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Security Management
home page > Unit 10: Labor Relations
Collective bargaining (continued)
Two approaches to negotiation:
- "Distributive, " which is a win-lose strategy, in which each party's goals are adversarial, and directly conflict with the other's.
- "Cooperative," or integrative approach, define or determine common problems and use strategies such as compromise and collaboration to achieve them. This can serve both union's and employee's long-term interests and promote stability and trust.
If either party doesn't bargain in good faith, either can file complaint with NLRB, which must then investigate, and, if substantiated, enjoin the party from engaging in them.
In some states, the union can negotiate an "agency-shop" clause, that requires all employees to pay union dues and work under the negotiated union contract, although it doesn't require the employees to be members.
Grievances
One of the aspects of collective bargaining is to give rights
that might otherwise not be found in the workplace: that includes
the grievance clause, which gives workers a right to be heard
regarding workplace conditions. About 95% of contracts have some
sort of workplace rights clause.
A neutral 3rd party can arbitrate how a clause is interpreted.
Typically, grievances regard either a new issue that may have emerged since the contract and thus wouldn't be covered by it, or a managerial practice that employees feel violates the contract conditions. Management also has grievance protections under the contract, to cover areas where they feel the union violates the agreement.
Steps in the process:
- notify union steward of the perceived wrong
- depending on the behavior of the employee and supervisor, steward may try to resolve the issue informally by discussing with supervisor, or may help employee file formal written grievance. Steward can file grievance him or herself in the name of the union.
- next step in a grievance process may be an oral discussion with the immediate supervisor.
- if not resolved, forwarded to the company administrator
last stage in most grievance processes (if one has been negotiated as part of the collective bargaining agreement) is an arbitration process: mutually selected, impartial arbitrator settles dispute, violation or perceived violation. The parties voluntarily agree to follow the arbitrator's decision, who bases decision on facts, evidence, and arguments. These hearings require deadlines for submissions and selection of arbitrator. Arbitrator usually selected from a variety of lists of approved arbitrators. Some parties actually have permanent arbitrators. The Supreme Court has actually decided in a number of cases that arbitration has been given precedence over judicial resolution, in part because a judicial ruling would undermine the arbitration process. "Thus, arbitration awards cannot be overturned 'as long as it [the arbitration award] draws its essence from the collective bargaining agreement.'"