AFSCME Information Highway

Source: Thomas J. Calo, HR News Magazine, April 2008

For the public sector HR professional, the challenge is not, as it may be in the private sector, to actively resist or avoid unions. Rather, because of increasing demands for ensuring accountability in government, good customer service, and government effectiveness, the public sector HR professional is challenged with creating positive employee-management relations with unions and individual employees. Public sector agency and HR managers are well advised and well served to continually explore and implement strategies fro maintaining satisfaction and effectiveness among both unionized and nonunionized employees.

Posted by William at 9:50 AM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: M. Scott Milinski, HR News Magazine, April 2008

Many unionized organizations in the private sector have successfully responded to the competitive challenge through labor-management cooperation programs. These programs have also been used effectively in the public sector to reinvent and streamline government, saving taxpayer dollars and jobs. However, many jurisdictions have had poor results with these programs. The reasons are fairly simple; labor-management cooperation initiatives usually fail due to lack of proper support, purpose and structure. This article lays out the critical elements for an effective labor-management initiative. Address these issues, and labor-management efforts will be more successful.

Posted by William at 9:48 AM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Towers Perrin, Press Release, February 20, 2008

Based on the Global Workforce Study 2007

Stamford, CT, February 20, 2008 - Some of the most pervasive beliefs about the workforce have recently been challenged by findings from Towers Perrin's 2007 Global Workforce Study - among them, that workers are highly stressed, that they resent the demands of new technologies and that they dislike their bosses.

To understand what drives employees to perform and succeed, Towers Perrin recently surveyed nearly 90,000 employees in 18 countries. The survey, which explored the drivers of workforce engagement - employees' willingness to go the extra mile to help their companies succeed - also exploded many of the myths that surround today's workforce.

Posted by Info Center at 2:54 PM in Family & Work | Labor-Management Relations | Workforce | Permalink

Source: Ozgur Orhangazi, New Labor Forum, Vol. 17 no. 1, Spring 2008

In recent years, private equity funds--firms that pool funds from investors to buy companies, restructure them, and re-sell them--have acquired firms in various sectors and dominated the news headlines in the business press. In 2006, there were more than a thousand private equity buyouts worldwide, with an estimated value ranging from five hundred to seven hundred billion dollars. ... The rise of these new institutions has had a profound impact on economic performance in general and labor relations in particular. This article contextualizes this recent boom in private equity funds and such within the framework of financialization, and outlines their direct and potential impacts on labor.

Posted by Info Center at 12:41 PM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Industrial Relations, Volume 47 Issue 1, January 2008
(subscription required)

Introduction to a Symposium on the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership by Thomas A. Kochan

In 1997 Kaiser Permanente, the nation's largest private integrated health insurance and health care delivery organization, and a coalition of ten national and thirty local unions signed an agreement to create a labor management partnership. Over the past decade it has grown to become the largest, and as will be described in the papers in this symposium, the most ambitious labor management partnership in the history of U.S. labor relations. Since 2000 our research team has studied the partnership through interviews, surveys, case studies of specific projects, and participant observation of national contract negotiations. The papers presented in this symposium report on three aspects of our research that capture critical challenges and opportunities facing labor, management, and government policy makers today.

Balancing Acts: Dynamics of a Union Coalition in a Labor Management Partnership by Adrienne E. Eaton, Saul A. Rubinstein and Thomas A. Kochan

The Potential and Precariousness of Partnership: The Case of the Kaiser Permanente Labor Management Partnership by Thomas A. Kochan, Paul S. Adler, Robert B. McKersie, Adrienne E. Eaton, Phyllis Segal and Paul Gerhart

Bargaining Theory Meets Interest-Based Negotiations: A Case Study by Robert B. McKersie, Teresa Sharpe, Thomas A. Kochan, Adrienne E. Eaton, George Strauss and Marty Morgenstern.

Posted by Info Center at 4:33 PM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Eurofound

In the context of global competition, it is increasingly relevant to look at Europe's economic development in a wider perspective. This report gives an overview of the main industrial relations developments in the European Union, Japan and the US in 2005 and 2006. It charts the similarities and trends in industrial relations as well as the differences in basic structures and developments between these three major economies.

Full Report (PDF; 667 KB)

Posted by Info Center at 11:53 AM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Gordon Lafer, American Rights at Work Report, July 2007

From press release:
American Rights at Work today releases “Neither Free Nor Fair: The Subversion of Democracy Under National Labor Relations Board Elections.” The report by University of Oregon political scientist Gordon Lafer, Ph.D., lays bare the realities of how unscrupulous employers undermine workers’ rights to freedom of association during government-administered union representation elections. “Anti-union employers are making a mockery of the principles governing American elections,” says Lafer. “Weak labor laws allow anti-union employers to manipulate the outcome of union elections in a manner that is inherently unfair and undemocratic.”

