Unionism

Conceptual Overview

The material origins of unionism are found in the development of the capitalist mode of production. Producers are separated from ownership and control over the means of subsistence and the product of their labor. Access to these resources is controlled by employers and mediated through job markets. Trade unions are the institutional collective response of workers to redress the material effects on wages of competition in the labor market for employment and the degradation of work that accompanies the authority and technological structures designed and put in place by each employer to ensure that the capacity to produce is exploited profitably. In the war of competition between rival enterprises, the organization of production and the shape and size of the labor market are constantly revolutionized. Thus, wherever the wage-labor relationship prevails, the actuality or specter of unionism comes into view.

Unionism has historically emphasized the importance of collective representation and bargaining to influence the terms and conditions of employment, to monitor and police agreements reached, to affect forms of democracy in the governance of labor processes, and to assert the interests of unions and their members in society. Unions attempt to enact these aims through insisting on, to a greater or lesser extent, the central importance of group solidarity and discipline. Mutual support and unity of voice through worker combination, as opposed to division and atomization, empowers in the face of employer and state opposition. In practical terms, this has meant that unions have often been involved in providing the following services:

• Mutual aid (such as strike relief or injury and death benefits).
• Representation in grievance and disciplinary hearings with employers.
• Legal advice and advocacy for members involved in litigation over issues such as discrimination and unfair treatment by employers.
• Control of access to a trade or profession by insisting upon and participating in the regulation of prerequisite training.
• Education and training to members and union leaders in diverse areas of practice and understanding (from trade-specific instruction through to training in the techniques of representation and beyond to the examination of labor and trade union history, political economy, and social theory).

Beyond the confines of workplace, enterprise, and industry, unions have looked to the state and society for support to provide for the legal right to establish and sustain organization and to refashion social and economic relations to the benefit of members and wider social allies. Traditionally, however, at the core of effective negotiations with employers and even the state is the willingness to threaten and apply sanctions, ultimately in the form of the strike: the collective refusal to produce.

...