During the Gilded Age, America was benefitting from the success of the Second Industrial Revolution and the growth of capitalism. While robber barons grew wealthy, however, industrial workers fell prey to harsh working conditions, scarce pay, and long work hours. In an effort to address these grievances, workers began to unionize and collectively voice their concerns. Despite their efforts, the labor unions of the late 1800s were unsuccessful in meeting their goals because of their inability to gain the governments’ support in the Great Railroad Strike, Homestead Strike, and Pullman Strike. Working conditions were harsh for the American industrial worker in the 1800s.
| Customers | Customers can stop buying products displaying the john Lewis logo, word of mouth means that john Lewis can be seriously damaged by customer shifts. They have a huge influence on the aims and objectives of john Lewis. However john Lewis may feel that it has sufficiently strong, brand loyalty to ignore customer input. | Employees | Employee can make john Lewis alter their aims and objectives to include staff needs and wants, john Lewis altered their company objectives to include the working conditions of its staff, however a set time when unemployment is high, employers are in a position of greater power as employment is harder to find. | Trade union | Unions mainly focus on the treatment and pay of the employees.
Even though unions had moved to improve the rights, justice and conditions of the workplace, it was not surprising that many workers were sacked for simply joining the unions. In the cities, many of the people worked in factories. Some employers and factory owners treated their employees well; they paid them above the minimum wage with good working conditions but in other cases, the workers were being treated like slaves. The temperature of the factories would rise in hotter seasons, sometimes rising above 40ºC, working between 8am to 6om, working to and fro work. Inquiries for better working conditions or wages were dismissed and so were the workers.
Employers had no compassion or empathy for their workers who slaved away in their factories. Because immigrant labor was cheap, it was often exploited by the employer. Workers tried to better the situation by unionizing and have a show of strength with the numbers of workers. The big businesses, used government support to suppress the organization of strikes or work revolts. However, when unions rised up and demanded fair wages, employers would have to consider these demands and negotiations would have to take place.
Even though union members—those who keep their jobs--- get their wages increased and enjoy improved working conditions and benefits, the economic issues that most unions brings to the United States outbalance the positive effects. As the United States competes with the rest of the world, firms struggle when one of their highest costs is directly related to labor. In the article Labor Unions by Morgan Reynolds, the author accurately explains this phenomenon: while higher wages are successfully achieved, they simultaneously reduce the number of jobs available in unionized firms. This occurs because of the basic law of demand: once prices of labor rise, then employers will purchase less of it. Hence such members’ benefits are achieved at the expense of consumers, nonunion workers, already unemployed people, taxpayers, and corporation owners (Reynolds,
The loss of production and or customers due to failure to deliver the employees or products you sell is also an indirect cost that affects the business in a negative way. One indirect cost many of us do not think of is the effect on the companies morale and that can take a toll on others employees especially the ones who are taking the brunt of the work that the separated employee was performing. Turnover and the indirect cost can even include more frequent accidents and higher injuries due to the inexperience of newcomers. If you take all of the cost, the indirect and direct cost into consideration, you can start to see the full scope and calculate the cost of the
Labor Unions and working Conditions. Working conditions were part of the problems that Labor Unions took care of. At the beginning of the industrial Revolution there were not many laws made for working field, without laws or having being told how to have a company/factory kept, owners were too uncaring and paid a little attention to the cleanliness of the business but more to the profit that was being made. Also owners were not paying their employees enough money, and the factories were unsafe. The cause of the problem was that owners were selfish and very greedy.
The benefits of globalization are unevenly distributed, and it causes hardship for poorer countries. The gap is widening between developed and developing countries. About two-thirds of the developing countries remain on the margins of the globalization process and are considered "nonglobalizers." Globalization can result in unemployment as businesses relocate operations to lower-cost areas. Many of these outsourced jobs don't pay decent enough wages to lift workers out of poverty.
The fear of having lower SPH forced employees to make the non selling hours off the record and this resulted in losses for the employees, in both, monetary as well as recognition of extra efforts work. The main cause of this problem is the incentive for the sellers. It causes employees to work off the clock in order to increase their SPH. Another important problem that the employees of Nordstrom confront is the peer pressure. Every employee want be in the shifts that had maximum sales to increase their sales-per-hour, so there was a lot of competition.
The works left by resigned employees would be distributed to the remaining staffs, and they would be burdened by the additional job.This can make them have much pressure and want to leave the workplace more and more. Thus, number of turnover will increase even more badly. * Affect operational efficiency: the organization’s operation is heavily relied on part-time workers, so it is essential to reduce its turnover. When there are not all of them, the operation process will become worst due to insufficient workers. Moreover, when they leave, the organization needs to hire new inexperienced staffs with highly paid and full benefits to fill the responsibilities, this adds up to dollars and cents.