“Neither Free Nor Fair” details the strategies - both legal and illegal - that typically comprise employers’ efforts to deny their workers’ rights to form unions and collectively bargain. Says Lafer, “Unionbusting activity in the weeks leading up to the union election resembles practices that our government routinely denounces when performed by rogue regimes abroad.”

+ Executive Summary
+ Fact Sheet
+ Full Report

Posted by Info Center at 1:45 PM in Labor Laws/Legislation | Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: James R. Thompson, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Vol. 27, No. 2, June 2007
(subscription required)

The Bush administration is promoting radical change to the labor-management relations status quo in the federal sector. Provisions of the 1978 Federal Service Labor-Management Relations Statute already leave the federal employee unions in a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis management. The changes by President Bush would tip the balance of power even further in favor of management. Are those changes an attempt to expand presidential control over the bureaucracy, or do they simply represent an alternative, promanagement philosophy of workplace relations? The conclusion here is that Bush has adopted a political management model of governance in which operational considerations are subordinate to control considerations.

Posted by Info Center at 5:46 PM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Bulletin to Management, Vol. 58 no. 15, April 10, 2007
(subscription required)

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s vice chair and a group of management and plaintiffs’ lawyers March 22 warned at an American Bar Association conference against the use of employment policies flatly prohibiting employees to engage in religious communication or other expression at work.

Posted by Info Center at 12:22 PM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Ellen Dannin, Labor Law Journal, Vol. 58 no. 1, Spring 2007

…The at-will regime does not exclude judges from examining (or “second guessing”) employer decisions. In addition… it ill serves employers. If this is true, then it ill serves our economy and our national interests. …There is no empirical evidence that at-will employment has a positive effect on our economy. There is evidence that an at-will employment regime does not prevent litigation. In fact, there is no evidence that an at-will regime results in less litigation than a just-cause employment regime. There are reasons to believe that employers would be better off as managers with a just-cause employment regime. Finally, but more theoretical, there is a cost to society from maintaining at-will.

Posted by Info Center at 12:15 PM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Marie Gottschlak, New Labor Forum, Vol. 16 no. 1, Winter 2007

Today, health benefits are once again a major arena of labor-management strife. And once again universal calls for universal health care by labor leaders mask important differences between them over health care reform. Some labor leaders are advocating a bottom-up mobilization in support of a single-payer solution that would dismantle the system of job based benefits based on private insurance. Others are staking their health care strategy on wooing key business leaders to become constructive partners in some kind of unspecified comprehensive reform of the health system.

Posted by Info Center at 11:16 AM in Benefits | Health Care | Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Richard C. Elling and T. Lyke Thompson, Review of Public Personnel Administration, December 2006, Vol. 26 no. 4

Based on the views of hundreds of managers in 10 states surveyed in 1982 and 2000, this article explores the severity of a range of human resource-related barriers to effective state management. Adequately rewarding outstanding employees, difficulty filling key staff vacancies, retaining experienced staff, disciplining low-performing employees, and—in 2000—uncompetitive pay were among the most serious impediments. Little change in the severity of various human resource-related problems occurred between 1982 and 2000, however. Despite the criticism often leveled at them, variation in civil service coverage and variation in public sector collective bargaining were typically only weakly related to the severity of particular personnel-related problems. In fact, certain problems were less serious in those states with more extensive civil service coverage or more widespread collective bargaining. There was little evidence that deregulating aspects of state human resource systems reduced the severity of personnel-related impediments.

Posted by Info Center at 11:34 AM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink

Source: Thomas J. Calo, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

This article examines the changing nature of employee and labor relations in the United States. A significant shift has occurred in the employee relations environment between the public and private sectors. As union representation in the private sector workforce has steeply declined, there had been a sharp and steady increase in third party representation in the public sector workforce. The reasons for these changes are explored.

The article goes beyond the issue of labor relations to the broader issue of positive employee relations in the workplace. Exploring employee relations from a behavioral science perspective, the article describes and discusses the psychological contract as an organizing framework for understanding and achieving positive employee relations in the workplace. The article also draws upon the author’s professional human resource experiences in the public and private sectors.

Posted by Info Center at 10:40 AM in Labor Unions | Labor-Management Relations | Public Sector | Permalink

Source: Barry Rubin and Richard Rubin, Public Personnel Management, Winter 2006, Volume 35, no. 4

The failure to consider the collective bargaining relationship already established between labor and management constitutes a major deficiency in the research on collaboration, especially since labor unions are likely to play a significant role in organizational reform. The purpose of this research is to analyze the successful labor-management reform initiative in the city of Indianapolis using a model of collaboration developed by the authors.

Posted by Info Center at 5:48 PM in Labor-Management Relations | Permalink