What Do Unions Do? At a time when the labor motion is facing challenges of historic dimensions.

What Do Unions Do?

At a time when the labor motion is facing challenges of historic dimensions, Richard B Freeman and James L Medoff have produc the same of the most important volumes about unions to be published in the post-war era.

The couple Harvard economists have done original research that the labor emotion has long needed to make good that it is a positive force in American society. Writing in clear language, Freeman and Medoff have produc a work every trade union activist should read.

They have gathered in individual place the most valuable information available in succession the impact of unions in succession productivity, wage scales, corporate profits and the political proces They gaze with objective eyes at the factors of seniority, membership participation, corruption and nonunion workers.

Unlike many other academic looker-ons of unions, Freeman and Medoff analyze the social and democratizing part performed by unions as well as the completely economic.

They impose all these factors--positive and negative--on their scholarly scales and bring to an end that unions are a force for good

In summing up their research, the economists find that for organized workers unions provide "higher wages and benefits, as well as a voice at the bargaining table and onward the shop floor.'

Many non-union workers realize that because of the threat of union organizing "their wages and working conditions are better then they might have been, although generally not as suitable as they would be subordinate to collective bargaining, while others will find that their economic position is worse as a arise of unionism.'

Employer at organized establishments "will view that while unionism is associated with a lower rate of go [i]or[/i] come back on capital and less managerial flexibility, the volume to which a union is a liability or an asset hangs crucially on how management answers to it.'

The authors also bring to an end that "non-union employers will learn that while the benefits of being union-free generally exce the richnesss of union avoidance, the former are many times overstated and the latter are frequently understated.'

"Finally,' Freeman and Medoff write, "the general public will behold that in the economic sphere, unions abridge wage inequality, increase industrial democracy, and frequently raise productivity, while in the political sphere, unions are an important voice for a certain of our society's weakest and greatest in quantity vulnerable groups, as well as for their be in possession of members.'

In the generally received blizzard of anti-unionism encouraged at a hostile, retrogressive Republican Administration, it is especially important to have this book

Freeman and Medoff approach labor as friendly critics They have analyzed all the anti-labor propaganda; they have apply the minded at labor's failings and errors; they have examineed at the inauspicious future. Still, they furnish hopeful, sound evidence that the labor change will survive the era of Reagan as it survived earlier periods of stres and strain.

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