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Question

By calling for exempting unionized businesses from the minimum wage, unions are creating more incentives for employers to favor unionized workers over, the non-Unionized sort. Such exemptions.strengthen their power ___ Once employers are obliged to pay the same minimum wage to both unionized and non-unionized labor, workers often see less reason to pay the dues to join a union.

A
High rates of unionization make minimum-wage rules unnecessary as collaborative wage setting achieves the flexibility goals of a low minimum wage and the fairness goals of a high one.
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B
Workers who have no real alternative to employment in, the unregulated shadows of the labor market are even more vulnerable to exploitation and abuse than workers with the legal right to take low wages.
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C
The labour ethos of worker solidarity seems hollow if non-union workers are underpriced by union workers and left unemployed or scrambling for unauthorized work.
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D
This is useful because for all the effort unions throw at raising the minimum wage, laws for better pay have an awkward habit of undermining union clout.
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E
Unions have been demanding democratic values in the work culture but on the contrary they have been practicing dictatorial ways.
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Solution

The correct option is D This is useful because for all the effort unions throw at raising the minimum wage, laws for better pay have an awkward habit of undermining union clout.
Option D best completes the passage.

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The Taft-Hartley Act, passed by the United States Congress in 1947, gave states the power to enact “right-to-work” legislation that prohibits union shop agreements. According to such an agreement, a labour union negotiates wages and working conditions for all workers in a business, and all workers are required to belong to the union. Since 1947, 20 states have adopted right-to-work laws. Much of the literature concerning right-to-work laws implies that such legislation has not actually had a significant impact. This point of view, however, has not gone uncriticized. Thomas V. Carroll has proposed that the conclusions drawn by previous researchers are attributable to their myopic focus on the premise that, unless right-to-work laws significantly reduce union membership within a state, they have no effect. Carroll argues that the right-to-work laws “do matter” in that such laws generate differences in real wages across states. Specifically, Carroll indicates that while right-to-work laws may not “destroy” unions by reducing the absolute number of unionized workers, they do impede the spread of unions and thereby reduce wages within right-to-work states. Because the countervailing power of unions is weakened in right-to-work states, manufacturers and their suppliers can act cohesively in competitive labour markers, thus lowering wages in the affected industries.

Such a finding has important implications regarding the demographics of employment and wages in right-to-work states. Specifically, if right-to-work laws lower wages by weakening union power, minority workers can be expected to suffer a relatively greater economic disadvantage in right-to-work states than in union shop states. This is so because, contrary to what was once thought, unions tend to have a significant positive impact on the economic position of minority workers, especially Black workers, relative to White workers. Most studies concerned with the impact of unionism on the Black worker’s economic position relative to the White workers have concentrated on the changes in Black wages due to union membership. That is, they have concentrated on union versus non-union groups. In a pioneering study, however, Ashenfelter finds that these studies overlook an important fact: although craft unionism increase the differential between the wages of White workers and Black workers due to the traditional exclusion of minority workers from unions in the craft sectors of the labour market, strong positive wage gains are made by Black workers within industrial unions. In fact, Ashenfelter estimates that industrial unionism decreases the differential between the wages of Black workers and White workers by about 3 percent. If state right-to-work laws weaken the economic power of unions to raise wages, Black workers will experience a disproportionate decline in their relative wage positions. Black workers in right-to-work states would therefore experience a decline in their relative economic positions unless there is strong economic growth in right-to-work states, creating labor shortages and thereby driving up wages.

Which one of the following best describes the passage as a whole?


Q. Prior to 1975, union efforts to organize public-sector clerical workers, most of whom are women, were somewhat limited. The factors favoring unionization drives seem to have been either the presence of large numbers of workers, as in New York City, to make it worth the effort, or the concentration of small numbers in one or two locations, such as a hospital, to make it relatively easy. Receptivity to unionization on the workers’ part was also a consideration, but when there were large numbers involved or the clerical workers were the only unorganized group in a jurisdiction, the multi-occupational unions would often try to organize them regardless of the workers’ initial receptivity. The strategic reasoning was based, first, on the concern that politicians and administrators might play off unionized against non-unionized workers, and, second, on the conviction that a fully unionized public work force meant power, both at the bargaining table and in the legislature. In localities where clerical workers were few in number, were scattered in several workplaces, and expressed no interest in being organized, unions more often than not ignored them in the pre-1975 period.
But since the mid-1970’s, a different strategy has emerged. In 1977, 34 percent of government clerical workers were represented by a labor organization, compared with 46 percent of government professionals, 44 percent of government blue-collar workers, and 41 percent of government service workers. Since then, however, the biggest increases in public-sector unionization have been among clerical workers. Between 1977 and 1980, the number of unionized government workers in blue-collar and service occupations increased only about 1.5 percent, while in the white-collar occupations the increase was 20 percent and among clerical workers in particular, the increase was 22 percent. What accounts for this upsurge in unionization among clerical workers? First, more women have entered the work force in the past few years, and more of them plan to remain working until retirement age. Consequently, they are probably more concerned than their predecessors were about job security and economic benefits. Also, the women’s movement has succeeded in legitimizing the economic and political activism of women on their own behalf, thereby producing a more positive attitude toward unions. The absence of any comparable increase in unionization among private-sector clerical workers, however, identifies the primary catalyst—the structural change in the multi-occupational public-sector unions themselves. Over the past twenty years, the occupational distribution in these unions has been steadily shifting from predominantly blue-collar to predominantly white-collar. Because there are far more women in white-collar jobs, an increase in the proportion of female members has accompanied the occupational shift and has altered union policy-making in favor of organizing women and addressing women’s issues.
Q. The author cites union efforts to achieve a fully unionized work force (line 13-19) in order to account for why
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