Human Relations in the Field

Human Relations

In the field of human resources, employee unions and the labor relations of the company can seriously impact a business's bottom line. For that reason, understanding these issues is crucial. A union can be defined as an organization workers join so they can negotiate on issues affecting the workers, such as salary, benefits, and working conditions. Labor relations consist of the process of management in a company communicating with the other employees. very often the non-management employees belong to a union, tying the two concepts together.

Obviously, when two variables are locked together, any change in one causes a change in the other. For this reason, any change that affects one entity may affect the other. Some of these possible changes include changes in employee relations strategies, policies, and practices.

Some might argue that unions are no longer relevant in the United States. They might point out that companies beyond a certain size are required to offer health insurance and that the country has a minimum wage law, one that historically has been periodically rewritten to reflect gradual inflation. However, other stresses on non-management employees present new problems. Those issues include reduced health care or increased cost without increase in coverage; changes in pension plan policies, and outsourcing, which causes people to lose their jobs through no fault of their own except that their job can be done cheaper in some other country.

Bonior (1997) writes, " If you help a company make money, you deserve a raise. If you get sick, you deserve good health care. If you put in a lifetime of loyal service, you deserve a secure pension. And if you do your job well, then nobody has a right to take your job." While this is what people expect, companies may make decisions that diminish health insurance or make it more expensive; negatively affect pension plans; or outsource jobs. These actions are likely to be challenged by employee unions if they are in place, or they may prompt previously non-union employees to join a union.

Unions cannot prevent outsourcing, and they cannot one-sidedly require that companies neither increase costs for health insurance nor reduce the benefits gained for the same amount of money. However, a union can negotiate for a group of employees in the way that individual employees could not.

But perhaps the best way to view whether or not unions are still relevant, that is, whether they bring anything useful or productive regarding their jobs to their members, one might look at whether publishers will spend money to print books about unions. Quorum Books made that decision in 1998 with its book Managing Tomorrow's High-Performance Unions. This book specifically provides advice to union officials regarding ways to act effectively on the behalf of their members (Roberts, 1998).