Trade Unions- are unions helpful or harmful for businesses? Reaction paper should be a minimum of 500-words long and should cover:

1. The main points that were presented by each team

2. critical assessment of the arguments available. In this case, I am not looking for your subjective opinion or how you “feel” about the debate.  I am interested in your assessment of the logic used in the debate and the evidence presented.

3. Your opinion (based on #2) as to which team won the debate.

Be sure to include references and citations for any source that you use in writing your paper, including your textbooks, but remember that you do not have to use sources outside what is presented in the debate if you do not want to.   Additional

points will be deducted if you fail to follow any of the instructions.

The debate question was: 

 Are unions helpful or harmful  for businesses? 

Notes on the debate:

Team pro unions:

• It facilitates communication between employees and corporations
• Increases overall satisfaction resulting in the customers’ as well
• Build trust and collaboration in the work place
• According to newyork times more satisfaction results in better efficiency in the workplace
• Easier negotiation since the company meets with one representative
• It reduces overall turnover
• Which results in saving money
• It ensures fairness
• Which decreases frustration and anxiety in the work place
• Unions help discipline employees in a fair way
• Ensures safety by job security
• Loyalty pays in unions since seniority is awarded making employees more probable to be loyal to the corp
• Example that unions can be very costly: Teachers are highly unionized and they are paid well and have 3 months vacation every year
• It causes increase in productivity since there’s continuance training
• It builds a unique connection between the employees and the corp through a representative
• It creates space for better solutions
• It pleases employees, managers and improves the bottom line

Team con unions:

• Unions = higher wages which raises prices on customers and hurt the corp
• The threat of lawsuit is higher since they have financial backing from the union 
• It causes a decrease in HR control 
• Since unions laws favor seniority and states to fire the newer employee regardless of performance
• It opens the corp to a threat of a strike which would severely hurt production
• The system favors seniority resulting in no incentive pay on good performance which would hurt the overall efficiency 
• 90% of the US workforce are no in unions
• Union expenses
• All having same wages could be unfair since the production isnt the same 
• Union tax which takes money away from investing resulting in leaving the company being competition
• Toxic work environment 
• It’s time consuming and it’s costly to keep up with regulations  
• Leads to insufficient workforce to handle the workload
• It’s outdated

Answer Preview-Trade Unions-Pros and Cons