Union Membership and Right to Work

Running Head: Human Resource Fundamentals
Union Membership and Right to Work
Name of the Student:
Name of the University
Author’s Note

HUMAN RESOURCE FUNDAMENTALS1
Discussion 8.1:
The case study of Harley Davidson Give and Take gives a general view of labour
unions and management. The labour union is an organisation of associates where staff or
employees often in profession or trade are formed to protect the right and interest of the trade
union. The case study of Harley Davidson states that when in a situation one wins the other
loses and vice-versa. There are many situation where the business and the unions coincide
with each other. One notable example is stated by Davidson is that the overall cost was in
structured to remain competitive. The relation of the typical interaction between the labour
and management was heated. There are many instance where the team and management work
together in an efficient manner. One of the examples stated by Davidson was reduction in the
cost of the York factory because of the dejection burden. The reason of the recession was due
to the hike in price of labour cost, the plant was antiquated and the employees were inflexible
about the movement across the different classification of work (Catulli, Cook & Potter,
2017).
Harley Davidson was a manufacturer of a big motorcycle company in York,
Pennsylvania. The York plant had employed about 2000 employees in the non-managerial
level. The recession had dropped down the revenue and the organisation needed to reduce its
cost. One of the important aspect of the company was that it required modernization.
It was a gaining benefit of Davidson to renegotiate with the union workers. According
to the new agreement half of the jogs were cut and the number of classification was reduced
from sixty to five. The newly recruited workers would also start working in at a lower wage
rate and some of the workers who had already retained the jobs would yield pay cuts.
However Harley stated that the state of Pennsylvania had agreed to update the York plant and
the factory will be the first one to staff new jobs to the economy. Some of the experts have
believed that this deal was a one-sided in favour of Davidson’s interest.

HUMAN RESOURCE FUNDAMENTALS2
Union Membership
The union membership is an organised group that comes together to make certain
decision about the condition of working in a working space. Being a member of the union
membership the impact is on the workers regarding the wage, benefit, working hours, safety
and health and other work-related issues (Schnabel, 2013). The biggest union membership
comprises of 2,731,419 members in National education association of the United States.
There are four types of general union that handles the trade union in UK. They are the general
union, craft union, white collar union and industrial union (Dunn & Walker, 2016).
The union membership provides with the facility of basic right towards the union
members who has more powers than and has the capability to negotiate with the individuals.
Some of the benefits of the union membership are:
 Union membership can make an average of 30% more than the workers of the non-
trade union.
 92% of the workers in the union have coverage against the health where in the non-
trade union the workers have a benefit of 65%
 The employees of the union are more likely to have guaranteed pensions as compared
to the non-union employees.
The benefits of the union and unionization to the working class and to the entire economy
are:
 Productivity
 Economic growth
 The quality of the product and service