Collective Bargaining Process Research Articles

The Determinants of Strike Activity in Canada

Strikes are an integral part of the collective bargaining process and as such must be understood in relation to their determinants in order to properly evaluate the performance of that process. In spite of the importance of such knowledge there has been surprisingly little effort devoted to estimating empirical relationships.

Liberté de grève et liberté de commerce. Le régime de la grève légale au Québec au regard de celui découlant de la législation américaine du travail

Although built around the same basic principles of exclusive representation of unit employees in favour of the majority union, the legislative systems regulating the collective bargaining process in Quebec and within the American federal jurisdiction present significant differences with respect to both the scope of permissible strike action and the course of a legal strike. A survey of the relevant discrepancies reveals that the legislative framework is more stringent in Quebec. The relative flexibility of the American system tends to work against the employer when one looks at the greater availability of the right to strike that it affords. This is not only the case with respect to so-called economic strikes over collective bargaining issues, but also with respect to different kinds of protest strikes. On the other hand, the American employeur seems to enjoy a relatively freer hand in taking different measures to counteract a strike, for instance, through the use of permanent replacements. A certain internal equilibrium may then be prevalent within each of the compared legal systems. The competitive situation of American and Canadian employers included within the same free trade zone is also dependent upon wider juridical and non juridical factors. As to the more pronounced degree of state intervention with respect to collective bargaining in Canada, its historical roots would tend to preserve it.

Arbitrability Restrictions in Action

The authors test a number of hypotheses as to the possible impact on the collective bargaining process of section 48 of the Alberta Public Service Employee Relations Act which declares non-arbitrable a broad range of management rights items. This study compares the collective bargaining relationship for two units of hospital workers and examines the Crown Service sector.

The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. (review)

Reviewed by: The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. Howard R. Stanger The Story of Reo Joe: Work, Kin, and Community in Autotown, U.S.A. By Lisa M. Fine. Philadelphia, PA: 2004. 239 pp. $ 22.95 paper. Lisa M. Fine's study of Reo Joe focuses on the "universal white male autoworker" during the early decades of the twentieth century—Protestant, native-born, with strong ties to both localism and the land. Reo Joe's conservative background often made him content to be part of Reo Motors' "factory family," but he also could be a staunch unionist. Reo Joe could have belonged to the Masons, the Ku Klux Klan, either the Democratic or Republican Party, sports teams, or a church. Ransom E. Olds established the Reo Motor Car Company in 1904 in Lansing, Michigan, which was at the time a center for the production of plows and agricultural implements. The city was over 98% native-born white and [End Page 114] had a well-organized business community that prided itself on its homogeneity and lack of class conflict. Workers and managers/owners lived in close proximity to each other, shared the same set of values, and often joined the same fraternal associations. It was in this context that the Reo's culture was forged and stabilized by three key pillars: the "square deal" (a combination of hard work and loyalty in exchange for fair pay, job security, and welfare capitalism's benefits), a "living wage" that could support a family, and "Anti-radical Americanism" that nurtured a sober, loyal, family man and "respectable" unionist. "Through the benevolence and paternalism of the company, the male worker provided his family with security, independence, and a place in the emerging consumer culture" (p. 42). However, the Great Depression seriously compromised the company's welfare capitalist practices and Reo Joe's ability to provide for his family. Many workers returned to the land for food and income and saw the New Deal's industrial unionism as a viable solution. The UAW local that formed there reflected the membership's local orientation and its disdain for outside influence, politics, and bureaucracy. Through the union and numerous labor actions, Reo Joe freed himself from the company's paternalism and created an alternative community. After 1936 he and the company found themselves too dependent on outside forces when the company switched from the production of cars to trucks, and again in 1938, after a federal-supported loan to assist in reorganization. Henceforth, military truck production was the company's main output. Lansing's labor force also underwent significant changes during and after World War II. Greater numbers of blacks, Hispanics, women, and younger more militant war veterans joined Reo. Together with harsher supervision and changes in the labor process, labor unrest marred the cooperative spirit at Reo. The collective bargaining process was often unable to resolve nagging disputes over piece rates, supervision, seniority, and work rules. By the mid-1950s only a few hundred workers remained at Reo, after it had peaked at over 3100. Over the next two decades Reo experienced three corporate takeovers, including one by a local businessman who milked the company and its pension plan. With a narrow product line, an outdated factory, and unstable ownership, the plant closed in 1975. Fine's oral histories with retirees feature the many positive remarks about the factory family and whitewash negative remarks about the company. Retirees also created social clubs—extensions of the factory culture—to maintain old friendships and to keep alive the vision of a homogenous, harmonious, and humane workplace where Reo Joe (and Jane) lived out their version of [End Page 115] the American Dream. Fine does a nice job of recreating Reo Joe's world of work, kin, and community, but some important questions are left unanswered. For example, she argues that the persistence of the rhetoric of the factory family, relatively low turnover rates, and the popularity of Reo's social programs suggest that workers were supportive of its employee welfare programs. However, she also contends that workers were happy to break free of the company's paternalism, joined unions in significant...

