Liam Brennan’s CT Mirror (November 14, 2022) essay, “You Want a Latte” discusses the importance of unions and their ability to bring people together, help negotiations, and create a productive and safe work experience. Before reading this piece, I understood unions were to bring workers together to rally for better pay, treatment, and work conditions. It was also always clear to me that media coverage showed unions in a negative light. I’ve seen more coverage of how strikes negatively affect people rather than the positive reasons behind them.
My steelworker grandfather was a union representative for his company and his goal was to protect fellow workers. From his experience, I learned there are positive and negative aspects. If you are part of a union, you do not have a choice when they want to go on strike. The main issue this causes is a complete pay cut throughout the strike. On the other hand, this helps the union to push their agenda. They can negotiate your salary benefits and protect you.
Unlike my grandpa, I worked for a non-unionized company. I labored at a major fast-food chain for about a year and a half. I believe that all fast food chains need to be unionized to improve safety for employees. Conditions may have changed since working there, but one of the prominent safety issues was the fact that we would spend hours in the heat taking orders in the summertime. On multiple occasions, employees have passed out due to heat and dehydration. During winter, employees gear up in winter clothes and take orders outside. We were told we would be swapped every 30 minutes, yet we were left out in freezing weather for hours on end. Employees are made to overheat and freeze even though speakers work perfectly fine. There are many more issues fast food employees face that unionization could help solve.
Unions have solved many more problems than I realized. Liam Brennan’s essay showed me just how much unions are capable of. I was surprised to find out that unions played a major role in the development of the middle class. Before unions, there was an exponentially large gap between the general population and the wealthy. Unions made it so people could come together. It gave workers a voice against the top 1%. Workers were able to demand safer work conditions and better pay. This has caused the development of the middle class. Over the years the number of workers belonging to a union has dwindled. This can become problematic as employees can once again get mistreated without a representative voice. These days we see employees being severely underpaid, especially in comparison to inflation.
Just like my experience in fast food, there are many additional jobs unionization could potentially help to keep employees from being taken advantage of. The wage gap between the elite and middle class is still ginormous. The top 1% have more money than they know what to do with and are still unwilling to improve work conditions or increase pay unless they are put under pressure.
Unions are a great way to pressure the elites to give what is deserved to workers. The very wealthy can get away with illegal activities and pay little to no taxes. The lower and middle classes are forced to pay the highest taxes and abide by the law.
In my opinion, the justice system is made to put the general population in their place while allowing the elite to get away with many illegal activities. This is because they have connections and unlimited money at their fingertips. This enables them to control most people around them. The only way elites are made to face their actions is if there is a public outroar to pressure the justice system into action. Even then they get to negotiate their terms and get a slap on the wrist. The general population does not believe they can do anything to change this reality. However, once unionized their voices become stronger and the people in power are forced to comply.
Unions are a great opportunity for the general population of workers to come together and demand what they deserve. They have allowed us to create a middle class, which could help us slowly close the large pay gap. I believe that unions can be used to fix more than just work conditions and pay.
If the general population agreed and if more workers were to unionize, management would be forced to comply with labor’s demands. Liam Brennan’s essay opened my eyes to the potential unionization holds to create change in the workplace and society.
Amanda Tardif is a student at Connecticut State Community College.