went through in her earlier years. In an article entitled “One Family 's Story Shows How The Cycle Of Poverty Is Hard To Break,” Pam Fessler stated that “Like many before her, she carried her poverty into adulthood, doing odd jobs with periods of homelessness and hunger.” The woman had realized that her children were being negatively affected by the unsteady lifestyle that they were living. The mother had said that her six year old daughter had emotional issues, which led to her making herself throw up after eating, running away, and talking about killing herself (Fessler). The little girl had been emotionally affected by poverty, which caused her to do things that most six year olds would not think about doing. The people who live in poverty as a child are more likely to struggle in adulthood. Poverty has many negative effects on children and tends to affect the way they grow and live the rest of their life as an