The Theoretical and Historical Perspectives of Unionized Retires Health Care Benefits

The Theoretical and Historical Perspectives of Unionized Retires Health Care Benefits

Human beings are influenced by events that change their lives and conflict comes into play. Americans are living longer, but at a premium cost to former employers. An inter group conflict has arisen from retirees, who were promised health care benefits for their life time and former employers who are slashing and in come cases terminating health care plans for their retirees.

This paper will examine the dialectic logic of organizational conflict and applicable dynamic principles. I will analyze the following theorists: 1) Emile Duskier and Solidarity 2) Max Weber and the Theory of Bureaucracy 3) Abraham Mallow’s Hierarchy Theory of Needs and 4) Karl Marx’s Value and Exchange Theory. I will try to interrelate the theories and connect the conflict from an organizational, economic, norms and values perspective.

One actor represents a group of retired union employees who were promised in writing, that the company would provide health care benefits until their demise. The other actor represents the corporations that are slashing and terminating health care benefits to their former unionized employees.

All of the theories will show commonalities in analyzing the different foundations of the theorists. There exists a power imbalance between the two groups involved in the organizational conflict. The first issue is economics. Corporations have the financial resources and lawyers on retainers to represent their cause in the courts. The retirees are on fixed incomes (scarcity of resources) and have joined in mass to present a class action lawsuit against their respective former employers, the organizations. The corporations are either defunct and filed bankruptcy or are enjoying a healthy profit line. The second issue is the law. During the employees working lifetime, their collective bargaining agents, the unions, defined the rules of the workplace and...