The Missed Opportunities The O.P. Henley Textile Mill had a significant divide between employees and management and the working conditions were poor. There would have been many opportunities to make improvements such as improved working conditions, training and promotion programs, communication, and the building of trust. Significant wage increases may not have been necessary as long as they were competitive for the local market. In fact, a well-structured profit or gain-sharing program, benefitting both parties, may have been sufficient.
Working Conditions Improving working conditions should have been the mill’s first priority because no other accommodation would have mattered if employees were not provided with a safe and respectful
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Innovation and identifying new opportunities will be necessary for survival. A key finding from a study by Givan and Hipp (2012) found that, in the United States, women are more likely to believe that unions improve job security and suggested that unions focus their efforts on women. This may be a factor in recent union successes in healthcare, particularly nursing, where the majority of workers are women. Benson (2010) argued that the unionization of nurses has allowed them to “retain pride in their profession” and to put a “curb on the authority of imperious management” (p. 303). In general, the heathcare industry is expected to be a target due to reform, concern over job security, pressure to reduce costs and improve quality, and recent National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) legislation, responsible for streamlining the election process (Budryk, 2015). Almost 80 percent of healthcare worker elections resulted in unionization in 2014, a ten-year success rate high for organizing efforts (Budryk, 2015). Unions will need to continue to identify new opportunities such as these and adapt their efforts to the situations of the modern American worker.
Conclusion
Although few employment situations exist in America today resembling the O.P. Henley Textile Mill, the story depicts an ideal scenario for organization and textbook strategy by the union representative. The mill displayed poor judgement in their response to the previously failed union attempts and forfeited the opportunity they had to improve working
This was the first-time people had seen factories like this is America. Many famous, affluent, and powerful men visited these textile mills only long enough to admire the engineering advancements Lowell had made, and completely missed the inhumane treatment of the workers inside.
The paper will discuss minicases on ‘The White-Collar Union Organizer’ and ‘The Frustrated Labor Historians’ by Arthur A. Sloane and Fred Witney (2010), to understand the issues unions undergo in the marketplace. There is no predetermined statistical number reported of union memberships in this country. However, “the United Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) excludes almost 2 million U.S wages and salary employees, over half of whom are employed in the public sector, who are represented at their workplaces by a union but are not union members. Not being required to join a union as a condition of continued employment, these employees have for a variety of reasons chosen not to do so. Nor do the BLS estimates include union members who are currently unemployed” (Sloane & Witney, 2010, p.5). Given this important information, the examination of these minicases will provide answers to the problems unions face in organizational settings.
The Industrial Revolution in America began to develop in the mid-eighteen hundreds after the Civil War. Prior to this industrial growth the work force was mainly based in agriculture, especially in the South (“Industrial Revolution”). The advancement in machinery and manufacturing on a large scale changed the structure of the work force. Families began to leave the farm and relocate to larger settings to work in the ever-growing industries. One area that saw a major change in the work force was textile manufacturing. Towns in the early nineteen hundreds were established around mills, and workers were subjected to strenuous working conditions. It would take decades before these issues were addressed. Until then, people worked and struggled for a life for themselves and their families. While conditions were harsh in the textile industry, it was the sense of community that sustained life in the mill villages.
The case study of GMFC provides an example of a company attempting to avoid unionization of its workers. GMFC is expanding by building a new U.S. plant which will manufacture motorized recreational equipment. The company plans to hire about 500 production workers to assemble mechanical components, fabricate fiberglass body parts, and assemble the final products. In order to avoid the expected union campaign by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) to organize its workers, GMFC must implement specific strategies to keep the new plant union-free. GMFC’s planning committee offers suggestions with regards to the plant’s size, location, staffing, wages and benefits, and other employee relations issues in order to defend the company against the negative effects of unionization and increase...
Previous to the fire, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers Union took a stand with the Women’s Trade Union League to strike against the their working conditions. Unfortunately, even though their voices were heard, many of the sweat shop owners disregarded all basic workers’ rights. Management had no fear from
Work in the mills was hard and dangerous. The men worked from six to six, seven days a week. One week on day shifts and one week on night shifts, at the end of every shift the workers worked twenty-four hours. When the men worked the long shift they where exhausted, this made it fatally easy to be careless. Accidents were frequent and the employers did little or nothing to improve the conditions that the workers h...
