Although to call for an election the union by law needs only 30 % of the employees in a unit to sign cards, most organizers wait to announce that the union represents a majority of the employees until at least 50 % sign and usually until 60 % to 80 % sign. At this point, the union campaign usually goes public with an exchange of leaflets, handbills, and letters.Īt another point, the union may publicly identify the committee members to protect them (in case key union members are discharged, management cannot claim it did not know who the key supporters were) and to induce workers to consider signing the union card. Building interest-Soliciting employees to sign authorization cards begins during this stage, which is often when management wakes up to what is going on.Next, the committee members begin to contact other employees to determine their interest in the union and their willingness to serve on the committee. The objective of this phase is to educate the committee about the benefits of forming a union, the law and procedures involved in forming a local union, and the issues management is likely to raise during a campaign. Setting up an organizing committee-the union representative calls together the employees identified as leaders and establishes them as an organizing committee.Determining interest-The union representative visits the company to find out whether enough employees are interested in the union to make a campaign worthwhile, which employees would make good leaders in an organizing campaign, and which company policies and practices might affect such an effort.Once a company becomes a target, union official usually does research on it and assigns a representative to follow up on the initial contact. Sometimes a campaign starts when a union decides that a company has strategic importance or looks like an easy target and then initiates contact with employees at their workplace. Nlo union nj how to#Identifying the target-A union effort often starts when a disgruntled employee contacts a local union office to learn how to organize at a place of work.But a union campaign is actually a fairly long process that usually goes through the following stages. He has written one other HBR article-“When Employees Want to Oust Their Union” (March–April 1978).Ī union organizing campaign may look like a brief process of exchanging a few simple letters and handbills and holding an election that quickly settles the issue. He has done extensive research on union campaigns and is currently completing a book on the subject. Fulmer is associate professor of human resources management at the University of Alabama’s Graduate School of Business. Being prepared for each stage of the process of campaigning and negotiating, argues the author of this article, is the best way for both labor and management to avoid serious mistakes and to present employees with the information they need to cast an informed vote. But responding to a union campaign need not end up this way. Its hasty decisions to deal with the short run become strategic errors in the long run. Sometimes the company even finds itself burdened with multimillion dollar lawsuits. Without advance thought or preparation, the company launches a policy of resistance and often winds up before the National Labor Relations Board charged with unfair labor practices. At the first sign of union organizing, company management often decides to do “whatever is necessary to defeat the union,” as one corporate vice president put it.
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