Management and Unions
After completing this weeks textbook reading requirement, create a paper in which you describe three pieces of legislation that have been critical in defining the rights of management and unions.
In your paper response the below question:
• Why are the laws you chose important and what role did they play in shaping today's management-union relationship?
The requirements below must be met for your paper to be accepted and graded:
Create a 750 - 1,250 words (approximately 3 - 5 pages) using Microsoft Word in APA style, see example below.
• You must Use font size 12 and 1" margins.
• Include cover page and reference page.
Reading material
Labor Legislation
Introduction
Focuses on unions and the impact of unionization.
• Union - an organization of workers, acting collectively, seeking to promote and protect its mutual interests through collective bargaining.
• Impact of unionization
Only about 12% of the private sector work force is unionized.
Union contract agreements in major industries may still influence wages, benefits and working conditions in non-unionized organizations.
Labour contracts typically stipulate wages, hours, terms and conditions of employment and generally limit management's discretion.
Why Employees Join Unions
Why would employees join unions?
• Higher Wages and Benefits - the power and strength of numbers sometimes help unions obtain higher wages and benefit packages for their members than employees can negotiate individually.
• Greater Job Security - collective bargaining contracts limit management's ability to arbitrarily hire, promote, or fire.
• Influence Over Work Rules - unions represent workers and define channels for complaints and concerns (grievance and arbitration processes).
The Wagner Act
Let's look at the legislation behind the existence of unions.
• Also known as the National Labor Relations Act is a basic bill of rights for unions.
• Guarantees right to organize, bargain collectively, strike, and pursue activities supporting their objectives.
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) determines bargaining units, conducts elections, and prevents or corrects unfair labor practices.
• Unfair labor practices include:
• Interfering with an employee's rights to join a union and to bargain collectively.
• Interfering with the formation or administration of any labor organization.
• Discharging or discriminating against any employee who filed or gave testimony under the act.
• Refusing to bargain collectively with representatives chosen by the employees.
The Taft-Hartley Act
• Also known as the Labor-Management Relations Act.
• Amended Wagner to address employer concerns
• Specified unfair union labor practices including:
• Coercing employees to join the union
• Discriminating against an employee refused union membership.
• Refusing to bargain collectively.
• Engaging in illegal strikes and boycotts.
• Charging excessive or discriminatory fees under shop contracts.
• Obtaining compensation for services not performed.
• Prohibited closed shops, secondary boycotts, and gave the president power to issue a cooling-off period.
• Created Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) to help labor and management settle disputes.
The Railway Labor Act of 1926
• Gave workers in the transportation industry the right to bargain collectively and allowed congressional and presidential intercession in the event of an impasse.
Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959
• Also known as the Labour and Management Reporting and Disclosure Act.
• Made union officials accountable for funds, elections and other business and representational matters.
• Required annual filing of information by unions and by individuals employed by unions.
• Required that all members be allowed to vote by secret ballot.
Unionizing Employees
Employees are unionized after an extensive process called the organizing campaign.
• To move from being unorganized to organized, the following steps occur.
• 30% of employees must sign authorization cards indicating their interest in having an election.
• An election (with secret ballots), known as the representation certification (RC), is held.
• If the union is accepted by a majority of eligible voting workers, the union becomes the workers' legal representative.
• The National Labor Relations Board certifies a union requiring each worker to abide by the negotiated contract.
Most organizations' managements will try to influence workers against voting for union representation.
"Collective Bargaining Basics"
Content
Human Resource Management
Collective Bargaining Basics
Collective Bargaining
Collective bargaining is the negotiation, administration, and interpretation of a written agreement between two parties, at least one of which represents a group that is acting collectively, and covers a specific period of time.
• Objective and Scope of Collective Bargaining
Contracts must be acceptable to management, union representatives and union membership.
Four issues appear consistently in all labor contracts. (The first three are mandated by the Wagner Act)
• Wages
• Hours
• Terms and conditions of employment
• Grievance procedure
The Collective Bargaining Process
There is much preparation when undergoing collective bargaining.
• Preparing to Negotiate
Once a union is certified as the bargaining unit, both union and management begin preparing for the negotiation by:
• Fact-gathering: Includes internal information (e.g., employee performance records, overtime) and external (i.e., data on what similar organizations are doing and the economy).
• Goal-setting: Management decides what it can expect from the negotiation.
• Strategy development: This includes assessing the other side's power and tactics.
• Negotiating at the Bargaining Table
Each side usually begins by publicly demanding more than they are willing to accept.
More realistic assessments and compromises take place behind closed doors.
After oral agreement, a written contract is submitted to the union for ratification.
• Contract Administration
Contract administration involves four stages:
Providing the agreement information to all union members and managers where contract language is clearly explained to all parties.
Implementing the contract to make sure all communicated changes take place and both sides comply with the contract terms.
Interpreting the contract and grievance process by specifying the grievance procedures and grievance rights, if an impasse is reached.
Monitoring activities during the contract period to keep track of how effective the current contract is and any need for changes.
Failure to Reach Agreement
Failure to reach an agreement is difficult for both management and labor.
Strikes versus Lockouts
• Economic strikes occur when labor and management cannot reach agreement before the current contract expires and union leadership instructs its members not to work.
• Wildcat strikes are unauthorized and illegal strikes that occur because of worker dissatisfaction during an existing contract.
• Lockouts occur when organizations deny unionized workers access to their jobs during an impasse.
• Impasse-Resolution Techniques
• Used when labor and management cannot reach agreement.
• Conciliation and mediation involve a third party (Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service) to either keep negotiations going or make non-binding settlement recommendations.
• Fact-finding involves a neutral third-party who conducts a hearing and recommends a non-binding settlement.
• Interest arbitration involves a panel of one neutral, one management and one union representative who hear testimony and render a decision to settle a contract negotiation dispute.
• It is used primarily in public-sector bargaining.
• Decision is binding only if there is unanimous agreement.
Critical Issues for Unions Today
Union membership in the U.S. reached a high of 36% in the early 1940s, but there has been a steady decline since then.
• The reasons for decline in membership include: new concerns of a growing middle-class; greater diversity of the work force; growth of the service sector; diminished financial resources of unions; anti-union pressures resulting from increased competitiveness; layoffs of large numbers of union workers; hiring of replacement workers for strikers.
• Unions are changing some of their organizing tactics and may currently be gaining public support. They also are placing more emphasis on the service sector.
• Labor-Management Cooperation - some unions recognize that they can gain more by cooperating with management rather than fighting.
International Labor Relations
Labor relations practices, and the percent of workers unionized, differ in every country.
• Unions outside of the United States have long histories and were primarily based on "class struggle" which resulted in labour as a political party.
• The governments of each country have their own view of its role in labor relations, so the multinational corporate industrial relations office must be familiar with the separate laws of each.
• Countries differ in their labor relations histories, government involvement, and public acceptance of labor unions.
• The labor relation's function for international companies is more likely to be centralized with the parent company when domestic sales are larger than those overseas.
The European Union - brings together a dozen or more labor relations systems which are being integrated as part of the effort to unify Europe and facilitate trade. Countries wishing to do business in Europe must keep up with changing labor legislation, such as that being agreed upon concerning workers' rights.