Week 4 Discussion Labor relations
Chapter 13
What Should Labor Relations Do?
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Learning Objectives
Outline alternative directions for union strategies in the 21st century.
Describe alternative directions for corporate behaviors in the 21st century.
Identify alternative directions for labor relations public policies in the 21st century.
Understand strategic management and leadership issues pertaining to labor relations for managers and union leaders in the 21st century.
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Labor Relations Under Fire
Proponents of free markets and HRM see unions as interfering with markets and managers.
Advocates of employment relationship flexibility criticize union policies as restrictive barriers to competitiveness.
Proponents of greater labor–management cooperation attack United States labor law as adversarial and overly restrictive.
Globalization, financialization, and the need to create high-performance workplaces are major strains.
Organized labor believes that United States labor law is weak and fails to prevent union busting.
Labor activists criticize the conservatism of the traditional business unionism approach of United States unions.
So what directions should labor, employers, and law take?
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Directions for United States Labor Unionism
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Possibilities for 21st-Century Labor Unions 1
Table divided into four columns summarizes the range of key possibilities for 21st-century labor unions. The column headers are: Possibilities; unions as; emphases; and concerns.
| Possibilities | Unions As . . . | Emphases | Concerns |
| Solidarity unionism | Powerful solidarity alliances | Strong worker advocacy in the workplace through bargaining backed up by strikes, and solidarity across workplaces. | More adversarial than cooperative. How to achieve competitiveness and quality? What about the unorganized? |
| Social movement unionism | Community and political activists | Social and political militancy and activism; alliances with community groups. | What about workers’ workplace concerns? |
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Possibilities for 21st-Century Labor Unions 2
Table divided into four columns summarizes the range of key possibilities for 21st-century labor unions. The column headers are: Possibilities; unions as; emphases; and concerns.
| Possibilities | Unions As . . . | Emphases | Concerns |
| Employee ownership unionism | Employee owners | Control over employment conditions through employee ownership of companies. | Is employee ownership efficient? How are business decisions made? Is it too risky for employees when their savings are invested in their company? |
| Efficiency-enhancing unionism | Productivity and cooperation enhancers | Concern with establishing participatory structures to serve competitiveness and quality. Rewards based on performance; training initiatives. | What is the source of employee power? Is there solidarity across workplaces? Who’s looking out for employee interests? |
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Possibilities for 21st-Century Labor Unions 3
Table divided into four columns summarizes the range of key possibilities for 21st-century labor unions. The column headers are: Possibilities; unions as; emphases; and concerns.
| Possibilities | Unions As . . . | Emphases | Concerns |
| Employee empowerment unionism | Individual empowerment supporters | Bargaining for procedures that empower individual decision making; inclusion of procedural safeguards and minimum standards. | What is the source of employee power? Is there solidarity across workplaces? |
| Associational unionism | Loose networks of professional associations | Flexible, multiple forms of representation and networks based on multiple concerns. More than just bargaining. No exclusive representation. | What is the source of employee power? |
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Directions for Corporate Governance or Norms
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Corporate Responsibility?
The maximizing shareholder value perspective
Corporations have the responsibility to serve their shareholders (owners).
They serve society by providing valued goods and services based on what the market will bear.
A broader alternative (corporate social responsibility)
Corporations are social, not purely private, institutions.
Receive benefits from society; in return, have an obligation to serve the public interest.
Need to recognize inherent value of workers, communities, and the environment.
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Shareholder versus Stakeholder Model
The maximizing shareholder value perspective
For both economic and legal reasons, shareholders are embraced as the key group in the corporation.
Corporate actions should support maximizing shareholders’ investments.
The stakeholder perspective
All stakeholders, employees, customers, suppliers, local communities, and others in addition to shareholders or owners, are sufficiently affected by corporate actions to deserve consideration in corporate decision making.
