What's At Stake When A Worker's Union Forms?

As a boss running your own small business, you’re going to want to make sure your employees feel motivated, heard and respected. Workplace stagnation and resentment can quickly lead to revolt. If your business is still in its early stages, this can prove to have disastrous effects. This is where [workers compensation insurance](https://coverhound.com/business-insurance) comes in to save the day; when you support your staff, you support your business.

Reasons Employees Join Unions

Labor unions have a [long history](https://www.unionplus.org/about/labor-unions/history-origin) in the American workforce. Having had enough ill treatment (including low wages and poor working conditions), workers of every stripe have banded together to provide support, safety and assurance to each other and to ensure that those who come after do not face the same discrimination or mistreatment by their employers.

The Huffington Post reports that there are [seven reasons](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-macaray/labor-union-membership_b_973038.html) to join a workers union, but the main three reasons people join are:

Money: Positions protected by a union generally pay more than non-union. The Huffington Post writes that union earnings are 10-20 percent higher than non-union earnings.  

Benefits: Not all jobs offer insurance, pensions or a retirement plan. As for the companies that do, they generally do not raise salaries or expand insurance benefits until their hand is forced. Workers unions negotiate with the company for better benefits, and they often win.

Security: If a manager only seeks to fire an employee because they do not like said employee, not because the employee is producing poor work or is a nuisance in the workplace, it’s not enough for contract termination. A workers union membership guarantees employees a fair shake in the workplace against managers who try to leverage their power negatively.

Will it Affect Your Business?  

By now you’re probably asking, “what does this have to do with my business?” It has everything to do with your business. If your staff believes that they are not getting the training, assistance or salary that they deserve and that will help them to perform their job well, they will unionize.

When employees unionize, one of their first courses of action is to hold a protest. If you have a line of employees picketing outside of your establishment, your business’s reputation is going to come under fire. This is why it’s vital to support your staff from the beginning, and one way of doing that is by offering workers compensation.

Workers compensation is a [type of insurance](http://legal-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Workers%27+Compensation) that offers medical benefits and wage replacement to employees who are hurt on the job. This means that if they are performing a service for a client or the attending management and suffer injury as result, they will be taken care of until they are able to return to work. What is another bonus of offering workers comp. to your employees? They can’t sue you. Once your employees have signed on for workers comp. benefits, they revoke their right to sue your company.

In getting workers compensation insurance, you aren’t just protecting your employees, you’re protecting your business. [Click here](https://coverhound.com/business-insurance) to find a workers comp. policy that fits in your budget.