The Lowell textile mills were a new transition in American history that explored working and labor conditions in the new industrial factories in American. To describe the Lowell Textile mills it requires a look back in history to study, discover and gain knowledge of the industrial labor and factory systems of industrial America. These mass production mills looked pretty promising at their beginning but after years of being in business showed multiple problems and setbacks to the people involved in them.
Beginning in the late 1700’s and growing rapidly even today, labor unions form the backbone for the American workforce and continue to fight for the common interests of workers around the country. As we look at the history of these unions, we see powerful individuals such as Terrence Powderly, Samuel Gompers, and Eugene Debs rise up as leaders in a newfound movement that protected the rights of the common worker and ensured better wages, more reasonable hours, and safer working conditions for those people (History). The rise of these labor unions also warranted new legislation that would protect against child labor in factories and give health benefits to workers who were either retired or injured, but everyone was not on board with the idea of foundations working to protect the interests of the common worker. Conflict with their industries lead to many strikes across the country in the coal, steel, and railroad industries, and several of these would ultimately end up leading to bloodshed. However, the existence of labor unions in the United States and their influence on their respective industries still resonates today, and many of our modern ideals that we have today carry over from what these labor unions fought for during through the Industrial Revolution.
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.
“Unions are about collective leverage, the power of numbers versus the power of capital” - Canadian entrepreneur, Kevin O’Leary. The American workplace has not always provided protections for employees. Until the early 20th century business owners held all of the power in the employee/employer relationship. Workers were subjected to extremely long hours, low wages and dangerous working conditions, with no recourse or protections. Organized labor over the last century challenged the position and power of employers and lobbied the government to create laws and policies that would protect workers and create safer working environments for employees. The majority of policies that today’s average employee takes for granted, such as the eight
In 1832 Michael Sadler secured a parliamentary investigation of conditions in the textile factories and he sat as chairman on the committee. The evidence printed here is taken from the large body published in the committee's report. The questions are frequently leading; this reflects Sadler's knowledge of the sort of information that the committee were to hear and his purpose of bringing it out.
In reading your group leader application I was very impressed with the various concepts of the union movement in terms of its representation and the labor unions from passed and present accomplishments. The group leader developed precise concepts of what collective bargaining methods represent in the union labor. Devinatz (2011), states that the declined in labor union created a globalization that abandoned the collective bargaining techniques. Labor unions were disorganized, and many were exclusive, and without organization or strength in numbers they could not be very successful. As striking became frequent, corporations were aided by federal injunctions and troops in suppressing action by union-affiliated workers, and this once powerful weapon of labor unions became ineffective. In recent years numerous studies displayed lack of professional nurses due to low
Nursing is the most powerful profession in the United States, given the fact that they can dictate how the direction of policy formation will go through their large numbers. In addition, their extensive knowledge of healthcare, which in itself is a technical profession that requires specific skills, places them at a greater position to influence the direction of the national policy. Regrettably, these professionals have left their political activism reins to other individuals who do not understand what healthcare is all about. The consequence of this is the passing of unfavorable healthcare policies that make the provision of healthcare even more difficult.
The textile industry is one of the largest industrial sectors in Indiaand plays an important role in Indian economy.Denim production is one of the major sub-sectors in the textile industry. The denim products are some of the most highly used in textile clothing, with continuousfashion use and consumer preference, especially by young people. A recent survey by Cotton Inc1.,showed thatthe global denim jeans market is projected to grow 8 percent, from $55 billion in 2015 to $59 billion by 2021, with Latin America and Asia expected to lead the increase. The projected growth is expected to be 12 percent in Asia, 15 percent in Latin America, 10 percent in North America and 4 percent in Europe over the next six years. In 2015, close to 1.9 billion units of denim jeans were sold in the world and by 2021 yearly sales of jeans will cross two billion units. In India, Historically, denim has been one of the fastest-growing apparel fabric segments, having grown by 500 million
Holley, William H, Kenneth M. Jennings, and Roger S. Wolters. The Labor Relations Process. Mason, OH: South-Western Cengage Learning, 2012. Print.