You are the Employee Relations Specialist for a national retail company with locations across the United States

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You are the Employee Relations Specialist for a national retail company with locations across the United States. The nearly 500 company employees are diverse in terms of age and demographic differences. Your primary work location is Southeast Pennsylvania. Recently, the employees in the mid-Atlantic region, managed by Kristopher Kolumbus, have expressed dissatisfaction with the work environment. There are approximately 125 employees in the mid-Atlantic region. Their specific concerns include receiving small pay raises for the past 2 - 3 years, limited employee benefits, lack of career mobility and progression, and heightened security controls implemented due to theft concerns. There has been recent talk among the employees about the possibility of unionization, and some workers have begun exploring options such as United Food & Commercial Workers International Union and the Retail, Wholesale, and Department Store Union. Before either of these unions will send an organizer to the organization, it wants to be sure that sufficient employees will back union representation. Some employees have started company-wide communication to increase interest in unionization.

As the Employee Relations Specialist, it is your responsibility to ensure that supervisors and managers follow the rules regarding a union organizing campaign. In response to this potential campaign, you decide to take some initial actions and prepare several documents to share with your boss, the Director of Human Resources:

• A summary email to the Director of Human Resources describing the issues and what actions you are taking (which include the below items)
• A one-page memo to all managers and supervisors indicating what they can and cannot do during any union organizing effort.
• An email to your human resource colleagues about actions the HR team should consider in response to some of the concerns raised by the Mid-Atlantic Region employees
• An outline for a meeting to be held between Human Resources and the organization's leadership team regarding the organizing effort

Requirements include:

 

• Each of the 4 items indicated above (summary email, one-page memo, email to your human resource colleagues, and outline for a meeting)
• Headings to separate the sections of the paper
• A minimum of three sources (two must be from the course materials) for each response

Readings:

 

Home - The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union | The United Food & Commercial Workers International Union (ufcw.org)

 

Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (rwdsu.info)

 

