1B Vocabulary
1-D
2-C
3-B
4-F
5-A
6-E
1C Listening
1 Unions are a necesasary voice for the interests of workers.
2 In countries like South Korea or Poland,or South Africa,trade unions have played an enormous dynamic political and economic role.
3 As long as employees have needs that need to be represented they'll need trade unions.
4 Sensible employers, that want effective social peace and want also a team-working and dynamic economy , should be encouraging trade unions.
5 In some of the most successful economies, a strong trade presence is recognized by employers and accepted as a partner by government.
2C Listening
1 manual workers
2 trade union
3 to consult
4 adversary
5 uneconomic
6 tirany
7 deregulation
8 public sector
9 confrontational
10 conglomerate
Who Needs Unions ?
Manual an service industry workers are often organized in labour unions,which attempt to ensure fair wages,reasonable working hours and safe working conditions for their members. British unions are known as trade unions because,as in Germany, they are largely organized according to trade or skill: there is an engineer's union, an elecricians' union, a train-drivers' union , and so on. In other countries , including France and Italy, unions are largely political: workers in different industries join unions with a particular political position.
Industrial relations tend to be better in coutries,industries and companies where communications are good,i.e. where management consults workers on matters that will concern them,where neither side treats the other as an adversary,and when unions do not insist upon the preservation of completely uneconomic jobs and working practices. Although some employers and managers (and political parties) oppose the very existence of unions - even though, like doctors,lawyers,accountants, and so on,they might themselves belong to a professional association with similar basic aims- many management theorists stress the necessity of unions. In the 1970s,Peter Drucker wrote that "Management is and has to be a power.Any power needs restraint and control - or else it becomes tyranny. The union serves an essential function in indusrial society."Yet one of the chief objectives of right-wing governments in the 1980s ( e.g. in Britain and the USA ) was to diminish the power of trade unions , and to deregulate labour markets in acordance with the ideal of free markets.
Asa result of deregulation,working conditions in many industrial in many countries have worsened,leading tj the creation of a great many casual , part-time,unskilled jobs done by non-inionized workers. France,for example, has the lowest number of workers in trade unions in the industrialized world. The unions now represent less than 10 % of the French work force , and most of those are in the public sector. The vast majority of French workers seem to have rejected the confrontational politics of the main uinions, notably the communist-controlled CGT. Consequently,when the largely non-unionized French lorry drivers blocked all the motorways in the summer of 1992,sriking over the introduction of a new driver's license with a penalty-point system ( and over their working conditions in general), the French government found no one to negotiate with.
In fact, a number of politicians and bussiness leaders are beginning to regret the weakness of unions . some managers, including Antoine Riboud, the former head of the huge Danone food conglomerate, actively encourage unionization because they insist that a big company needs someone to represent and articulate the needs og the employees and act as a social partner to the emplyer. But there is clearly a problem if workers believe that the unions are incapable of doing this, and choose not to join them.
*Peter Drucker: An Introductory of Management
Author: Kovalenko Andrew
