[Student]
[Professor]
Unions have declined as a percentage of the workforce in the private sector. With this decline, have career and workplace dissatisfaction and alienation increased? If so, why is this so? If not, why not? Support your position.
There is a growing trend of non-unionization of workforce in private sector nowadays. Although in many private sector organizations, unions are working but the level of union activities have now certainly decreased to much larger extent than before. These unions are now becoming less effective and inactive. The reason for this phenomenon is the increased awareness in the private sector to protect the interests and rights of their employees (Amiti & Davis, 2012). In modern world, private sector companies are investing in order to eradicate all the concerns of their employees as they know that unless the company does not learn to retain its talented and experienced work force. A committed and motivated workforce is the key to organization’s success but satisfied and motivated workforce can only be retained by the company if the concerns of employees are attended and handled appropriately ( Bhola & Nigade, 2012). As the laws and regulations articulated by the government regarding employee rights are developing with every passing day, the organizations have to ensure that their rights are protected. This is because unions are formed when the employee matters are ignored by the company management and all the workers form a union for the protection of their rights. But since the business companies are willingly doing their best to support their employees, the employee dissatisfaction and alienation has decreased. Therefore, decreased level of union as a percentage of workforce depict that the workplace environment is changing in a positive direction for both the employees and firms (Choudry & Thomas, 2013).
List and discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages in using seniority as a factor to determine shift preference or overtime assignments.
Seniority at workplace usually happens due to unionized workforce where workers’ seniority is taken into consideration to decide the work shifts and overtime assignments. Seniority basically refers to the length of service offered by an employee at job. There are several advantages and disadvantages of seniority at workplace. A major advantage of using seniority to determine shift preference or overtime assignments is that it allows for the criteria where seniors are given preference for their loyalty and tenure as they have worked for a longer period of time with the company than the younger staff (Fells et al., 2015). This is basically used as one of the recognition practice under which senior are given the preference of choosing the shifts and overtime assignments as a way of respect. It sends a clear message throughout the organization that the company values commitment and expects its employees to serve within the organization for a longer period as this will eventually save on the employee turnover cost.
The major disadvantage of using seniority as criteria for preference in shifts and overtime assignments involves discouraging the younger lot of talent who may hesitate to improve as they may be left unmotivated by preferring seniors. It happens usually happens that the senior managers tend to take the better shift hours and better overtime assignments while the fresh employees are left with the most undesirable assignments and are often forced to work at nights. Such unattractive practices are demotivating for the new employee who views it as unfair and unjust. It also harms the performance of employees who are new to the job as they would be disgruntled over the fact that seniority is a key to success in the organization rather than performance, ultimately causing dissatisfaction and deterioration of performance.
Identify two different steps a company should take to prepare for its first round of bargaining with the union pre-negotiation activities. Explain why each of the steps you have identified is critical to achieving an initial successful collective bargaining agreement with the union.
There are two steps that a company takes to prepare for its final round of bargaining:
Step 1: Selecting the Negotiating Team
This step is crucial before starting the negotiation process and so are the roles and responsibilities of individuals that are allotted to them. In addition, they must be well aware of the roles that they are supposed to perform in the negotiation process. For the selection of the individuals for negotiation team, it is better to outsource them or select on the basis of referendum. Negotiation team selection is also important because it helps the company to include and consider the interest of the individuals while making the negotiation terms. The company must select a line manager, who deals with the workers on the daily negotiating issues. By doing this, it is highly likely that the settlement team will include most of the members that are selected by the unions.
Step 2: Research and Study
It is also important to study the union demands before the negotiation. By studying and knowing the demands well before will help the company to determine the possible outcomes of the negotiation as well as the information related to the subjects of bargaining. The reason behind doing so is to save the time and energy in case of a resuming negotiation, which was stopped in the past. Moreover, this step will also help the team to gather the information from informal sources and other companies that had gone through negotiation process.
Identify and explain the major ways in which the government is an important participant in the labor relations.
Government is an important participant in the labor relations as it is the authority that makes the ground rules in order to supervise the workers’ relationships with their employees (Amiti & Davis, 2012). There are four main actors who play their role in the labor relations; the state (government), the employer (company), labor union (employees in the unions) and the last one is the workforce (which may or may not be in the labor union). State plays its role both actively and passively depending upon the nature of the problem and the organization. It gets actively involved to oversee and counter check to maintain proper mechanism in labor market. In order to avoid the exploitation of employees by its employer, government intervenes and makes some legislation that minimizes the exploitation of employees. For instance Hirsch et al. (2013) states that setting of the minimum wage and ensuring the implementation of safety conditions is the responsibility of government, and so is to check whether the companies are following the rules formed or not (Hirsch et al., 2013). Without government’s participation, many employers will exploit employees and, hence the government must design strategies to cope with employee exploitation. But this protection is not only for employees but for employers as well as it also provides some rules wherein the employees need to perform to their best of capabilities. Government also provides its services as the arbitrator when things are not going well between the union and the organization. Government intervenes as third party and plays a neutral role in solving the problem.
References
Amiti, M., & Davis, D. R. (2012). Trade, firms, and wages: Theory and evidence. The Review of economic studies, 79(1), 1-36.
Bhola, S. S., & Nigade, J. J. (2012). A Study of Quality of Work Life (QWL) in Small Scale Unionized and Non Unionized Organization. Vishwakarma Business Review, 2(1), 16-24.
Choudry, A., & Thomas, M. (2013). Labour struggles for workplace justice: Migrant and immigrant worker organizing in Canada. Journal of industrial relations, 55(2), 212-226.
Fells, R., Rogers, H., Prowse, P., & Ott, U. F. (2015). Unraveling Business Negotiations Using Practitioner Data. Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, 8(2), 119-136.
Hirsch, B. T., Macpherson, D. A., & Winters, J. V. (2011). Teacher salaries, state collective bargaining laws, and union coverage. In Association for Education Finance and Policy (AEFP) Meetings, Seattle, March (Vol. 26, pp. 671-718).