How can unions continue to remain relevant in a more dynamic
world of labor?
Kavi Guppta
FORBES, October 12, 2016
Retrieved from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2016/10/12/will-labor-
unions-survive-in-the-era-of-automation/#26a88b9b3b22
There is no "one best way" for unions to respond to these challenges, but there
is consensus that unions will continue to remain relevant only by anticipating
and adapting their organizing and collective bargaining strategies to the
continuously changing economy, labor market, demography, work
organization, and human resource management.
Successful stories on unions embedding transnational corporations come from
their ability to engage themselves in international networks and collective
action. For example, thanks to UNI Global Union coordination efforts, the
North American management of SecureCorp was convinced to abandon an
anti-union strategy and sign an international framework agreement (IFA) at
the end of 2008, setting important standards which could be referenced
throughout the service and commerce sectors.
Similar cases can be reported from both US and European countries, where
international framework agreements between MNCs and trade unions have
been signed since 1988 (when Danone concluded the first IFA). Equally
relevant for trade unions committed to the promotion of solidarity is
establishing alliances with community groups and civil society organizations.
Though driven by the initiative of the local mayor, an example can be brought
by the so-called "KeepGM" movement: a multi-stakeholder campaign
organized in the city of Lansing, Michigan in the 1990s when General Motors
was facing serious economic troubles.
The strategy involved the most important local actors, such as the public
administration, the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the University of
Michigan and GM managers: all committed to demonstrating the value of
Lansing and its workforce against closure threats. Subsequently, a new
technical education campus was built to expand training programs for GM,
necessary infrastructures (e.g. roads, utilities and environmental cleanup)
were improved, and UAW embraced an interest-based approach tonegotiations with GM (e.g. leading to fewer job classifications and a two-tier
wage structure). The strategy proved to be successful: GM built new plants in
the area and invested more than $3 billion.
A proactive communication campaign contributed to engaging local
community and sending a clear message to GM headquarters in Detroit.
Communication is indeed an important issue for unions willing to create
awareness of their organization, encourage non-members to join and
demonstrate the benefits of membership. The prevailing views on this topic
argues that in face of current transformations (e.g. labor market
fragmentation, less stable employment relations), workers' representatives
should embrace social media allowing for immediate communication and
dialogue across vast distances and a potentially fast mobilization of a large
number of workers.
Unions, indeed, have to be able to interpret and communicate reality, take
responsibility and eventually engage in proactive initiatives (e.g. promoting
relationships and a participatory culture in companies and localities, even
within the framework of increasing age, ethnic and employment contract
diversity).
What role can unions play in protecting casual or freelance
workers?
There are some reasons why organizing and representing freelancers and
independent contractors is not an easy task. On the one hand, competition
policy and law may represent a serious constraint for freelance workers to
benefit from the right of trade union representation and other freedoms
enjoyed by other workers. On the other hand, the self-employed may have
contractual relationships with multiple clients at any point of time. This
inevitably results in dispersion of contracts and space and a fragmentation of
bargaining. By and large, the ambiguities of freelance workers' occupational
identity (whether they are independent or semi-dependent contractors)
engender basic organizational dilemmas for both workers and trade unions.
However, there are many examples of unions organizing in areas of casual and
insecure employment and substantial gains have been achieved both in terms
of providing services to and building new constituencies for this modern
workforce. The German trade union, IG Metal, for instance, provides a virtual
place named faircrowdwork, where freelance workers (and specifically
workers in digital platforms) are allowed to share views and organize
themselves. The U.K. Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph andTheatre Union (BECTU) represents both employees and freelance workers in
the sector and has signed an agreement with an employers' organization, the
Producers' Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT), which regulates labor
relations in the U.K. film-making industry. Finally, in the U.S., the Freelancers
Union has recently signed an agreement with Uber. The union is in charge of
advising the company on how to create portable benefits for its drivers.
How can unions be more involved within the organizational
structure of a company?
Union involvement in the organizational structure of a company is not an easy
process. On the one hand, unions can benefit from labor regulations and
socio-political institutions at the national or international level. In Europe, for
example, the Directives 94/45/EC and 2009/38/EC impose the establishment
of a works council and an appropriate information and consultation procedure
in transnational undertakings or groups of undertakings employing more than
1000 workers across European countries.
In Germany, co-determination allows works councils, conceived as competent
negotiating partners, to work out solutions with employers to improve
operations and increase productivity. Furthermore, in Italy the Law 300/1970
allows union channels of workplace representation. This means that only
those unions that have signed a collective agreement relevant to the company
are consented to establish a workplace representation.
On the other hand, unions can enjoy the increasing diffusion of the so-called
"High Performance Work Systems", which are based on the premise that
workers' voice can play a significant role in enhancing a firm's
competitiveness. Reorganization of production in the direction of these new
work systems thus often implies frequent relationships and negotiations with
both workers and their representatives. However, beyond external variables,
unions willing to engage in the organizational structure of a company have to
invest resources in building a culture of mutual trust with management;
implying a shared understanding of common goals, good communication and
joint efforts to resolve mutual problems.
Integrative bargaining can allow unions to have a role in the organizational
structure of a company and achieve win-win agreements delivering mutual
gains for both workers and employers. However, in times of changing
workplaces and work forces, participatory labor relations require unions to be
promoters of, rather than obstacles to, innovation and change. Unions are,
therefore, asked to keep up with technological and organizationaltransformations, in order to be aware of issues at stakes for both workers and
managers. To this aim, unions can find it useful to establish relationships or
partnerships with universities, research centers and any technical expert, that
can provide workers' representatives with the necessary knowledge to both
engage in fruitful negotiations with employers and successfully interpret and
sustain the demands of their represented.
How are unions preparing for large-scale automation in most
skilled labor industries?
Firstly, it must be specified that unlike digitization, automation of production
is a long-lasting union challenge, that traces back to the second half of the
twentieth century. The innovation of current transformations lies in the
combination of automated devices with increasing connectivity. There is no
empirical research providing a general and homogeneous picture on how
unions throughout the world are preparing for large-scale automation.
However, many unions' attempts to keep up with these changes can be
reported from developed countries. In Italy, for instance, the Italian
Federation of Metalworkers, FIM-CISL, has recently conducted a study on
automation and its impact on production systems and the potential role for
unions. Due to the shift from manual tasks to planning and control, and the
urgency to assess the complex relationship between humans and machines,
the Italian FIM-CISL is promoting professional training as an individual right
for workers, which should be included in the national collective agreement of
the metalworking sector. Finally, even though there is no "one best way" to
reorganize companies in the wake of technological development, it may be
contended that future organizations will require more decentralized work
processes and highly flexible workplace interventions.
As a consequence, a serious union issue is to prevent flexibility and less
hierarchical work structures. As the German model of co-determination
demonstrates, workers' participation in decision-making can provide an
effective solution to this issue, allowing automation and digitization to become
programs for success for both employers and employees. That is why the
workers voice may be expected to become one of the main union claims in face
of current transformations

