Unions

The American workplace and American workers have changed. Gone are many assembly-line factories that once were ripe for union organizing. In their place are jobs requiring people less interested in unions-highly trained professionals who are unsympathetic to the adversarial labor-management relationship and who are empowered to make many decisions themselves.

Union clout has been weakened through corporate downsizing, technological advances that displace workers, and the rise of small, service-oriented businesses.

The US economy has become highly integrated into the global economy, and many manufacturing and low-skilled jobs have gone overseas. To temper union demands, companies sometimes threaten to send more jobs overseas to cut costs.

Labor’s traditional ally, the Democratic Party, has lost control of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Republicans set the legislative agenda and are aiming to repea

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slation that organized labor fought for years to get on the books. More importantly, it has been discovered of late that most of the contributions from organized labor’s membership coffers have gone to Democrats and supported Democratic causes, “Union PACs gave Democrats $45 million of the $49 million in hard-money PAC contributions distributed during 1995-1996. Democrats also received 98 percent of the nearly $10 million in soft-money contributions from labor unions in 1995-1996. Of the $100 million in 1995-1996 labor union campaign expenditures, about $96 million (96 percent) went to the Democratic Party…even though an average of 44 percent of voters from union households supported Ronald Reagan and George Bush over Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis,” (News World, 1997: 1). One of the reasons why this funding has been causing such controversy, especially among Republicans, is because of the fact that organized labor does not have to gain permission from its membership before donating membership dues to support political campaigns or causes. The finance-reform bill that is floating around Congress is being shaped by Republicans to amend legislation to it that would require unions to receive permission from
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 1454
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page)

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