course week 11

Understanding equal opportunity and the legal environment

Understanding HR law is important because it helps you to do the right thing, realize the limitations of your firms HR and legal departments and minimize your firms potential liability. The HR law is also very complex so a manger should be able to understand and obtain the working knowledge to comply with those laws in the vast majority of situations. Laws often have unanticipated or unintended consequenses.

Avoiding pitfalls in EEO by engaging in sound management practices. The most important of these practices are training, documenting decisions, honest communication and asking applicant only information what is needed for the job.

Working with organized labor

A union is an organization that represents employees interest to management on issues such as wages, work hours and working conditions. Employees support activities with the fees they pay for the unions services. Unions usually operate only in firms where employees are dissatisfied with their jobs. The places where unions affect the managers are responsible for the day-to-day implementation of the terms of the labor agreement.

Labor relations and the legal environment

The wagner Act is an American federal law designed to protect employees rights to form and join unions and to engage in such activities as strikes, picketing and collective bargaining. The Taft-Hartley act was designed to limit some of the power that unions acquired under the Wagner Act and protect the rights of management and employees. Its goals were to adjust the regulation of labor-management relations to ensure a level playing field for both parties. The Landrum-Griffin Act was created to protect union members and their participation in union affairs. It allows the government through the department of labor to regulate union activities.

Collective bargaining is a system which unions and management negotiate with each other to develop the work rules under which union members will work for a stipulated period of time, usually it is 2-3 years. Work rules include any terms or conditions of employment, including pay, work breaks and lunch, vacation, work assignments and grievance procedures. Labor contract was a consequence of the collective bargaining that sets the rules for the conditions of employment and work rules that affect employees in the unit represented by the union.

            Under union acceptance strategy management chooses to view the union as its employees legitimate representative and accepts collective bargaining as an appropriate mechanism for establishing workplace rules whereas union avoidance strategy is chosen when management fears the union will have a disruptive influence on its employees or fears losing control of its workers to union. There are two types of approaches to union avoidance; union substitution /proactive human resource management approach in which management becomes so responsive to employees needs that it removes the incentives for unionization. Union suppression is a avoidance strategy in which management uses hardball tactics to prevent a union from organizing its workers or to get rid of a union

Sources

Managing Human Resources, Global Edition 2016 Gomez-Meja, Balkin, Cardy. P.110-114,133-138, 492-527