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

How can unions continue to remain relevant in a more dynamic
world of labor?
Kavi Guppta
FORBES, October 12, 2016
Retrieved from:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/kaviguppta/2016/10/12/will-labor-
unions-survive-in-the-era-of-automation/#26a88b9b3b22
There is no "one best way" for unions to respond to these challenges, but there
is consensus that unions will continue to remain relevant only by anticipating
and adapting their organizing and collective bargaining strategies to the
continuously changing economy, labor market, demography, work
organization, and human resource management.
Successful stories on unions embedding transnational corporations come from
their ability to engage themselves in international networks and collective
action. For example, thanks to UNI Global Union coordination efforts, the
North American management of SecureCorp was convinced to abandon an
anti-union strategy and sign an international framework agreement (IFA) at
the end of 2008, setting important standards which could be referenced
throughout the service and commerce sectors.
Similar cases can be reported from both US and European countries, where
international framework agreements between MNCs and trade unions have
been signed since 1988 (when Danone concluded the first IFA). Equally
relevant for trade unions committed to the promotion of solidarity is
establishing alliances with community groups and civil society organizations.
Though driven by the initiative of the local mayor, an example can be brought
by the so-called "KeepGM" movement: a multi-stakeholder campaign
organized in the city of Lansing, Michigan in the 1990s when General Motors
was facing serious economic troubles.
The strategy involved the most important local actors, such as the public
administration, the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the University of
Michigan and GM managers: all committed to demonstrating the value of
Lansing and its workforce against closure threats. Subsequently, a new
technical education campus was built to expand training programs for GM,
necessary infrastructures (e.g. roads, utilities and environmental cleanup)
were improved, and UAW embraced an interest-based approach tonegotiations with GM (e.g. leading to fewer job classifications and a two-tier
wage structure). The strategy proved to be successful: GM built new plants in
the area and invested more than $3 billion.
A proactive communication campaign contributed to engaging local
community and sending a clear message to GM headquarters in Detroit.
Communication is indeed an important issue for unions willing to create
awareness of their organization, encourage non-members to join and
demonstrate the benefits of membership. The prevailing views on this topic
argues that in face of current transformations (e.g. labor market
fragmentation, less stable employment relations), workers' representatives
should embrace social media allowing for immediate communication and
dialogue across vast distances and a potentially fast mobilization of a large
number of workers.
Unions, indeed, have to be able to interpret and communicate reality, take
responsibility and eventually engage in proactive initiatives (e.g. promoting
relationships and a participatory culture in companies and localities, even
within the framework of increasing age, ethnic and employment contract
diversity).
What role can unions play in protecting casual or freelance
workers?
There are some reasons why organizing and representing freelancers and
independent contractors is not an easy task. On the one hand, competition
policy and law may represent a serious constraint for freelance workers to
benefit from the right of trade union representation and other freedoms
enjoyed by other workers. On the other hand, the self-employed may have
contractual relationships with multiple clients at any point of time. This
inevitably results in dispersion of contracts and space and a fragmentation of
bargaining. By and large, the ambiguities of freelance workers' occupational
identity (whether they are independent or semi-dependent contractors)
engender basic organizational dilemmas for both workers and trade unions.
However, there are many examples of unions organizing in areas of casual and
insecure employment and substantial gains have been achieved both in terms
of providing services to and building new constituencies for this modern
workforce. The German trade union, IG Metal, for instance, provides a virtual
place named faircrowdwork, where freelance workers (and specifically
workers in digital platforms) are allowed to share views and organize
themselves. The U.K. Broadcasting, Entertainment, Cinematograph andTheatre Union (BECTU) represents both employees and freelance workers in
