The Sociology Of Trade Unions, Labor Markets, Equality And The Social Networking

We will be examining the sociology of trade unions, labor markets, equality and the social networking that exists among all of them. The labor market is also known as the job market, a term which refers to the supply and demand of labor in which the employees are the ones that provide the supply and the employers are the ones that provide the demand. This relationship between supply and demand for labor is a major component of any economy, regardless of size, location and scope, and it is connected with the markets for capital, goods and services as well.

On the other hand, the trade unions, which are also called labor unions, are assemblies, or organizations, of workers who come together to achieve a certain common goal. Such a goal can be the protection of the integrity of its trade, the improvement of standards of safety, the influencing of working conditions through increase of bargaining power, among other objectives that relate and impact all members of the union. As can be seen around the globe, the lack of established labor unions can have an obvious direct impact on how working conditions are perceived in different place. Places that are considered to be the worst to work at, usually labor unions are not part of the equation.

A report issued by the International Trade Union Confederation, the umbrella organization of unions around the world, is revealing data on the state of workers’ rights across 139 different countries. While conducting the research for its 2014 Global Right Index, the ITUC has evaluated 97 unique workers’ rights metrics such as the ability to join and participate in unions, access to legal protection and due process, and the freedom of violent conditions. For each metric, the group is ranking a country on a scale of one to five, with one being the best protection and five being the worst. The research conducted has found that in 35 countries, at the very least, workers have been arrested or imprisoned “as a tactic to resist demands for democratic rights, decent wages, safer working conditions and secure jobs”. More than that, in a minimum of nine countries, it was found that disappearances and murders are regularly used methods to intimidate workers.

The only country on the planet that achieved a perfect score was Denmark. A perfect score in this regard means that the country stood by all of the 97 indicators of workers’ rights used in the research. The U.S, somewhat embarrassingly, scored a total rank of 4, indicating “systematic violations” and “serious efforts to crush the collective voice of workers”. It is stated that “countries such as Denmark and Uruguay led the way through their strong labor laws, but surprisingly Greece, the United Stated and Hong Kong, lagged behind”. What’s interesting to note is that the level of development of a country proved to be a poor indicator of whether that state is respecting basic rights to collective bargaining, striking for decent conditions, or simply joining a union at all. Darker shades represent the worst protection there is for workers, while a score of 5+, means that activate conflicts in the region, such as those that are taking place in Syria or Sudan, are blocking any legal protection for workers.

Looking more into the report, the countries found to be the worst for workers in Europe are Turkey, Belarus, Greece, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Romania, Serbia and the United Kingdom, where the number of countries experiencing physical violence and threats against workers saw an increase of 10 percent in a single year.

The report shows, however, that generally trade unions in Europe have a greater respect, support and standing in society, where they are benefiting from a strong culture and tradition of industrial relations, especially within those that are member states of the European Union.

When it comes to the Middle East and North Africa, these regions continue to be the worst in the world in regards to workers’ rights with an average rating of 4.53, down from 4.26 in the previous year, indicating a substantial region-wide decline. This is being worsened by the fact that the area is affected by various conflicts and a breakdown of the general rule of law, so that no guaranteed provision of fundamental labor rights in places such as Palestine, Syria, Iraq and Libya. The report ranks the ten worst countries in the world for workers’ rights in 2017 as Bangladesh, Colombia, Egypt, Guatemala, Kazakhstan, the Philippines, Qatar, South Korea, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.

Faced with a decline in membership figures, some unions around the world join forces with others in an attempt to be more effective at achieving their purpose, while others are trying to provide a modernization of things: in the United Kingdom, for instance, UNISON, the second-largest union, is now allowing people to join as members online and has created its own app which is popular with the younger audience. In addition UNISON has changed the way it markets itself to its potential members, by highlighting provided services such as a free legal advice, rather than market just its ability to start a strike, and instead of relying on “agents” to recruit new members to the union, it advertises in newspapers and on television. Despite the latter, however, the pace of change in trade unions has often been very slow.

In some other countries, however, trade unions have seen an steady growth in membership numbers. Spain, Ireland and Luxembourg have all seen an increase in members-number over the past three decades. Meanwhile there is a scope for even more growth in emerging markets. Since 1981, when the country of Chile began keeping records, the number of people who have joined and became members of a trade union has more than doubled. And even when considering the declining number of members, in some places, such as France, such unions still hold a great power in other elements of the market, where they determine wages or prevent businesses from expanding. But unless western unions begin to widen their appeal to the workers, events such as the Paris week of Protests will become increasingly muted.

Another major issue of the labor market is that of equal pay for equal work. Seeing this issue being solves is still but a far-into-the-future dream, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2014 Global Gender Gap report. The WEF estimates that it will take around 81 years for a woman to earn as much as a man does for doing the same job, something that no country in the world has yet to achieve. However, this report also found that slowly, women’s salaries are approaching those of their male counterparts, though at a not so high pace – the U.S, which ranks at the 65th place in wage equality (out of 142 nations covered in the report) successfully narrowed its wage gap by one percentage point to 66% in just one year. In other parts of the world, women (logically) fare better and worse: where in Italy, for instance, women receive only 48 percent of what a man earns, in Norway and Singapore the gap is much closer to being overcome altogether, with women earning 80 cents on the dollar in comparison to a man’s one dollar of earning. The only place in the world currently where women earn more than man is still Denmark.

This point can be explained by several theories. The one main difference between how economists and sociologists are looking at the labor markets is that the economist’s view is primarily concerned with the efficiency of optimally allocating workers to jobs, where a sociologist’s view is mainly looking at fairness in the market. For the economist, the condition of efficiency is fulfilled when the employment is affected only by the feature relevant to a specific job. However, the results of it might not be considered fair if the features are determined by factors such as power, ethnic origin, class, family and so on. Even if the sociological research can assert the employment opportunities are affected by completely irrelevant individual features such as skin color, economists can still maintain their view of efficient free market by including discrimination among the preferences attributed to employers.

Another theory that explains why inequality among workers or why certain jobs there is are attributed to certain group of people is social pattern. This theory suggests that workers like to work more with their relatives’ friends and with other people that they previously know. For human resources managers, this situation is quite optimal, given that it reduces their search cost, as well as placing an informal social control among the employees for betterment of economic performance that can then be easier to control due to group homogeneity. In homogenous groups it is simpler to perform communication and to avoid ethnic conflicts at the workplace. So, once a pattern has been established it is very hard to deviate from it and it can only happen with great cost and effort. This is what we then call embedded economic behavior and rational economic decisions in ongoing social relationships. These too can explain the phenomena in which men at dominant in certain areas of an industry and why women are dominant in others. For instance, in Russian dentists are primarily women, while in Germany they are mainly men, while in other places also racial discrimination can exists in society such as in the United States.

There is another important aspect to note, that of social networking. Without social networking, neither labor markets nor labor unions would exist. There is a great significance of personal relations or “weak ties” (Granovetter, 1973) that actually facilitate the rational behavior of market participants. In other words, individuals that are looking for employment or looking to employ others who will flourish and strive at their job can do so only by the social relations that require them to behave in accordance with rules that are social and not economic at heart. Social relations, as such, give employers access of information on each other and the relevant jobs. Access to social networks is not free for all. The concept of social capital (Bourdieu 2000) has been planned exactly for the purpose of high market value and the unequal distribution of social relations.