An industrial society, especially one as centralized and concentrated as that of Britain, is heavily dependent on certain essent

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问题     An industrial society, especially one as centralized and concentrated as that of Britain, is heavily dependent on certain essential services; for instance, electricity supply water, rail and road transport, the harbours. The area of dependency has widened to include removing rubbish, hospital and ambulance services, and, as the economy develops, central computer and information services as well. If any of these services ceases to operate, the whole economic system is in danger.
    It is this interdependency of the economic system which makes the power of trade unions such an important issue. Single trade unions have the ability to cut off many countries’ economic blood supply. This can happen more easily in Britain than in some other countries, in part because the labour force is highly organized. About 55% of Britain workers belong to unions, compared to under a quarter in the United States. For historical reasons, Britain’s unions have tended to develop along trade and occupational lines, rather than on an industry-by-industry basis, which makes a wages policy, democracy in industry and the improvement of procedures for fixing wage levels difficult to achieve.
    There are considerable strains and tensions in the trade union movement, some of them arising from their outdated and inefficient structure. Some unions have not many members because of industrial changes. Others are involved in arguments about who should represent workers in new trades. Unions for skilled trades are separate from general unions, which means that different levels of wages for certain jobs are often a source of bad feeling between unions. In traditional trades which are being pushed out of existence by advancing technologies, unions can fight for their members’ disappearing jobs to the point where the jobs of other unions’ members are threatened or destroyed. The printings of newspapers both in the United States and in Britain have frequently been halted by the efforts of printers to hold on to their traditional highly-paid jobs.
    Trade unions have problems of internal communication just as managers in companies do, problems which multiply in very large unions or in those which bring workers in very different industries together into a single general union. Some trade union officials have to be re-elected regularly; others are elected, or even appointed, for life. Trade union officials have to work with a system of shop stewards in many unions, "shop stewards" being workers elected by other workers as their representatives at factory or works level.

选项 A、Because its economy is very interdependent.
B、Because unions have been established a long time.
C、Because there are more unions in Britain than elsewhere.
D、Because there are many essential services.

答案A

解析 因为文章的第二段提到了this interdependency of the economic system的有关内容。文章没有说到成立时间的长短,而英国的工会组织有很多成员,并不意味着比其他国家的多。"there are many essential services"本身是对的,但并不是问题的答案。
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