Labor Unions And Nursing Essays - Trade Unions In The United States

Labor Unions And Nursing The American Labor movement in the United States has a history dating back to the beginnings of the industrial revolution. Its existence is due to poor working conditions and exploitation during the beginning of that time. Labor unions have had a long history of using their most powerful weapon, strikes, to fight their battles. Even today, with the diminishing numbers of union members, strikes appear in the news sporadically. History of Labor Unions The first strike is thought to be by printers in Philadelphia in 1786 (Maidment, 1997). Working conditions, pay and benefits were so poor, leaders in the southern United States used them to justify slavery. Their contention was that slaves were treated better than the workers were in the North. (Maidment, 1997) Unions attempt to rectify poor working conditions, pay and benefits through collective bargaining. An individual has very little power when negotiating with an employer, however many individuals, collectively have the power to achieve results through bargaining and negotiating. The ultimate bargaining tool that the collective bargaining unit has is the right to strike. Strikes The United States has the most violent and bloodiest labor history of any industrialized country (Foner, Garraty, 1991). In 1850, police killed two New York tailors while attempting to disperse strikers. These were the first of over seven hundred documented caused by strike-related violence. In 1913, National Guardsmen attacked striking Colorado miners known as the Ludlow Massacre. In 1937, police killed Ten Chicago steelworkers during a strike, which came to be known as the Memorial Day Massacre. More commonly, though, strike related deaths are attributed to lessor known confrontations. Strikes in the United States are generally linked to the business cycle. Strikes are more common when unemployment is low with the lowest strike rate being during the Great Depression. The first American strikes in the late 1700's and early 1800's were by shoemakers, printers, and carpenters led by their trade societies and were generally effective because of the limited labor pool skilled in those trades. The strikers simply refused to work until their pay demands were met. The strikes were generally short, peaceful and successful. Successful litigation by employers inhibited the spread of these strikes and the trade societies. After an economic upturn in the 1820s, strike activity was revived. Throughout the 1800s, strike activity continued to wax and wane based on economic conditions. Women participated in strikes as early as the 1820s. After the Civil War, the labor movement started to more closely resemble today's labor movement. In order to discourage strikes, instead of unilaterally setting wages and striking, unions started negotiating with employers, addressing wages, work rules, hours and grievances. This method of ?arbitration? led to binding contracts between the collective bargaining units and the employers. The Knights of Labor, the most important labor organization of the 1800s, discouraged strikes. Mediation Union leaders, particularly those in the craft unions affiliated with the American Federation of Labor (AFL), continued to question the efficacy of strikes in the early 1900s. Instead of strikes, the craft unions turned to private mediation groups to help settle disputes. In mediation, ?the third party assists the negotiators in their discussions and also suggests settlement proposals.? (Mathis, Jackson, 2000) An expansion of the union movement was created by four years of depression in the 1930s. The violent strikes by autoworkers, truckers, longshoremen and textile workers in 1934 sparked the passage of the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). The NLRA is the law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector. It guarantees the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with employers. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) is an independent federal agency created by Congress, which administers the NLRA. Under the direction of the NLRB, strikes continued in the 1940s (after WWII) and while some were very long, most were peaceful. The NLRB saw to it that employers who were legally obligated to bargain with unions, did so. In addition, strikers were given legal protection. In the 1950s the number of strikes dropped sharply, as the relationships between unions and employers became more predictable. The 1960s saw a rise in public employee strikes (teachers, transit workers and other local government workers) and in 1970,

Beginning a Sentence with And or But

Beginning a Sentence with And or But Beginning a Sentence with And or But Beginning a Sentence with And or But By Maeve Maddox Several opinions about what is permissible in writing have acquired an almost religious authority with some English speakers. One of these opinions is that beginning a sentence with the coordinating conjunctions and and but is an unpardonable breach of usage. Here are some typical reader attitudes: I almost fainted when I read [a post] about the acceptability of beginning sentences with â€Å"and† or â€Å"but†. [How can anyone] justify the use of conjunctions to begin a sentence? It simply drives me crazy! Writers of English have been beginning sentences with and as long as English has been written. The Venerable Bede (672-735) did it. King Alfred (849-899) did it. You’ll also find examples in Swift (1667-1745), Johnson (1709-1784), Austen (1775-1817), Dickens (1812-1870), Orwell (1903-1950), and Roth (1933-). According to The Chicago Manual of Style, the belief that beginning a sentence with and, but, or so is an error â€Å"has no historical or grammatical foundation.† Not only that, but â€Å"a substantial percentage (often as many as 10 percent) of the sentences in first-rate writing begin with conjunctions. It has been so for centuries, and even the most conservative grammarians have followed this practice† (CMOS 5.206). Authors capable of â€Å"first-rate writing† are one matter. Teachers, on the other hand (and editors working with grammatically challenged adults) are wise to advise against it. Writing is a craft. Every craft demands that beginners learn in stages. A rule against beginning a sentence with a conjunction has pedagogical usefulness. Beginning writers benefit from being guided. They don’t need to have all the rules and exceptions dumped on them at the outset. My London headmistress forbade the use of semicolons. She said that semicolons could wait until students mastered the use of commas and periods. Her rule was intended to be transitional. Beginning writers overuse the conjunction and. Giving inexperienced writers permission to begin sentences with and is asking for trouble. Here, for example, is an excerpt from the writing of nine-year-old Daisy Ashford: Mr Salteena had dark short hair and mustache and whiskers which were very black and twisty. He was middle sized and he had very pale blue eyes With this style of writing, a rule against beginning a sentence with and can only be a blessing. In my teaching days, I forbade students to begin a sentence with because, not because I didn’t know about complex sentences, but because inexperienced writers tend to begin sentences with because and never get to a main clause. A practice that exacerbates this tendency in high school students is accepting sentence fragments as answers to essay questions on tests. For example: Question: Why did Silas put Eppie in the coal hole? Answer: Because she kept wandering away. Teachers of every subject could contribute to a higher standard of student writing by requiring students to rephrase the question in the answer: Question: Why did Silas put Eppie in the coal hole? Answer: Silas put Eppie in the coal hole because she kept wandering away. When students have learned to distinguish between a main clause and a dependent clause, they can progress to the use of because to introduce a subordinate clause. When they have learned to control their use of coordinating conjunctions, they can use them at the beginning of a sentence from time to time. Here are two examples from the work of writers known for â€Å"first-rate writing†: Besides, another purpose of the enlarged armywas to minimize the ever-present possibility of sedition. And with this purpose once again in mind, [Septimus Severus] took a number of steps to make the officers of the legions a privileged class and tie them firmly to his own person. –Michael Grant, History of Rome. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. –George Orwell, Shooting an Elephant Like any stylistic device, beginning a sentence with and or but may be overused or used incorrectly. A common fault with but is to use it where and is required. But is an â€Å"adversative conjunction.† It introduces a contrast. Some writers tend to begin a sentence with but when and is the appropriate choice. Here’s a revision suggestion from The Chicago Manual of Style: Evaluate the contrasting force of the but in question, and see whether the needed word is really and; if and can be substituted, then but is almost certainly the wrong word. Bottom line: Beginning a sentence with and or but is a common stylistic device used in English by the best writers of every century. Writers who dislike the device are free to avoid it. Forbidding it to inexperienced writers has pedagogical value, but condemning it out of hand is to set a fetish above English idiom. Want to improve your English in five minutes a day? Get a subscription and start receiving our writing tips and exercises daily! Keep learning! Browse the Style category, check our popular posts, or choose a related post below:What Is Irony? (With Examples)Homogeneous vs. Heterogeneous15 Idioms for Periods of Time