This book provides an introduction to collective bargaining and labor relations with a focus on developments in the United States. It is appropriate for students and labor relations professionals, including unionists, managers, and neutrals. The strength of this text lies in its logical coherence and its comprehensive coverage of contemporary developments.
KEY FEATURES
• A three-tiered strategic choice framework that guides the text in a unified manner (presented in Chapter 1).
• A thorough grounding in labor history (Chapter 2) and labor law (Chapter 3).
• Coverage of living wage and minimum wage campaigns and other emerging forms of collective representation that are addressing income inequality in new ways (see especially Chapter 7).
• An examination of the influence of business and union strategies (Chapters 5 and 6) with numerous contemporary illustrations of how those strategies affect collective representation.
• Consideration of the processes of contract negotiation (Chapters 8 and 9) and contract administration (Chapter 11), with frequent comparisons to nonunion practices and developments.
• Examination of the special aspects of collective bargaining in the public sector (Chapter 13).
• A look at global issues throughout the text and in a separate chapter on international issues (Chapter 14) and a chapter on labor relations in other countries (Chapter 15). Chapter 14 analyzes the labor relations issues multinational corporations face, including labor rights issues associated with global supply chains. Chapter 14 also analyzes the growing influence of NGOs and cross-national unionism.
• A look at how labor relations systems in Germany and Japan and four key transitioning countries (China, India, Brazil, and South Africa) compare to practices in the United States (Chapter 15).
• Boldface key terms in the text and a glossary that defines the terms.
• URLs for related websites at the end of the chapters.
• The textbook is supplemented by an instructor’s website resource, which includes an extensive instructor’s manual with a test bank, PowerPoint chapter outlines, mock bargaining exercises, organizing cases, grievance cases, and classroom-ready current events materials. The website also includes support materials for mock bargaining that help students engage in contract costing and financial forecasting.
CENTRAL THEMES AND TEXT ORGANIZATION
The text follows a strategic-choice framework that has three tiers: the environmental forces that shape collective bargaining, the process of collective bargaining, and bargaining outcomes. This structure follows in the tradition of John Dunlop’s seminal work, Industrial Relations Systems by emphasizing the interaction between legal, historical, and political institutions and economic factors.
The text also examines how business and union strategies constrain the process and outcomes of collective bargaining. After considering strategic issues, we analyze the middle tier of bargaining, where contract negotiation and administration are so important. We also examine workplace issues such as the organization of work and communication procedures. Harry Katz and Tom Kochan (with Robert McKersie) originally developed this three-tiered framework in The Transformation of American Industrial Relations, 2nd edition (Ithaca, N.Y.: ILR Press, 1994).
Through its examination of the influence of business and union strategies on labor relations, this book provides a broader focus than most other introductory texts do. In addition, we feel that students must also understand the influence of investment strategies, production strategies, union choices, and other strategic forces if they are to accurately comprehend how collective bargaining works in the modern economy. A separate chapter (Chapter 12) looks at workplace outcomes, including participatory processes and their connections to collective bargaining.
Our focus in this book also is broadened by our interest in international developments. We highlight international comparisons and pressures with examples throughout the text and focus on these issues in separate chapters: one on international (cross-national) matters (Chapter 14) and one on labor relations in other countries (comparative issues; Chapter 15). The emergence of a vibrant international workers’ rights movement is one of the most exciting developments of the day. Readers should understand the central roles that labor relations problems and labor unions play in these events.
Extensive coverage of developments in the nonunion sector also distinguishes this book from others. The nonunion sector is important in its own right, given the decline in union membership in the United States. In addition, our analysis
of the nonunion sector contributes to an understanding of the pressures and changes occurring within the union sector.
The public sector has increased in importance as unionization has declined in the private sector. We examine the special features of the public sector in Chapter 13.
Our broad focus helps readers gain a full understanding of collective bargaining. We present numerous illustrations throughout the text, some of which are highlighted as cases. Information about labor history and labor law help ground readers in the workings of American collective bargaining. These topics are covered early in the book (Chapters 2 and 3).
