Labor relations overview and key concepts

Management

Labor Relations

Collective bargaining entails negotiations between an employer and a group of workers in order to decide upon the conditions of employment. The product of collective bargaining is a collective agreement. Workers are frequently represented in bargaining by a union or other labor association. Collective bargaining is presided over by federal and state statutory laws, administrative agency rules and court decisions (Collective bargaining, n.d.). Rutgers University is an example of a company that has an effective collective bargaining agreement. At Rutgers the collective bargaining agreement has provided for faculty wages that exceed other universities faculty wages by an average of eighteen thousand at the full professor level and fourteen thousand at the Associate Professor level. AAUP at Rutgers has also been victorious in bargaining a good sabbatical policy, enhanced salaries and work rights for lecturers and instructors, and enhanced family leave, affirmative action, and dispute resolution rules (University of Washington chapter American Association of University Professors, n.d.).

2. Three laws that support collective bargaining include the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935, the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 and the Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act in 1959. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has recently initiated a relatively routine legal enforcement action against airplane manufacturer Boeing. The company is currently being scrutinized by the NLRB for its attempts to move airplane production to a non-union South Carolina production line in an alleged retaliation against Boeing's unionized employees in Washington State. The conservative media has accused the NLRB of seeking to ban companies from moving to states with looser organized labor laws. In fact, the NLRB, which is charged with enforcing the 1935 National Labor Relations Act, is attempting to protect the Boeing employees in Washington from an alleged illegal retaliation for their decision to go on strike (Powell, 2011).

In the article Revolution -- A Rock and Roll Epistle, Girard (2011), the author says that few unions and union members that are left in this country must be supported. When Congressman Fred A. Hartley, Jr. drafted the Taft-Hartley Act, he did so with the express purpose of destroying unions in this country. Admittedly there are problems with unions and the union membership in this country, but many of those problems can be traced back directly to the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, and the holding action, that big labor has felt that it has had to fight ever since. The aspect of unions that the corporate oligarchy fears most is the collective action of the working and middle classes to oppose the oligarchs' hegemonic quest for power and wealth. Whether it is bargaining for better conditions and benefits with more of a say in the work place, or opposing the self-serving actions of the plutocracy in our courts, legislatures, and executive offices at both the state and Federal level; unions represent the sole, ongoing, organized opposition to the depredations of the plutocracy in this country.

In the article New DOL Rule Would Require More Disclosure of Employer Consultants, Horowitz (2011), the author discusses how the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL has published a proposal in the Federal Register to expand the circumstances forcing companies to disclose information about their advisers. The Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosure Act of 1959 (LMRDA), stipulates that employers must report to the Department of Labor their business relationships with persons or groups whom they hire to influence employee representation or collective bargaining decisions. But there is also exemption contained within the act. This exemption says that neither employer nor consultant have to file a report if the consultant directly advises the employer. The proposed rule effectively would eliminate this exemption, requiring disclosure for communications that directly or indirectly persuade workers concerning their rights to organize or bargain collectively.

3. Four issues that are potential components of a collective bargaining agreement include: wages, personnel policies and actions, worker rights and responsibilities and employer rights and responsibilities. In March of 2011 Ohio's governor signed into law a boundary on the collective bargaining rights of over three hundred thousand public workers. The Ohio bill bans unions from negotiating wages but not health care, sick time or pension benefits. It also gets rid of automatic pay raises and forbids strikes. It applies to teachers, nurses and many other government workers, as well as police and firefighters. Under the Ohio plan, police and firefighters won't be able to bargain with cities over the quantity of people necessary to be on duty at any one time. This means they can't negotiate the amount of staff in fire trucks or police cars, for example. State lawmakers did make a last-minute change to the bill that permits police and fire officials to bargain for vests, shields and other safety equipment (Ohio governor signs Senate Bill 5 into law, 2011).

