When a union attempts to organize workers in a plant or an office, it is to the advantage of both management and the union to have one coordinator-usually the personnel director, or a labor relations director, if there is one. This person becomes the point of contact for the union spokesman. He also protects the firm’s interests by watching for unfair or illegal practices by union organizers. He must also be able to advise the firm’s managers and supervisors about what they can or cannot do during the organizing period.
Once a union has become the exclusive bargaining agent for a group of employees, management and the union are required by the Taft-Hartley Act to bargain collectively over wages, working hours and conditions, procedures for handling grievances, and so on. The initial contract is important to both union and management, since it sets the rules governing the workers and the firm. The contract may follow others in the same industry, or may be drawn up for the specific case. Often cash side has clauses it wishes to include and is prepared to trade or negotiate. Contract negotiation or collective bargaining is much like bargaining with a dealer in goods. The seller names a price and the prospective buyer offers less. The seller then reduces the price, but lowers the term of warranty from one year to six months. The buyer agrees on the lowered price but insists that the original term of warranty remain. If this is acceptable to the seller, the terms of the sale are settled.
The two major areas of labor or industrial relations are contract negotiation and contract administration. Both are complex and interesting because so many people with different interests and different work problems are involved.
Certain clauses appear in most labor contracts. The sweetheart clause spells out the responsibility of union and management to abide by the agreement and to cooperate. The contract duration clause names the period of the contract, usually a term of about three years. It also provides for change, and describes what will occur if a new agreement has not been reached when the present one expires. The security clause indicates whether the plant will be an open or a closed shop, and whether the company will collect union dues “check-off”. It also specifies the union’s right to entrance and the rights of shop stewards within the plant. The management security clause defines the areas in which management has exclusive jurisdiction. Other “meat and potatoes” clauses cover wages and hours, employee benefits and services, conditions and policies regulating promotion, layoffs, recall, and transfers.
A work rules clause stipulates such things as quantity of items to be produced during specific times, standards, and the number of people required to perform shop tasks. This is the clause that perpetuates featherbedding, the forced employment of labor to perform tasks that no longer exist or are unnecessary. When railway locomotives were steam driven and the fuel was wood or coal, a fireman was needed. With diesel and electric engines, no fireman is needed, but the work rules still call for this member of a train crew. Years ago a train could cover no more than 200 miles a day-contracts today still stipulate this distance as the maximum for a crew, and a new crew must take over after a distance which may require only two, three, or four hours. Featherbedding is a device to protect jobs against technological displacement.
Other contract clauses govern grievances and strikes. The grievance clause defines Grievances and the procedures for handling them. Grievances are defined by contract and remedied by specific procedures. For example, a grievance might arise from a misunderstanding of the wage and hours clause dealing with downtime. (When a machine is inoperative due to damage or lack of parts to be worked upon, the time involved is called downtime.) The clause may entitle the worker to four hours pay regardless of hours worked if he is not notified before coming on the shift Thus if the employee had worked four or more hours before the condition occurred. He would be paid for the full eight-hour day.
The strike clause, or the no-strike clause, usually states that during the period of agreement there will be no strike, walkout, or other form of work stoppage. And in return management will not lock out any employees. The no-strike provision has become a matter of great concern to unions, and some have refused to accept it since they have had to pay damages for wildcat or unauthorized strikes. Wildcat strikes are those by a few key employees who become dissatisfied, usually with the way a grievance is handled. If these few are in pivotal positions, a walkout can shut down an entire plant.
Assuming that a basic contract is in effect, how is the next contract negotiated? According to James J. Healy’s Creative Collective Bargaining, there were over 150,000 labor agreements in effect in the United States in 1965, and each represented a different bargaining relationship. For one thing, bargaining may be formal, at pre-arranged times, or informal, through day-to-day interpretations of clauses and settlements of differences.
The duration clause spells out the steps for renegotiating the existing contract and the basis for collective bargaining. It may specify that both parties be notified ahead of the actual meeting so they can study and consider terms. If the parties usually have trouble agreeing, the old contract may call for conciliation and mediation services, and if these fail, for binding arbitration. The clause may also state that if agreement is not reached the workers will strike, or that they will continue to work without contract and all benefits be retroactive to the date of expiration. The possibilities and combinations are infinite. Collective bargaining generally succeeds if both union and management representatives negotiate in good faith and are willing to compromise by recognizing that certain requests are not negotiable.
Contract negotiating is performed skillfully, with each side aware of the other’s position. A firm may be able to hold wages at the existing level, so that this position cannot be negotiated. If so, union representatives will respect the fact, and make their demands for more security, fringe benefits, or vacations, which will give workers higher indirect income without a direct increase in pay. The union, on the other hand, may be forced by its members to obtain a better pension program. Union and management may trade off such benefits to the satisfaction of their constituents.
Negotiators bargaining for the union are usually done by local representatives with one or more members of the national or international organization present if requested. Industry-wide bargaining is done by select committees of top-level Officers working with local groups. Because union contracts with General Motors or U.S. Steel may establish the pattern for giant industries, both sides pick teams of skilled negotiators, top management, and experienced lawyers to handle the complex legal implications in all labor decisions.
If a company is large enough, a labor relations director or a vice-president of industrial relations heads the management group. In smaller firms, the personnel director or manager may chair the firm’s committee. Collective bargaining may be industry-wide with an employer’s association representing all employers involved. Bargaining is also done on a geographical basis, by a committee representing different types of businesses in an area where a change in the labor market will affect all firms regardless of their nature. The National Labor Relations Board has rules that employers with equal interests can coordinate their side of the bargaining table.
