Trade Unions
Publicado por Diego Silva , domingo, 25 de abril de 2010 20:24
Trade unions in the European Union is the organization of workers for a certain enterprise or sector in order to get more rights, benefits, and the capacity to negotiate easily with their employers to achieve common goals such as better working conditions. As the EU varies in a wide range of aspects Unions aren’t the difference, in countries as Finland 71% of the employees are in Unions, Austria 32%, Spain 16% and France 8%, varying the power of each group for every country. But in general they have really great negotiating power in Europe mainly for the sectors or industries that belong to the States, but every time this percentage is decreasing in many countries, Unions are not having the same power as they used to, and people are not seeing the benefits of joining to this type of organizations, and also because nowadays companies tend to be more conscious about the effects of having unions and prefer to establish a good work environment and reward systems, to avoid the creation of Unions.
Trade Unions are not different from their purpose in the EU or Colombia, they are created to pursue more rights and common goals for the employees, but as the trend these organizations faced in Europe they are starting to decrease here as well, many of them stills have great power specially for government enterprises, but in the private sector their presence is every time less active.
image: Trade Union cartoon 10.http://www.cartoonstock.com/newscartoons/cartoonists/mba/lowres/mban126l.jpg
The fact that Unions are also starting to decrease here in Colombia, for me is pretty worse than the fact that this is happening in Europe, where Unions have achieve an important leadership inside the companies' decisions. Here in our country, Unions have never achieved the level of acceptance from the enterpreneural sector that in Europe have. In Colombia a "sindicalista" is seen as a revolutionary, “guerrillero” or like a picky person, non as a labor leader and as an important part inside a company, and even worse they are pursued. This fact is one of the reasons why FTA between USA and Colombia has not been accepted in the Democrats camera. My reflection goes towards thinking about, if Unions are losing their importance in Europe, where labor rights are quite fairer than here, what can we expect about this phenomenon in a country like ours? What other consequences different from just ending the Unions this could carry out?