Students also can expand their understanding of collective bargaining through the mock bargaining exercises provided on the supplemental website. Some of these exercises involve private sector negotiations, while others involve public sector cases. Full instructions for the exercises and recommendations gained from our own classroom experience are provided in the instructor’s manual. Material is available on the website that allows students (even those with no previous computer experience) to cost contract settlement terms and forecast the financial and employment implications of alternative settlements. We have used this material in our classes and highly recommend it.
Grievance arbitration and organizing cases are also provided on the course website. Those cases illustrate a range of contemporary developments and enable students to test their skills as third parties.
INSTRUCTOR’S RESOURCE WEBSITE
The course web site includes an instructor’s manual, PowerPoint chapter outlines, a computerized test bank, and other materials that can be used to enhance student learning and classroom discussions. In addition to suggestions about how to use the mock bargaining exercises and supplementary material for those exercises, the instructor’s manual includes organizing cases, arbitration cases, and mock bargaining cases. It also includes answers to the end-of-chapter discussion questions, chapter outlines, lecture outlines, and citations to recent news stories and other materials (including YouTube videos) available on the Internet about current labor relations issues. In our teaching of introductory collective bargaining, we have found that the mock bargaining exercises and films help convey how bargaining really works. We would appreciate hearing your reaction to the text and these materials. Instructions for accessing the instructor’s manual are on the website of the ILR School’s Scheinman Institute on Conflict Resolution at Cornell University (www.ilr.cornell.edu/scheinman-institute).
Acknowledgments
A number of people assisted in the development of this book and we are deeply grateful to all of them. We thank Stephen Schmitt, Janina Gunderson, and Alex Woloshyn for research assistance. Fran Benson deserves our heartfelt thanks for advice that helped shape this book. Working with Fran on this project, as with the many other books she has helped us with in the past, has been a real pleasure.
This book is dedicated to our many teachers. It was they who generated the spark that led us into the field of labor relations, a field we continue to find stimulating and rewarding. We hope this book can generate similar sparks for our readers.
Harry C. Katz
Thomas A. Kochan
Alexander J. S. Colvin
Abbreviations
AAA American Arbitration Association
ACFTU All-China Federation of Trade Unions
ACTWU Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
ADA Americans with Disabilities Act
ADEA Age Discrimination in Employment Act
ADR alternative dispute resolution
AFL American Federation of Labor
AFSCME American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees
ALPA Air Line Pilots Association
AMCU Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union
AMFA Aircraft Mechanics Fraternal Association
APWU American Postal Workers Union
CAD Computer-aided design
CIC Common Issues Committee
CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations
CIR Committee of Interns and Residents
CIW Coalition of Immokalee Workers
COPE Committees on Political Education
COSATU Congress of South African Trade Unions
C-P Colgate-Palmolive
CWA Communications Workers of America
EEOC Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
EI employee involvement
ERISA Employee Retirement Income Security Act
FFP Fair Food Program
FLA Fair Labor Association
FLRA Federal Labor Relations Authority
FLSA Fair Labor Standards Act
FMCS Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
FOSATU Federation of South African Trade Unions
IAM International Association of Machinists
IBEW International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers
IBN interest-based negotiations
ICFTU International Federation of Free Trade Unions
ILO International Labour Organization
IUD Industrial Union Department
IWW Industrial Workers of the World
KP Kaiser Permanente Health and Hospital Corporation
MPRA Multiemployer Pension Reform Act
NAA National Academy of Arbitrators
NALC National Association of Letter Carriers
NBA National Basketball Association
NEA National Education Association
NGOs nongovernmental organization
NHL National Hockey League
NIRA National Industrial Recovery Act
NLRA National Labor Relations Act
NLRB National Labor Relations Board
NMB National Mediation Board
NPMHU National Postal Mail Handlers Union
NRLCA National Rural Letter Carriers Association
OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration
PACs political action committees
PATCO Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization
PBA Police Benevolent Association
PERB Public Employment Relations Board
QC quality circles
ROC Restaurant Opportunities Centers
SACTU South African Congress of Trade Unions
SEIU Service Employees International Union
SPEEA Society of Professional Engineering Employees in Aerospace
SUB supplementary unemployment benefit
TDU Teamsters for a Democratic Union
UAW United Auto Workers
UFCW United Food and Commercial Workers Union
UFT United Federation of Teachers
UMW United Mine Workers of America
USPS United States Postal Service
VEBA voluntary employee benefit association
WARN Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification
WFTU World Federation of Trade Unions
WRC Worker Rights Consortium
Abbreviations
An Introduction to U.S. Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations
A Framework for Analyzing Collective Bargaining and Labor Relations
DEFINING PRINCIPLES OF THE FIELD OF INDUSTR IAL RELATIONS
Whether we are at work or at leisure, we are affected by the conditions under which we work and the rewards we receive for working. Work plays such a central role in our lives and in society that the study of relations between employee and employer cannot be ignored.