Die Entgrenzung industrieller Beziehungen: Vielfalt und Öffnung als neues Potential für Interessenvertretung?

SozW Soziale Welt , Seite 295 - 316

The Right to Bargain Collectively: an International Perspective on its Extent and Relevance

Abstract: It is generally assumed that collective bargaining is a ‘good thing’, a worthwhile goal to be pursued in itself that provides benefits in both the economic and political areas. The aim of this paper is to look more closely at limitations to the right to bargain collectively in various countries and to define more clearly the role it can play, as well as its relevance as a generally applicable concept. After an attempt to provide a definition of collective bargaining, that is often missing in discussions, the paper examines the following points: the limited scope of collective bargaining as a process among others, the limited role assigned to it by many legal systems, and the obstacles that it may constitute to National Economic Policy. Moreover, the transformations in the process and substance of collective bargaining, that weaken its impact, are discussed, as well as ideological obstacles that stand in its way. Finally, the specific case of developing countries is considered. In conclusion, doubts are raised about whether the prospects for European collective bargaining are really as promising as was once thought.

Developing Work Culture Through Collective Bargaining at Escorts Limited

Escorts was facing unprecedented problems in the late nineties. Externally the company was facing severe competition and more was expected in the form of MNC. But the company was hardly in a position to face existing competition, leave alone the emerging ones. The company's internal operations were in shambles. Escorts limited had a history of intransigent union. The union was ubiquitous and unassailable. Productivity was low and management had ceded control of the worker to the union. From shop floor to marketing offices, the will of unionized labor prevailed. The management could interact with individual workmen only through the union. Productivity was abysmally low. Production norms were decades old and most of the machines on which these norms were based had been replaced by faster machines. Management decided to bring about wholesome changes in work practices and reduce the control of the union through the process of collective bargaining. Management had collected data to show that if a workman put eight hours of sincere work, productivity would be greatly enhanced. The company also wanted to do away with overtime and incentive system. But the management and union regularly negotiated salary and productivity through three year collective bargaining agreements. Escorts management decided to bring about all the changes through this collective bargaining agreement. After a pernicious struggle with the union, the management was successful in introducing production according to Industrial Engineering Norms and abolishing variable payoff overtime and incentives. A large part of the overtime and incentive payment was merged in the basic salary, and production norm was substantially hiked. But around the same time the tractor market crashed. The company needed and made tractors less than the norm, but it had to pay the hiked salary. In the new environment of low sales, the company would have been better off not concluding the new agreement. Though market forces reversed the advantage, the new practices have become a part of the work culture at Escorts.

Processo de negociação coletiva no espaço rural mineiro: uma análise retrospectiva da década de 1990

O objetivo deste trabalho foi traçar uma configuração do processo de negociação coletiva ocorrido no espaço rural mineiro durante a década de 1990. Para tanto, optou-se pela aplicação do método de pesquisa descritiva. A análise retrospectiva revelou que: a) o processo de negociação coletiva no espaço rural mineiro configurou-se como uma prática social que assumiu traços distintos e bastante singulares; b) o seu pleno exercício encontrou alguns entraves estruturais associados à forma de organização sindical; c) as reivindicações acordadas ao longo dos processos de negociação limitaram-se à exigência do cumprimento da legislação trabalhista. Acredita-se que as considerações reunidas neste trabalho podem, de alguma forma, contribuir para uma reflexão acerca do processo de reformulação do sistema brasileiro de relações de trabalho no espaço social rural, especialmente nesse momento em que se intensificam as discussões públicas sobre o papel do Estado no referido sistema. Certamente, o tema negociação coletiva, flexibilização dos direitos trabalhistas e mudanças na organização sindical fazem parte das agendas de debates.

