Managing for Quality and Performance Excellence 9th Edition by James Evans,William Lindsay

Exercise 50

Labor relations between unions and management can make it difficult to establish TQ-oriented HR practices within organizations. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) ruled on two cases in 1993 and 1994 that complicate a company's determination of how far it can go legally to set up and use employee participation programs (EPPs) to make improvements in the workplace. The two cases involved a small, nonunion company, Electromation, and a large company, DuPont. These case decisions by a five-person board were based on interpretations of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA, or Wagner Act), passed in the 1930's which prohibits unfair labor practices. The rulings are found in the NLRB proceedings as Electromation vs. International Brotherhood of Teamsters (309 NLRB-No. 163), and E. I. duPont de Nemours and Company vs. Chemical Workers Association, Inc. (311 NLRB-No. 88). In the Electromation case, the nonunion company's management set up five employee action committees to deal with policies concerning absenteeism, smoking, communications, pay for premium positions, and attendance bonuses. In DuPont's case, management unilaterally (without bargaining with the union) changed the composition of safety and fitness committees to include nonmanagerial employees (where the committees had previously been composed only of management) at a unionized New Jersey plant. Stated briefly, the cases specified that "employer-dominated labor organizations" are prohibited. In both cases, the employee teams/committees were ruled to be "labor organizations" and to be "management dominated." Discuss the implications of these cases, particularly in the context of high performing organizations. You might wish to conduct further research on these cases.