Questions on Norma Rae

1. The barrier that the TWUA had to overcome to successfully

organize the workers at the O.P. Henley Plant is getting the
workers attention and having them take the flyers out to people.
Another barrier of the TWUA was trying to get workers to come
to the union meetings and making sure that the managers at the
plant was putting up the union notices on the bulletin board.
Also, TWUA had to get the employees to not have such a racist
outlook on African-Americans joining the union and that starting
a union in the South will take a longer time than it does up north.
2. Factors affecting the relative bargaining power of the
management of the plant ve
3. The tactics used by the union to organize the plant was that they
had union meetings at the church. Also, the union would hand
out flyers or even buttons to get attention from the employees to
join. The union would also have some of the plants workers do
union work outside of the plant. The tactics used by
management to keep the plant union free was hiding union
notices. Also, management put employees on a stretch-out,
longer work hours and half the pay. Employees began to despise
the union, and some left the union because they needed the
money from the plant. The union also tried to keep the plant
union-free by putting a racial letter saying that black people were
going to run the unions, which very much upset the white plant
employees. I think the union could have improved on their tactics
by having more than one representative. Reuben was a great
asset but it took him a long time to organize the union and he
wasnt able to reach to all of the employees. Also, if I was the
union, the lawyers should have been there automatically from
when the plant was hiding the union notices. I think the plant
could have been more effective if they just made weekly
meetings, in which they talked about the negatives of unions,
such as higher cost to firms and lower employment rates.
4. Since the movie came from a pro-union perspective, it did not
really address the opposing views of a union. Although, the
movie addressed the positives of a union, it did not show the
negatives of being apart of a union either. Moreover, the
opposing view that the movie did not address is how unions can
impose work rules that decrease efficiency or productivity,
unions have strikes that can lower income, the higher the wage
in the union sector causes workers to be displaced in the
nonunion sector, and that there are labor misallocations.

5.
Chapter 12
7. a) The existence of national, state, and city parks will increase the
labor demand in the recreational vehicle industry. This occurs because
the parks will increase the demand for recreational vehicles, which
then increases the demand for labor. Essentially the park and
recreational vehicles are complements.
b) The existence of national, state, and city parks will reduce the
derived demand for workers who help produce a private good. Thus,
the demand for workers who build and maintain equipment for private
recreational theme parks will decrease because it is a substitute to
parks.
c) The existence of national, state, and city parks may reduce
individual and overall labor supply in the economy. This would occur
because the more closely parks are substitutable for private goods
(amusement parks), the greater the reduction in labor supply.
However, the more complementary the parks are to work, the less the
reduction in labor supply.
Chapter 13
2.