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Alternative Directions for the Public Sector 1
Paralleling the private sector and public policy trends emphasizing free markets, financial incentives, and financial results
“New Public Management” movement to bring in free market ideas and private-sector management tools.
Decentralization, competition among service providers, privatization, outsourcing, and financial incentives.
Some have criticized New Public Management and fiscal austerity for their narrow and short-run economic objects
Instead advocate for approaches that take a broader view of the role of the public sector in promoting diverse pubic values.
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Alternative Directions for the Public Sector 2
Not only efficiency, but also values related to democracy.
So just as in the private sector, those responsible for shaping, leading and paying for a government service should be thinking about the values and norms that are desired and the implications for strategy and practice
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Directions for United States Labor Law
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Strengthening the N L R A: Common Reform Proposals 1
Remedial Reforms
Create strict timetables for unfair labor practice processing to prevent “justice delayed being justice denied”.
Penalize violators with fines, such as triple back pay for illegal firings.
Provide immediate reinstatement of illegally fired workers.
Allow bargaining orders when an employer’s illegal actions prevent a union from obtaining majority support.
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Strengthening the N L R A: Common Reform Proposals 2
Substantive Reforms
Expand coverage to include contingent employees, independent contractors, and supervisors.
Provide equal access to employees by unions and managers during organizing drives. Union organizers should be able to give a captive audience speech if management does.
Limit management and union campaigning to prohibit lies and to restrict statements regarding negative consequences of union organizing.
Require card check or instant elections so that certification elections are avoided or occur quickly to lessen campaigning and selective discharges. Or, require periodic elections in all workplaces without needing a showing of interest.
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Strengthening the N L R A: Common Reform Proposals 3
Require arbitration of first contracts if bargaining fails to produce a contract for a newly organized unit.
Broaden the scope of mandatory bargaining items to include plant closures, subcontracting, introduction of new technology, and other issues that directly affect working conditions and job security.
Ban permanent strike replacements so that companies can use temporary workers during a strike, but strikers will not lose their jobs.
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Deregulating the N L R A 1
In neoliberal thinking, monopolies, laws, and other barriers to competition are bad
From this perspective, unions are labor market monopolies.
The NLRA reduces aggregate welfare by:
Protecting monopoly unions.
Forcing unwilling employers to bargain with them.
Law should not compel action because it:
Interferes with free markets.
Encroaches on individual freedoms.
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Deregulating the N L R A 2
So favor replacing the N L R A with a voluntarist system (recall the traditional U K system).
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Loosening the N L R A
A compromise position between strengthening and deregulating the N L R A
Focuses on the N L R A’s section 8 (a) (2) restriction on company-dominated labor organizations
Could loosen this to allow labor–management committees that do not seek to negotiate collective bargaining agreements.
Another possibility: allow employee committees that monitor compliance with employment laws (as is already the case for health and safety committees in numerous states).
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Transforming the N L R A 1
Arguments for transforming the N L R A are based on the belief that the N L R A framework is obsolete
Proponents believe there is a mismatch between the assumptions of the New Deal industrial relations system and the world of work in the 21st century.
Technological change, demographic change, organizational change, etcetera.
Also, belief that NLRA creates Adversarialism: A culture of conflict.
Point toward traditional distributive negotiations that revolve around a power struggle.
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Transforming the N L R A 2
A complete overhaul of labor law is therefore necessary
Modifications are not enough.
But transform, not deregulate, because of IR assumptions of need for checks and balances on free markets
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Transforming the N L R A 3
Proposals to transform United States labor law:
Provide legal support for members-only unions.
Unions that only have the support of some workers, not a majority.
Members-only bargaining or consultation rights.
Voluntary or mandatory works councils.
Codetermination, consultation, and information rights.