4. There are basically five steps to organizing a union. These include: put together an organizing committee, take on an issues program, sign-up a preponderance of workers on union cards, win the union election and negotiate a contract. More than 200 workers at Sacramento City Hall who have not been represented by unions are moving forward with organizing, a move that will give them more clout as budget officials eye their pensions for ways to save. Management support staff and administrative assistants have voted to join the newly formed Sacramento City Exempt Employees Association. Meanwhile, roughly 400 other managers, attorneys and media affairs specialists at City Hall will take part in a secret ballot election in the coming weeks over whether to join that union. More than 30% of those workers have signed authorization cards to move ahead with organizing, but that amount is below the threshold that would have triggered automatic unionization (Lillis, 2011).

5. The National Labor Relations Act bans employers from getting in the way of, restricting, or pressuring workers in the exercise of rights connecting to organizing, shaping, joining or supporting a labor organization for collective bargaining reasons, or from functioning together to advance terms and conditions of employment, or abstaining from any such action. Likewise, labor organizations may not hold back or intimidate workers in the exercise of these rights (Employer/Union Rights and Obligations, n.d.).

In today's way of the Internet it is thought to be a good source of information for employers when they go to make hiring and firing decisions. But depending on how the information is obtained and for what purpose this could be a violation of the law. In November 2010, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) opened an unfair labor practice action against an employer for firing an employee who posted personal negative remarks about her supervisor on Facebook. The NLRB argues that the employer's termination was illegal under the National Labor Relations Act in that it was based on a policy that banned workers from engaging in sheltered concerted activities like discussing the terms and conditions of their place of work with each other (Legal issues using social media in hiring and firing, 2011).

Another example of unfair labor practices can be seen in regards to Boeing. In April of this year the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), charged the airline manufacturer Boeing with illegal measures intrinsically destructive of the rights assured workers after Boeing decided to open a new production line for its 787 Dreamliner aircraft in North Charleston, South Carolina, instead of locating the plan near its existing Dreamliner production facility in Everett, Washington. According to the government Boeing is punishing the union for going on strike and seeking to dampen future walkouts. If the NLRB is successful, Boeing would have to close its new South Carolina facility and operate its second line of 787 Dreamliner aircraft assembly manufacture in the State of Washington. This case has yet to be decided by the court (Root, 2011).

6. An arbitrator has a quasi-judicial function, acting on evidence and submissions that are presented to them by the parties who cannot agree. Because of this arbitrators have immunity from being sued. An arbitrator is given wide and important powers by statute relating to procedural issues. For example, they may order revelation of documents and may make authoritative orders potentially resulting in the discharge of a claim in the event of failure to obey any order. They also have statutory power to award costs (Furber, 2011).

Arbitrators can be used in many different industries and for many different reasons. One example is in that of the teachers in Philadelphia. At the end of June this year teachers at the Philadelphia Federation of Teachers office became very worried about whether they would be spared from the layoffs that were to go into effect in early July. Lawyers for the PFT and the district agreed to allow an arbitrator to decide how teacher layoffs would be conducted. In this case all layoffs were put on hold until the arbitrator could make their decision (Arbitrator to have role in teacher layoffs, 2011).

7. Once a union has been certified, the parties are under a duty to meet and discuss at reasonable times and partake in good faith negotiations. Collective bargaining is made up of negotiations between an employer and a group of workers that decide the conditions of employment. Frequently workers are represented in the bargaining by a union or other labor association. The outcome of collective bargaining procedure comes in the form of a collective bargaining agreement (CBA). Collective agreements may be in the shape of procedural agreements or substantive agreements. Procedural agreements have to do with the association between workers and management and the procedures to be put into place for settling individual or group disagreements. This generally includes procedures in regards to individual grievances, disputes and discipline. Commonly, procedural agreements are put into the businesses rule book which supplies information as to the general terms and conditions of employment and rules of behavior that apply (Collective Bargaining Process, 2007).