Sunday, May 6, 2012

Employee's on Strike: How This Affects You (this was written in 2007)

For this particular article I was paid 3.71 upfront. However, I still earn a little for page views so if you don't mind please click on the link, and leave a comment under the article. Also because this was a non-exclusive I have included the article below the link.           
             
        http://voices.yahoo.com/employees-strike-affects-you-569557.html?cat=9                                    

                              "Employee's on Strike: How This Affects You"


What does a company strike mean?

When a company goes on strike, many people other than just the employees and their families are affected.

Depending on where you live, or whether or not you work for a union will reflect some of your opinions about unions. If your business is dependant on a union plant for any of your business will also determine what you think about strikes. The majority of striking workers are in union plants, there maybe rare exceptions to this. But I would venture to say that most strikes are done in plants or companies with unions.

Now the reasons that a union will decide to strike are many and varied some have very valid reasons for striking such as safety concerns. Some just want higher wages or more benefits. The second case of just wanting higher wages is less likely to gain as much sympathy from the general public especially from those who are living on much less than those complaining are already making.
So what does it mean short tem when a company has workers who decide to strike for whatever reason? Well number one it means that the strike is costing someone money. The longer the strike lasts the more money it's costing someone.

Most likely the company or corporation is the one who starts out paying out extra money. Then depending on how long that the strike lasts will determine who else ends up paying for a strike. If the strike lasts very long a lot of people will be affected.

An extended strike can affect a whole economy if it lasts long enough.

So you may wonder just what the striking workers hope to accomplish with a strike, and why the employers don't just fire everyone that's on strike. Then hire new workers to replace the old ones. Who are not happy with the pay or working conditions?

Well its pretty simple the reason that a company does not normally just fire everyone. Is because it costs the company more to retrain new workers than it does to just keep the workers they already have. Not to mention there is a lot of paperwork involved. This is why the striking workers have some advantage over their employers.

Something else about a strike that may or may not of crossed the mind of those striking is the fact that while they are trying to force their employers to comply to their demands. Whether justified or not the employer may just decide to close up shop in that area. This means the employees no longer even have a job to complain about.

When an employee decides to go on strike they risk even having a job to go back too. Even if the employee's receive what they want from their employers there will be a cost to pay somewhere along the line. The cost of the striking workers will have to be paid for.

This translates into rising costs. Higher costs for cars, trucks, other vehicles, housing, and transportation everything.

This means while the workers who go on strike for higher pay and more benefits may profit short term, they also loose more than they gain. Now the cost of many things will have risen, because of the company spending more on their workers. Just to pay for the cost of meeting the striking workers needs. This means in order to make enough money to buy the things that they had previously been buying these same workers end up having to work more hours or take on second jobs.

So eventually the workers will get unhappy again and may strike again wanting more pay. This eventually will cost everyone.

Because the cost is eventually passed on to the consumer.

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