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Strategic Roles of Managers and Union Leaders
Table divided into four columns summarizes the strategic roles of managers and union leaders. The column headers are: Role; major focus; labor relations managerial issues; and union leader issues.
| Role | Major Focus | Labor Relations Managerial Issues | Union Leader Issues |
| Builder | Internal Fit or Coherence | Creating processes for negotiating and administering contracts that fit with other organizational needs | Building internal competencies like leadership and strategic planning skills to support organizing, bargaining, and other core activities; creating democratic structures |
| Change Partner | External Fit or Responsiveness | Shaping contracts and labor-management partnerships that promote competitiveness in a global economy | Creating strategies for representing workers that fit changing demographics, globalization, and other external trends |
| Navigator | Balancing Competing Internal and External Pressures (Dualities) | Respecting union and employee needs while promoting competitiveness; creating flexibility from union and employee security | Balancing centralized power with decentralized responsiveness to local needs, control with discretion, solidarity with individuality |
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Striking a Balance 1
Studying any aspect of the employment relationship should be rooted in the objectives of the employment relationship
Efficiency - The effective use of labor to promote competitiveness and economic prosperity.
Equity - Encompasses fair labor standards in both material outcomes and personal treatment.
Voice - The ability to have meaningful input into decisions.
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Striking a Balance 2
The framework for studying labor relations used in this book is how employee representation, typically through independent labor unions, contributes (or not) to the achievement of efficiency, equity, and voice.
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Striking a Balance 3
United States labor law explicitly protects workers’ rights to form unions and collectively bargain because it is believed that these protections balance efficiency, equity, and voice
Efficiency.
Served through industrial peace and increased consumer purchasing power through increased labor bargaining power.
Equity.
Fulfilled through collective rather than individual labor power to better equalize corporate bargaining power.
Voice.
Achieved by replacing unilateral managerial authority with the requirement that employment issues be negotiated with employee representatives.
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Striking a Balance 4
But many challenges
Labor relations and labor law must navigate a number of critical dualities that involve tensions between
property rights and labor rights
work rules and flexibility,
bilateral negotiation and unilateral control
efficiency, equity, and voice
Adversarial negotiations and the typical postwar outcomes such as detailed contracts are under heavy pressure to change in both the private and public sectors.
Global competition and financialization.
Need for workplace flexibility, employee involvement, and labor–management partnerships.
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Striking a Balance 5
Major concluding question: what of system for governing the workplace, and in particular, what form(s) of employee representation, will best achieve the goals of the employment relationship in the economic, social, technological, and global environment of the 21st century?
Creating the ideal system will likely require changing union and corporate strategies, visions of government, social norms, and public policies.
Competing visions are each rooted in alternative schools of thought.
Need to understand these foundational models.
A careful examination of multiple perspectives is always important.
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Accessibility Content: Text Alternatives for Images
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Directions for United States Labor Unionism - Text Alternative
Return to parent-slide containing images.
These directions are as follows:
Table divided into two columns shows the six alternative directions for U S labor unions. The column headers are marked as: Direction and type of unionism.
| Direction | Type of Unionism |
| More activism | Social movement unionism |
| More ownership | Employee ownership unionism |
| More cooperation | Efficiency-enhancing unionism |
| More individuality | Employee empowerment unionism |
| More networking | Associated unionism |
| More power | Solidarity unionism |
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Directions for Corporate Governance or Norms - Text Alternative
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These three directions are as follows:
Longer-term perspective
Broader sense of corporate responsibility
Stakeholder, not shareholder, governance
These three directions improve the short-term profit-maximizing, shareholder focus of an organization.
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Directions for United States Labor Law - Text Alternative
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The four directions for the National Labor Relations Act framework are as follows:
Table divided into two columns shows the four directions for the U S labor law. The column headers are marked as: Direction and action.
| Direction | Action |
| Loosen | Relax 8 (a) (2) to allow nonunion committees |
| Deregulate | No explicit labor laws (just antitrust) |
| Strengthen | Instant elections, strike replacement bans, stiffer penalties |
| Transform | New legal framework (example, end exclusive representation) |
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