Employment relations in the United States: law, policy, and practice

Preface 1. Contemporary Employment Relations in Historical Perspective The Start of a New Millenium Analyzing Exceptionalism: Is the United States Different and Why? Studying Work The Nature of Labor Contracts An Overview of This Book Firms and Managers Organized Labor Community Institutions PART I. THE ERA OF MANAGEMENT, 1880 - 1935 2. Industrial Expansion and the Foundations of Unionisms The Rise of Corporations Beginnings of Collective Organization Union Growth and Labor Conflict From Conflict to Cooperation 3. Managerial Control and the Beginnings of State Regulation Judges and the Law of Employment Contracts Injunctions and Antitrust Scientific Management and the Efficiency Movement Welfare Capitalism and the Emergence of the Modern Personnel System Workers' Compensation Insurance - An Early Exception to Exceptionalism Summing up the 1920s PART II: THE EVOLUTION OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING 4. The Creation of Federal Labor Policy: World War I Through the New Deal Wartime Policies and the Effect on Collective Bargaining Labor Legislation Before the Wagner Act The National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935 Social Legislation: Retirement, Unemployment, and Labor Standards The Federal Mandates and the Collective Bargaining Process 5. Rise and Decline of the Labor Movement, 1935 - 2000 Founding of the CIO The Supreme Court and the Wagner Act Labor Relations During World War II The Labor Management Relations (Taft-Hartley) Act, 1947 Cosolidation of Collective Bargaining and Employment Policies Union Decline: 1970s to the Millenium PART III: INDIVIDUAL EMPLOYMENT RIGHTS, 1960s - 2000s 6. Protecting Individuals From Discrimination Equal Pay Act Civil Rights Acts Age Discrimination in Employment Act Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 7. Workplace Rights and Benefits Workplace Health and Safety: OSHA Employee Retirement and Income Security Act Health Insurance and Employment The Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 Exceptions to the Employment At Will Rule PART IV: REBUILDING THE EMPLOYMENT CONTRACT: PRACTICES, POLICIES, AND POLITICS 8. Contemporary Employment Issues Organizational Justice as an Alternative to Litigation Bringing Unions Back In Economic Security for U. S. Workers: Health Insurance, Pensions, and Employment Stability 9. Conclusions Back to the Future? The Job Machine in the 2000s A Final Thought Index About the Author

The Assault on School Teacher Bargaining in Ontario

Between 1975 and 1997, school teacher bargaining was conducted under the School Boards and Teachers Collective Negotiations Act (Bill 100). By most accounts, the teacher bargaining law was successful in promoting bilateral settlements with minimal strike activity. Following its election in 1995, the Harris government reduced public expenditures and introduced educational reforms. In doing so, it repealed Bill 100 and passed laws restricting teacher bargaining. These measures ranged from imposing restrictions on the scope of negotiable issues to attempts to make “voluntary” extracurricular activities mandatory. This study finds that the government’s blunt and heavy-handed efforts to control collective bargaining processes and outcomes, not only proved futile, but led to an increase in work stoppages and protracted guerilla warfare at the school board level.

Identifying Latent Conflict in Collective Bargaining

The purpose of this article is to find indicators of the substantive incentives for industrial conflict. We argue that collective decision-making models can be helpful in developing such a measurement tool. These indicators will enable scholars in industrial relations to distinguish the substantive incentives from other reasons for calling out strikes, e.g. union internal political incentives or trade union competition for members. The models we use are the expected utility model of Bruce Bueno de Mesquita and the exchange model of Frans Stokman and Reinier van Oosten. These models differ in their assumptions on how the collective bargaining process proceeds. The expected utility model is based on the assumption that actors reach collective decisions after threats and conflict. The exchange model is based on a cooperative strategy. Our indicators of industrial conflict are tested on a data set with information on 29 collective agreement negotiations in which 90 trade unions are nested. The data set contains instances of both industrial conflict and peaceful settlements of collective agreements. The results show that the indicator based on the expected utility model is a good indicator of industrial conflict, whereas that based on the exchange model is a poor one. This seems to contradict findings in previous applications of both models of collective bargaining, in which the exchange model provided the most accurate predictions of the bargaining outcomes. We conclude that although the exchange model provides better predictions at the aggregate level (the collective outcome), the expected utility model generates superior predictions of the individual positions after bargaining.

Faut-il régionaliser la négociation salariale ?

At first glance, the collective wage bargaining process in Belgium, being carried at the national level, could be blamed for the persistent high unemployment rate in the Walloon Region, while a process per Region would lead to differentiated wage increases leading towards lower wages in the Walloon Region and therefore less unemployment. The paper shows that such a reasoning is too short as, when lower labor costs would be welcome in the Walloon Region to create more jobs, it is unlikely that the higher unemployment rate would lead towards wage moderation. In addition, regional bargaining could eventually backfire, through spillover effects on Social Security.

So what’s the news? Management strategies towards non–union employee representation at News International

In an environment of what would appear to be a widening ‘representation gap’ developing in many organisations, there has been considerable discussion on the effectiveness of non–union employee representation (NER) structures as communication devices and mechanisms for employee involvement, or as a substitute for unions in the collective bargaining process. The underlying debate centres on whether NER forms make trade unions unnecessary, or whether NER forms have a role different from, but complementary to, that of unions at the workplace. The findings of this study suggest that a ‘substitute’ or union avoidance strategy as used at News International Newspapers could have limitations. The implications of not recognising these limitations could result in greater indirect union influence in workplace issues and greater employee dissatisfaction at the workplace.

