Public Sector Labor Relations and the Labor Market

Public Sector Labor Relations and the Labor Market [Name] [Institution] [Date] Public Sector Labor Relations and the Labor Market Labor unions are legally recognized association of workers, often in a trade or profession, whose core objective is to protect rights and interests of workers in various organizations. Currently, the view of labor unions in America is generally negative. This has come about because of both political and economic influence. Due to globalization, American companies have been facing tough competition leading to labor unions losing their ground. The number of unionized private sector workers is also decreasing. As the number of Americans registered to unions becomes less, support for these unions also decreases. Politically, the unions have been associated with Democratic Party. This has meant that Republicans have an incentive to attack labor unions (Kucera, n.d.). Because of these reasons, American attitudes towards labor unions have been more negative in the recent years. Nowadays, the environment of the labor unions is in favor of employers. Because of the current economic and political climate, labor unions are losing their bargaining power, and as a result, employers make various decisions regarding their employees unopposed. Considering the future trends in labor relations environment, everyone is worried about the economy. The rich individuals (various company owners) tend to preserve their wealth and invest only in opportunities where they will get more quick money. On the other hand, employees are after forming more strong unions to protect their rights and interests. Since many companies are currently running out of funds, and strong unions with pensions and other benefits are being formed; in the future, quite a number of employees will lose their jobs due to downsizing of companies, and the unions will face a negative impact due to less support (Haun, 2010). Labor unions in the transportation sector are prevalent in the public transportation sector. Although there are private sector unions, they are few in number. Teamsters union is one of the largest transportation unions in United States of America. It mainly deals with trains and trucking. The largest union in America is the United Transportation Union (UTU). This union is based in Ohio and it represents approximately more than 120,000 transport...