Trade Unions -Meaning and Definitions
Meaning
Trade unions are a major component of the modern industrial relations system. Trade unions are an essential feature of industry in every country. Trade unions emerged as a reaction to the factory system and capitalize society. In the early stage of industrialization, working class in eh absence of legal protection felt exploited at the hands of employers. Workers joined hands to protect their interests through collective action. A trade union is, thus an organized expression of the needs, aspirations and attitudes of the working class. All trade unions have objectives or goals to achieve, which are contained in their constitution and each has its own strategy to reach those goals.
Definitions
According to Sidney and Beatric Webb
A trade union is a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining and improving the conditions of their working lives.
According to Dale Yoder
A trade union is a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives.
According to Lester
Trade union is an association of employees designed primarily to maintain or improve the conditions of employment of its members.
According to G.D.H. Cole
A trade union means an association of workers in one or more occupations, an association carried on mainly for the purpose of protecting and advancing the member’s economic interests in connection with their daily work.
According to V.V. Giri
Trade union is such an organization which is created voluntarily on the basis of collective strength to secure the interest of workers.
According to S.D. Punekar
A trade union is a monopolistic combination of wage earners who as individual producers are complementary to one another but who stand to employers in a relation of dependence for the sale of their labour and production, and that the general purpose of association is in view of that dependence to strength their power to bargain with the employers or bargaining collectively.
According to British Trade Union Act
A trade union is a combination with the main objective of regulating the relation between workmen and masters or between workmen and workmen or between masters and masters for imposing of restrictive conditions on the conduct of any trade or business and also provision to members.
According to Indian Trade Union Act, 1926
A trade union is any combination, whether temporary or permanent, formed primarily for the purpose of regulating the relations between workmen and the employers, or between workmen and workmen, between employers and employers, or for imposing restrictive conditions on the conduct of any trade or business, and includes any federation of two or more trade unions.