The Transformation of American Indu...

The Transformation of American Industrial Relations

each union official does a fortune of talking, explaining, persuading, organizing. You do this with your union members, with potential members, with management folks with the general public. You do this to "continue the never-ending proces of renewal and regeneration" of the labor motion called for in the AFL-CIO report forward "The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions."

To learn more about this proces of renewal, about past changes and coming events options, take a look at "The Transformation of American Industrial Relations." This is a modern book by three industrial relations professors, Thomas Kochan and Robert McKersie of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell University's Harry Katz.

single useful chapter deals with attitudes and expectations of American workers. It draws forward a number of surveys of workers, including the Harris catalogue of persons used by the AFLC-CIO Committee onward the Evolution of Work.

principally union members are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their unions, according to the Kochan-Katz-McKersie report.

Unions rate high with their members upon getting good wages (84 percent approval), getting suitable fringe benefits (76 percent), and protecting workers from unfair treatment (83 percent)

moreover unions get lower ratings from union members onward gaining workers a say upon how to do their work at jobss (40 percent approval), making the piece of work more interesting (46 percent), getting workers a say in the business (27 percent) and representing workers' interests in management decision-making (41 percent)

Union wages, benefits, and fair treatment are not enough to suited the current needs and expectations of American workers, according to Kochan-Katz-McKersie.

They say workers also want more opportunity for participation in job-related decisions, more rule over their workplace environment, more self-complacency and personal fulfillment and non-material rewards between the walls of their work.

Anti-union employer are giving a guide role to behavioral-science-trained human resource management specialists instead of to management clan with experience in labor relations and collective bargaining. Kochan-Katz-McKerzie consider this a highly significant trend

The just discovered more sophisticated, non-union, anti-union management connected views are often based on of recent origin theories of worker motivation and organizational behavior which favor "participatory decision-making" and "employee involvement" in form into groups or team problem-solving. Big non-union companies frequently develop complaint and review conducts that are modeled on negotiated union grievance procedures

In unionized shop-floor settings, "quality of work life" programs are more likely to succe if there is joint labor-management trust and cooperation at higher plains of the industrial relations hypothesis the Kochan-Katz-McKersie book concludes. Succes means not merely better organizational performance by the company's standards if it be not that also more job security and better compensation for the workers.

The authors warn that "it is difficult and politically risky for the two union and management officials to introduce and manage union-management change efforts." They quick in emergencies examples of both QWL succes and QWL failure.

Unions are more and more using their barganing power to commit to memory into top-level strategic business decisions outside the "normal" range of collective bargaining through the whole extent of wages and working conditions and do job-work security. Strategic business decisions deal with as it is issues as new investment, workforce adjustment, modern technology, and new forms of work organization.

Kochan-Katz-McKersie behold these union actions as part of a significant break with past labor-management relations restricted in a more simple way to wages and working conditions and piece of work security.

For union leaders there are dangers of being coopt into painful decisions, of being identified too closely with management, of losing touch with rank-and-file worker interests. unless Kochan-Katz-McKersie point out that in a major crisis, as unions search for to protect and to advance the welfare of their members, it's logical and necessary for union leaders to win involved directly in strategic business decisions which carry unions outside the of long date range of collective bargaining.

Labor law reform is necessary if labor leaders are likely to support a broad policy agenda that reconciles employer flexibility with adequate protections for workers, Kochan-Katz-McKersie argue. The authors assert:

"If American labor policy is to justify the objectives stated in the National Labor Relations Act--to elevate collective bargaining and provide employee with the opportunity to decide whetehr or not to be depicted by labor organizations of their confess choosing--then the current law and its administration require substantial reform."

Unions and collective bargaining will not wither away or disappear, Kochan-Katz-McKersie declare, still "unions will continue to face intense urgency to modify their traditional strategies in order the two to cope with changes in business and human resource management strategies and to give workers more say throughout the issues that affect their working lives."