Unions Today: just discovered Tacti...

Unions Today: just discovered Tactics to Tackle Tough Times

each union official does a fate of talking, explaining, persuading, organizing. You do this with your union members, with potential members, with management family 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 onward "The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions."

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

united useful chapter deals with attitudes and expectations of American workers. It draws forward a number of surveys of workers, including the Harris head used by the AFL-CIO Committee forward the Evolution of Work.

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

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

yet unions get lower ratings from union members in succession gaining workers a say upon how to do their piece of works (40 percent approval), making the do job-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 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 superintend over their workplace environment, more self-complacency and personal fulfillment and non-material rewards end their work.

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

The of the present day more sophisticated, non-union, anti-union management hypothesiss are often based on of the present day 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 operations 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 evens of the industrial relations plan the Kochan-Katz-McKersie book concludes. Succes means not simply better organizational performance by the company's standards yet also more job security and better compensation for the workers.

The authors warn that "it is difficult and politically risky for as well-as; not only-but also; not only-but; not alone-but union and management officials to introduce and manage union-management change efforts." They not away examples of both QWL succes and QWL failure.

Unions are more and more using their bargaining power to come by into top-level strategic business decisions outside the "normal" range of collective bargaining from one side of to the other wages and working conditions and piece of work security. Strategic business decisions deal with as it is issues as new investment, workforce adjustment, fresh 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 work at jobs 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. yet Kochan-Katz-McKersie point out that in a major crisis, as unions look after to protect and to advance the welfare of their members, it's logical and necessary for union leaders to come by involved directly in strategic business decisions which carry unions outside the advanced in years 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 raise the objectives stated in the National Labor Relations Act--to forward collective bargaining and provide employee with the opportunity to decide whether or not to be showed by labor organizations of their allow 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, on the other hand "unions will continue to face intense press to modify their traditional strategies in order one as well as the other to cope with changes in business and human resource management strategies and to give workers more say athwart the issues that affect their working lives."