the sector and has signed an agreement with an employers' organization, the
Producers' Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT), which regulates labor
relations in the U.K. film-making industry. Finally, in the U.S., the Freelancers
Union has recently signed an agreement with Uber. The union is in charge of
advising the company on how to create portable benefits for its drivers.
How can unions be more involved within the organizational
structure of a company?
Union involvement in the organizational structure of a company is not an easy
process. On the one hand, unions can benefit from labor regulations and
socio-political institutions at the national or international level. In Europe, for
example, the Directives 94/45/EC and 2009/38/EC impose the establishment
of a works council and an appropriate information and consultation procedure
in transnational undertakings or groups of undertakings employing more than
1000 workers across European countries.
In Germany, co-determination allows works councils, conceived as competent
negotiating partners, to work out solutions with employers to improve
operations and increase productivity. Furthermore, in Italy the Law 300/1970
allows union channels of workplace representation. This means that only
those unions that have signed a collective agreement relevant to the company
are consented to establish a workplace representation.
On the other hand, unions can enjoy the increasing diffusion of the so-called
"High Performance Work Systems", which are based on the premise that
workers' voice can play a significant role in enhancing a firm's
competitiveness. Reorganization of production in the direction of these new
work systems thus often implies frequent relationships and negotiations with
both workers and their representatives. However, beyond external variables,
unions willing to engage in the organizational structure of a company have to
invest resources in building a culture of mutual trust with management;
implying a shared understanding of common goals, good communication and
joint efforts to resolve mutual problems.
Integrative bargaining can allow unions to have a role in the organizational
structure of a company and achieve win-win agreements delivering mutual
gains for both workers and employers. However, in times of changing
workplaces and work forces, participatory labor relations require unions to be
promoters of, rather than obstacles to, innovation and change. Unions are,
therefore, asked to keep up with technological and organizationaltransformations, in order to be aware of issues at stakes for both workers and
managers. To this aim, unions can find it useful to establish relationships or
partnerships with universities, research centers and any technical expert, that
can provide workers' representatives with the necessary knowledge to both
engage in fruitful negotiations with employers and successfully interpret and
sustain the demands of their represented.
How are unions preparing for large-scale automation in most
skilled labor industries?
Firstly, it must be specified that unlike digitization, automation of production
is a long-lasting union challenge, that traces back to the second half of the
twentieth century. The innovation of current transformations lies in the
combination of automated devices with increasing connectivity. There is no
empirical research providing a general and homogeneous picture on how
unions throughout the world are preparing for large-scale automation.
However, many unions' attempts to keep up with these changes can be
reported from developed countries. In Italy, for instance, the Italian
Federation of Metalworkers, FIM-CISL, has recently conducted a study on
automation and its impact on production systems and the potential role for
unions. Due to the shift from manual tasks to planning and control, and the
urgency to assess the complex relationship between humans and machines,
the Italian FIM-CISL is promoting professional training as an individual right
for workers, which should be included in the national collective agreement of
the metalworking sector. Finally, even though there is no "one best way" to
reorganize companies in the wake of technological development, it may be
contended that future organizations will require more decentralized work
processes and highly flexible workplace interventions.
As a consequence, a serious union issue is to prevent flexibility and less
hierarchical work structures. As the German model of co-determination
demonstrates, workers' participation in decision-making can provide an
effective solution to this issue, allowing automation and digitization to become
programs for success for both employers and employees. That is why the
workers voice may be expected to become one of the main union claims in face
of current transformations