COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Collective Bargaining

Collective Bargaining

Question 1

In deciding procedures for unanimity-making and conflict resolving, these collective bargaining measures always shape the specific national laws and labor market locally, and as seen by each country's current outlook towards labor , conflict and cooperation. There are multiple ways to see systems of labor relations in different countries. To solidify bargaining power, an important union goal is to organize those workers that represent a threat to union member wage levels and job security. Union structure and goals and the labor market in which it operates help determine the appropriate organizational focus for that union.

Craft-based unions

In some unions, the goal is extend the collective bargaining agreement to all workers sharing the same skills. This is particularly common in the construction industry where unions tend to be organized along strict craft lines. For example, the primary threat to union-represented electrician wage scales is a contractor's ability to find and employ non-union electricians. A traditional method for protecting against this risk is for the union to control the craft knowledge through union-controlled or dominated apprenticeship programs and hiring halls or referral systems.

A major for craft unions is in part attributable to short term planning in the relatively prosperous years of the 1960s. When there was plenty of work for union members, the unions enjoyed relatively low unemployment and concentrated their referrals to the lucrative industrial and commercial projects (Van, 2004). The less stable, lower wage residential construction market was left to the non-union sector of the industry. In the short term, this was not a major problem because most union members were working.

Industrial unions

Industrial unions' goal is to bring all workers engaged in specific manufacturing processes under the same bargaining patterns. If a union's jurisdiction is defined by identifiable product or service lines, it is described as an industrial union. A goal of the United Steelworkers of America, for example, is to extend the same or comparable working conditions to all workers engaged in the domestic steel industry. If an industrial union is successful, any employer manufacturing the specific product anywhere in the country would be subject to the same general terms and conditions of employment. If the union is not successful, the presence of non-union plants with substandard working conditions undermines the union's bargaining power in the organized sector.

Logically, this strategy results in wage and benefit levels being highest in those economic sectors with the highest percentage of union-represented workers. In sectors where unions have been less successful in organizing, wages are generally lower. In the 1980s and 1990s, employers have emerged in nearly every industry that has remained non-union, even in their domestic operations. The presence of Honda, Nissan, Toyota and other non-union automobile facilities in the United States represents one example of the erosion of traditional union bargaining power (Bauer, 2010).

General unionism

Traditional industrial union organizing assumptions have not worked with many employers that can no longer be identified with a single product. Industrial diversification allows an employer to become less ...