Unions in Crisis and Beyond: Perspe...

Unions in Crisis and Beyond: Perspectives from Six Countries

each union official does a haphazard 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 fresh book by three industrial relations professors, Thomas Kochan and Robert McKersie of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell University's Harry Katz.

single in kind useful chapter deals with attitudes and expectations of American workers. It draws forward a number of surveys of workers, including the Harris catalogue of heads used by the AFL-CIO Committee upon the Evolution of Work.

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

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

on the other hand unions get lower ratings from union members upon gaining workers a say onward how to do their piece of works (40 percent approval), making the work at jobs 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 adapted 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 command over their workpace environment, more self-sufficiency and personal fulfillment and non-material rewards in consequence of their work.

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

The novel more sophisticated, non-union, anti-union managment plans are often based on just discovered 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 oftentimes develop complaint and review steps 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 on a levels of the industrial relations scheme the Kochan-Katz-McKersie book concludes. Succes means not single better organizational performance by the company's standards moreover 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 not past nor future examples of both QWL succes and QWL failure.

Unions are more and more using their bargaining power to obtain into top-level strategic business decisions outside the "normal" range of collective bargaining throughout wages and working conditions and do job-work security. Strategic business decisions deal with like issues as new investment, workforce adjustment, just discovered technology, and new forms of work organization.

Kochan-Katz-McKersie view 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 do job-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. moreover Kochan-Katz-McKersie point out that in a major crisis, as unions prosecute to protect and to advance the welfare of their members, it's logical and necessary for union leaders to earn involved directly in strategic business decisions which carry unions outside the of advanced age range of collective bargaining.

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

"If American labor policy is to sustain the objectives stated in the National Labor Relations Act--to advance collective bargaining and provide employee with the opportunity to decide whether or not to be give an account ofed by labor organizations of their avow 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, nevertheless "unions will continue to face intense influence 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 across the issues that affect their working lives."