Labor Unions
These are organizations with membership drawn from the labor force of a particular economy and charged with the responsibility of representing the interests of its members in labor management issues within the work environment. Labor unions can also be specific thereby representing workers employed in various in specific trades and occupations such as communications workers for instance journalists, health care professionals including nurses and doctors, stage and theatrical employees including actors, and employees in the hospitality industry that include chefs, waiters among others. Labor unions are hierarchically organized stating with the international union, which is the highest level of the organization; this is then followed at a lower level by district councils found in the United States in every state. These council's jurisdictions cover areas such as towns and cities. It is important to note that union locals represent workers at their individual work areas.
Labor Relations
This is a term, just as labor-management is used to define the relationship or activities that exist between unions and employers of union members. Well established organizations have in place labor relations or employee relations specialists charged with the responsibility to intervene between labor union and the management. In smaller organizations, it is most likely that this relationship is handled by a knowledgeable human resource manger or even an attorney. Labor relations or management may include activities such as contract negotiations, a process that determines a final agreement between employee and the management (Stim, 2013). Employee grievances are also an important issues handled as part of labor relations by the unions. As Hirschman (1970) suggests, there are many workers, work environment as well as market factors that influence the likelyhood of grievience filling some of which include lack of compensation...
Nonetheless, Bin Daud, Yahya, Mohd, and Mohd Noor (2011), reveal that extraversion negatively and significantly impacts the choice of handling grievances.
Impact on Organizations
Labor unions have an impact on the operations of organizations and this impact varies according to nature of relationship between union officials and the management of different organizations. In firms that employ trades people and skilled labor, there is most likely to be a conducive relationship between labor and management since the workers have been accustomed to union officials within the trade. Moreover, these firms are also most likely to be more competitive as they continually evaluate their labor relations strategies, such firms are concern about the impact of "union organizing and bargaining on their productivity, profits, and stock performance" (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2011). Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, and Wright, (2011) further explain that there is mostlikely to be a positive influence on productivity through skillful labor managenemt as seen in the relationship beteen Harley-Davidson and the International Association of Machinists as well as the Aerospace Workers that is responsible for sustained high productivity.
In other organizations, there seem to be a rough relationship between the management and the labor unions and more so during contract negotiations. Byrnes (2012) explains that adversarial relationship between labor unions and organization's management that lucks motivation and the necessary skills to for restortion into a cooperative relationship, is most likely to result in organization's low productivity. Nonetheless, employee tension, absenteeism, heightened employee grievances, increased employees turnover as well as diminished loyalty to the organization among others…
