Lesson 5: Lesson 5: Labor Markets: Union Membership and Microeconomic Implications
Duration of Days: 4
Lesson Objective
Students will evaluate the microeconomic effects of labor unions on wage rates, working conditions, and overall firm profitability by analyzing opposing primary source arguments.
Students will construct a evidence-based written argument arguing whether collective bargaining creates market efficiencies or inefficiencies within a labor market.
How is the price of labor (your wage) determined, and what power do individual workers possess to change it?
What are the microeconomic trade-offs when workers organize into labor unions?
Derived Demand,
Collective Bargaining,
Labor Union,
Striking,
Monopsony.
7.Eco.9.a. Describe the role of labor unions, corporations, and non-profits within the market economy of a region. 8.Eco.1.a. Explain how the transition... affected the well-being of individuals, groups, and businesses. MW.Inq.4.a. Construct arguments using precise and knowledgeable claims, with evidence from multiple sources, while acknowledging counterclaims.
This lesson aligns with the SAT Paired Essay prompts. Students read two historical or contemporary passages taking conflicting viewpoints on unionization, assessing the strength of each author’s evidence and rhetoric.
Students will analyze paired texts on labor disputes, identifying rhetorical fallacies and statistical evidence. They will conclude the unit by staging a mock collective bargaining session where students act as union representatives or corporate executives negotiating a contract using supply and demand rules for labor.
The purpose of this lesson is to examine how human labor is valued in a market economy and explore how collective agency changes the balance of economic power. DOK Level 4 (Extended Thinking) as students analyze complex contemporary texts to defend a multi-layered economic position.
Examining recent high-profile labor unionization drives at corporate giants like Starbucks and Amazon, or analyzing strikes led by the United Auto Workers (UAW) and Hollywood writers/actors (WGA/SAG-AFTRA).
Students often assume wage levels depend entirely on a boss's generosity or an employee's hard work, overlooking that wages are deeply tied to the derived demand for the final product and the marginal revenue productivity of that labor.
Provide structural sentence starters and scaffolding frames (e.g., "While proponents argue that unions increase wage rates by... critics point out that the resulting surplus of labor can cause...") to assist students with their analytical writing.
Creation of an advertisement from either employer or employee viewpoint, that recruits for or against unions