Cut-off Process in Reinsurance Relationships

The article reports empirical research into the cut-off processes in reinsurance. The framework is based on Mittilä's [2000] Relation Trine Model. In this model evaluation together with bargaining and negotiation play a central role. The empirical part consists of two cases. Special emphasis is given to collective bargaining processes in the dissolution of relationships. The results of the analyses suggest that the model, originally created for analysing industrial business-to-business relationships with elements of both services and goods, is also applicable to the service sector

Unions and the Labor Market in Brazil

This paper analyzes the effect of unions on the labor market in Brazil and attempts to answer the following questions: How do labor laws and union legislation affect collective bargaining processes? Do unions influence wage formation and income distribution? Do unions increase labor market rigidity? We find evidence that institutions are fundamental in explaining the behavior of unions, their effects on income distribution and macroeconomic stability, and the current state of development of collective bargaining in Brazil. The paper concludes with some recommendations for enhancing the role of unions and collective bargaining processes.

Is the NLRB still relevant? A performance review

Conclusions Comparisons of the NLRB to dinosaurs and other extinct species, fallen empires, and other relics are overdone. Nevertheless, the Board must confront some worrisome signs of institutional decay. On very separate fronts federal courts and state legislatures- the Board's ULP jurisdiction is eroding. Even more troubling for the Board, these incursions are coming from different sources. Unions seem to be winning the battle to legislate protective labor standards when the collective bargaining process that is administered by the NLRB fails them. Individual employees, and by extension certain employers, are circumventing the Board's ability to define fundamental issues of union membership.

Employment regulation in collective bargaining in Spain

Concern surrounding employment issues such as job creation, job security and job quality has led to these issues being included in the collective bargaining process in Spain. Nevertheless, there are a number of matters which should receive greater attention from the social partners in future. Of particular importance is the need to co-ordinate collective bargaining in order to make it more flexible, i.e. more adaptable, whilst at the same time providing a stable framework in order to avoid the problems associated with the fragmentation of employment conditions. This article looks at the evolution of collective bargaining on employment issues since the end of the 1970s, as well as the social partners’ main bargaining demands with regard to these issues, and their most prominent characteristics.

Pacts for employment and competitiveness – an opportunity to reflect on the role and practice of collective bargaining

Pacts for employment and competitiveness (PECs) raise understandable concerns about the potential for ‘concession bargaining', ‘regime competition’ and the fragmentation of the inclusive collective bargaining structures characteristic of most European national systems. PECs are not themselves the source of the problem, however, and are unlikely to be a temporary phenomenon. Rather PECs are a manifestation of wider changes taking place in the process and structure of collective bargaining, reflecting the more complex role collective bargaining is playing in the light of ‘globalisation’ in general and ‘Europeanisation’ in particular. These developments are also bringing about a measure of convergence across EU countries in the form of substantial changes in the levels, scope, form and output of collective bargaining, all of which are being encouraged by the emerging multi-level system of industrial relations in Europe.

Reestruturação produtiva e negociação coletiva nos anos 90

O objetivo do artigo é analisar os impactos da reestruturação produtiva e financeira sobre o poder de barganha de três sindicatos da região de Campinas (São Paulo) - dos químicos, dos metalúrgicos e dos bancários -, enfocando principalmente, de uma perspectiva comparativa, os processos de negociação coletiva em que estiveram envolvidos no decorrer da década de 90. O interesse das autoras é discutir: (a) como se desenvolveu o processo de introdução e difusão de inovações tecnológicas e organizacionais nas indústrias metalúrgica e química e no setor bancário, e suas conseqüências sobre a divisão e o conteúdo do trabalho no interior das empresas; (b) como esse processo modifica o perfil dos trabalhadores destes setores na região e altera a estrutura do emprego nas cadeias produtivas e no interior do sistema bancário; (c) os efeitos destas transformações sobre a ação sindical e, em especial, sobre o processo de negociação coletiva, mediante a análise da evolução dos acordos e convenções coletivas destas três categorias.

Union Exclusivity Arrangements: A Comparative Overview

The purpose of this article is to compare the new British trade union recognition procedures with those of Canada and the United States. The article considers how the new legal framework in Britain affects the collective bargaining process and contrasts this with North American arrangements. It is argued that the British legal position involves a much lower level of interference with the administration of collective agreements and a much higher level of autonomy and independence given to workers to negotiate their own terms and conditions of employment than is the case in Canada or the United States. The article also examines the level of statutory and judicial support given to union security arrangements in Canada and the United States and compares this with the British position where no change has been made to the extensive range of statutory protections given to the non-union worker.