When collective bargaining first began, the unions held some advantages in negotiation. They had little to lose and everything to gain, they had specialists who did nothing but bargain; their preparations were thorough and information was gathered for the next negotiation as soon as the last was completed, Management. Usually began its preparation for a meeting at a late point and lacked the zest of the laborites. This of course has changed; management is now generally as strong in bargaining as labor. The image of organized labor does reflect its origin. Many people still think of the union leader as a relatively uneducated man who came up through the ranks and relies on strength rather than brains. Today unions, like business, employ economists, researchers, statisticians, lawyers, and other professionals who fully understand the national and the international economy and the position of the industry and the firm.
Dale Yoder, in his book Personnel Management and Industrial Relations, mentions seven recognized strategies commonly used in labor negotiation. He starts with table pounding, bluffing with fake threats, and playing it cool until the time comes to reach an agreement. His fourth technique he calls Boulwarism, named after G.E. Vice-President Lemuel R. Boulware, in which management tries to sell its offer to the work force by advance publicity, then negotiates with a “pat hand” and needs to draw no more cards. He mentions “buyouts,” in which both parties know that every concession has its price and they trade off for what they really want. In “the big deal,” both sides seek the best they can get by any strategy. And finally, in “positive bargaining,” he describes the introduction of objective means to implement serious proposals for change.
Although these descriptions make bargaining sound frivolous, they actually reflect serious psychological techniques, each side has commitments and both sides recognize these commitments. They must go into the bargaining session and satisfy the psychological as well as the economic needs of those they represent. A union bargaining team cannot accept the first offer it gets (Boulwarism), even though it is better than what they had hoped for. If they did, the union membership would think their leaders had sold them out, and there would have to be hard bargaining to get back to the starting position. Management, knowing that the bargaining team has to save face, would go along with just this strategy. Management may actually want a strike in order to bring about solutions otherwise impossible. And the union would know and go along with this strategy so that agreement could be reached somewhere along the way. Each side has ways of conveying its problems to the other, and little would be gained if there were no compromise.
Approval of the Contract because management rarely places anything in a contract that has not been discussed and agreed upon, employer ratification is almost automatic. This is not true of the union, and the members ratify or reject the contract as they see fit. There have been rejections as the result of conflicts within unions. If a contract is rejected, it is submitted to further negotiation, or a strike is called to put pressure on management.
Union Weapons The strike is the union’s strongest weapon, although its consequences must be carefully analyzed. Before striking, a union should consider the possibility of losing, the effect on contract negotiations, and the ability of members to survive without weekly pay checks, the ability of the strike to close down operations, the effect on public opinion, and the possibility of government action. Other factors that may seem remote include the firm’s ability to survive the strike, and the possibility that a new plant may open elsewhere. In either case union members would lose jobs. The firm also has to consider a possible strike in light of its ability to withstand loss of profit, customers, and suppliers, and the effect on nonunion employees, among other things.
Picketing is the practice of placing striking union members at entrances advising others not to cross the strike line. Those that do may be insulted or even attacked, although physical action is no longer common. Picketing may succeed if a firm depends on other help to maintain operations. Unions respect each other’s picket lines. Even though nonunion employees may attempt to operate a plant during a strike, necessary supplies normally brought in by trucks whose drivers belong to another union will not cross the picket line, and efforts to maintain production will soon cease. Often a small strike can close a large plant because of every union’s respect for picket lines. Boycotting, another way unions bring pressure to bear in a strike, is the urging of other union members not to buy the company’s products. This is the primary boycott, and is generally considered legal. The secondary boycott put union pressure on a third party, such as a supplier or a retailer, and is illegal. Often before or during formal negotiations, union members try to bring pressure on management by slowdowns or even sabotage. The slowdown is a failure to meet production standards: union members may report sick or may simply work more slowly than normal. Sabotage is damage done purposely to products or machinery to stall production, and is far more insidious. It increases rejects and can cause serious tie-ups along the production line,
Management Weapons the lockout is management’s chief answer to the strike. A lockout is seldom used as an offensive weapon but rather as a defensive measure against slowdown or sabotage. Employers’ associations have used the lockout to support members who have been struck. In strikes management has often attempted to replace union members with new employees, and this action has often led to bloodshed. Scats, as the replacements are called, are paid a premium to compensate for the risk they take in crossing picket lines.
Mediation and conciliation is the process by which a third party helps both sides reach sufficient agreement to sign a contract. Wendell French, in The Personnel Management Process, considers the two terms synonymous, although mediation connotes helping through friendly intervention while reconciliation means reducing hostility and reestablishing good will.
The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service were established under the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947 as an independent agency to assist both labor and man agement in avoiding work stoppages. The service also acts to settle grievances but only as a last resort: it does not force itself on either party but offers assistance if a deadlock seems imminent. The mediators meet with the parties separately to find their differences; by maintaining impartiality and operating as a catalyst, they can bring both sides together in agreement.
In arbitration, both sides place the dispute in the hands of a third party and agree to accept the decision made. Usually both parties would rather make conces sions and remain in control of decisions than put the outcome in the hands of an unknown.
The government may intervene when a strike would injure the national interest. It may cancel contracts issue injunctions, or threaten or try to reason with those who do not cooperate. A fact-finding board may investigate a deadlock, and on the basis of its findings, pressure both sides to an agreement.
