Exam 12: Dealing With Union and Employeemanagement Issues

Jian is a well-known professor of labor relations at a major university. She recently was asked by representatives of labor and management at a nearby corporation to help them resolve a disagreement that threatened to cause a breakdown in negotiations. If Jian agrees to help, her role will be to encourage both parties to continue negotiating and to offer constructive advice and suggestions, but she will not have the authority to render a binding decision. Jian's role is that of a mediator.

Due to threats of violence at work, some states have passed laws permitting companies to seek temporary restraining orders on behalf of their management.

The AFL-CIO was the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA).

In the next few years, unions are likely to find that they must adopt a tough, confrontational approach in order to get what they want from management.

Under a closed shop agreement, workers must agree not to join a union in order to keep their jobs.

Although the general public often sees the compensation of CEOs of major U.S. corporations as being much too high, the pay and benefits these top executives receive is actually quite similar to what is earned by top executives in other countries with market economies.

Rose is a human resources manager for a rapidly growing corporation. The firm recently hired one hundred new workers, ten of whom were involved in workplace accidents soon after they were hired. It was determined that alcohol usage was the cause of these accidents. Top management has asked Rose to do a better job in screening potential workers for alcohol abuse to avoid this in the future. Rose should point out that in fact the ten percent of the recent-hires with alcohol issues is actually much lower than the overall percentage of employees with alcohol issues that are involved in industrial injuries and fatalities in the U.S.

The purpose of the earliest recognized labor unions in the U.S. was:

Comparable worth is concerned with making sure that women get paid as much as men when they do the same jobs.

Last year, a retired schoolteacher moved her parents from Michigan to northern Illinois to live with her. For the past year, she was traveling two times each month to provide care for this eighty-six year old couple, including coordinating medical services and meals. In conversations with her family members, the teacher remarked, "If I were not already retired, I would have to quit my job to continue this way!" This retired teacher:

In the past, a variety of professionals have served as mediators. If a labor dispute were to breakout between the management at an auto manufacturer and the local union that represents workers at the auto manufacturing plant, it would be highly unusual for a university professor who has studied labor relations to be asked to mediate. The disputing parties would save his time for something more serious like arbitration.

According to the Legal Briefcase box associated with Chapter 12, we can cite several examples where CEOs in the U.S. received significantly large exit compensation packages even though the profit performance of their firms under their watch was rather meager to very poor.

According to "Spotlight on Small Business," in Chapter 12 many private-practice physicians have embraced unionizing as a means to collective bargaining with managed health care organizations.

Many of the negotiated labor-management agreements in the United States call for the use of an arbitrator to end labor disputes.

Safe'nSwift Airlines implemented a program to curb workplace violence before it occurs. Under this program, the employees of Safe'nSwift can expect to:

The Equal Pay Act of 1963 required companies to provide equal pay to men and women who perform the same job.

The outlawed the use of yellow-dog contracts and prohibited courts from issuing injunctions against nonviolent union activities.

During the lunch break at Secure Seat Belt Corporation, Ben's friend Dan was enthusiastic about the Employee Free Choice Act. According to Dan, if congress passes this legislation,

A(n) is an employee organization that represents workers in employee-management bargaining over job-related issues.

provided dynamic leadership for the American Federation of Labor during its early years.