[mslee84]

Please help me,I want to know the advantages & disadvantages of joining a union,I am studying Human Resources Management

[smoothy]

That advantages are with the collective bargaining agreement is that you are insulated from the random whims of bean counters tossing out people willy-nilly for no reason other than to fudge the numbers on the books that quarter. And layoffs won't happen with no advance warning they are coming as they have to be negotiated with the union in advance. And its harder for a manager who has personal issues with any particular employee that are not job performance related from kicking them around.

The disadvantage is you have to use long term planning instead of short term planning for personel needs.

Also the advantage of knowing that your pay increases will be over the period of the contract as well as what your benefits will be for that period.

THe disadvantage to that is during very good years is your raise will be less than non-union employees, balanced out by during bad times the contract specifies what it will be and may be higher than the non-union employees.

Basically, the union forces the corporation to consider the employees more like a long term investment... while non-union shops tend to view their staff much like day-traders view penny-stocks.

I'm not a HR person... just someone that over the last 30 years has worked both sides about evenly at this point.

That's just some of the pros and cons from a couple points. There are far more. And just to be clear... issues and specific advantages and disadvantages will vary from employer to employer as well as from one contract to another.

Look at it as an equalizer between a potiential group of employees that may not know what goes on in the world of the paper pushers... and the management that in some cases that is nearly oblivious to the work that actually earns the revenue for the company. (This comment was over generalized on purpose)