Labor Unions: A Public Health Institution
  

 This article reviews how using the social-ecological framework in underlying inequalities and social determinants of health. With steady decline in union membership, mainstream media often elects to discuss unions as a relic of the past. We have seen how many political and government figures try to erase them from our collective memory. By using the social-ecological models as a framework for analysis, these efforts shows how unions have helped create healthier workers, workplaces, and communities. Senator John F. Kennedy’s statement about the union is mentioned on how the union has “Brought Justice and democracy to the shop floor”.

 Through changes in our nation social, political, and economic landscape, through wars and depressions, workers have risked their lives to improve living and working conditions. The rise of corporate political-organizing, caused a decline among the unions growth. A public health perspective, within the context of the social-ecological framework, plays a critical role in promoting the health of workers and the broader communities of which they are part. Public health theory provides the mechanisms by which unions build healthy workplaces and support healthy workers. Like public health, the socioecological framework cannot be separated from the power relationships of the community and broader society.
 In conclusion: Through the ways unions are organized and operate, there remains of course, room for improvement including with regard to continued, albeit lessened gender in equities in union leadership. Across the literature, union membership can be found to have a positive effect on wages. By creating a higher prevailing wage, unions raise the income for nonunion workers as well. Wages are a major pathway through which unions contribute to improved health. Unions, are heavily focused on worker health and safety, they have proven valuable (albeit sometimes less visible) partners in broader public health campaigns. 
Work Cited
Skurzynski G. Sweat and Blood: a History of U.S. Labor Unions. Minneapolis, MN: Twenty-First Century Books; 2009.
Cogswell D. “Unions for Beginners” Hanover, NHL Steer forth Press; 2012.