This book traces how members of labor and management, acting either as individuals or as groups, have shaped and continue to shape the employment relationship. Employment is analyzed through the perspective of industrial relations, the interdisciplinary field of study that concentrates on individual workers, groups of workers and their unions and associations, and employers and their organizations and the environment in which these parties interact.
Industrial relations differs from other disciplines that study work because of its focus on labor and trade unions and the process of collective bargaining. Thus, this book describes how collective bargaining works and helps explain, for example, why it may lead to high wages in one situation and low wages in another.
The study of labor relations focuses on the key participants involved in the process, the role of industrial conflict, and the performance of collective bargaining. This chapter defines these various aspects of labor relations and describes how this book analyzes them.
THE PARTICIPANTS
The key participants (or parties) involved in the process of labor relations are management, labor, and government.1
Management
The term management refers to individuals or groups who are responsible for promoting the goals of employers and their organizations. Management encompasses at least three groups: (1) owners and shareholders of a company, (2) top executives
and line managers, and (3) labor relations and human resource staff professionals who specialize in managing relations with employees and unions. Management plays key roles in negotiating and implementing a firm’s labor relations policies and practices.
Labor
The term labor includes employees and the unions that represent them. Employees are at the center of labor relations. They influence whether the firms that employ them achieve their objectives and shape the growth of unions and the demands unions make.
Government
The term government includes (1) local, state, and federal political processes; (2) the government agencies responsible for passing and enforcing public policies that affect labor relations; and (3) the government as a representative of the public interest. Government policy shapes how labor relations proceed by regulating, for example, how workers form unions and what rights unions have.
KEY ASSUMPTIONS ABOUT LABOR AND CONFLICT
Labor Is More than a Commodity
One of the most important assumptions that guides the study of labor relations is the view that labor is more than a commodity, more than a marketable resource. For instance, workers often acquire skills that are of special value to one firm and not to another. The possibilities that such workers will able to earn as much “in the labor market” as they can at their existing employer are limited. In addition, changing jobs often costs workers a lot: moving locations can be expensive and can also entail large personal and emotional costs. For these reasons and others, labor is not as freely exchanged in the open, competitive market as other, nonhuman market goods are.
Furthermore, labor is more than a set of human resources that a firm allocates to serve its goals. Employees are also members of families and communities. These broader responsibilities influence employees’ behaviors and intersect with their work roles.
A Multiple-Interest Perspective
Because employees bring their own aspirations to the workplace, labor relations must be concerned with how the policies that govern employment relations (and the work itself) affect both workers and their interests and the interests of the firm and the larger society. Thus, labor relations takes a multiple-interest perspective on the study of collective bargaining and labor relations.
The Inherent Nature of Conflict
A critical assumption that underlies analysis of industrial relations is that there is an inherent conflict of interest between employees and employers that derives
The top tier of industrial relations, the strategic level, includes the strategies and structures that exert long-run influences on collective bargaining. At this level, we might compare the implications for collective bargaining of a business strategy that emphasizes product quality and innovation with a business strategy that seeks to minimize labor costs.
The middle tier of labor relations activity, the functional level, or the collective bargaining level, involves the process and outcomes of contract negotiations. Discussions of strikes, bargaining power, and wages feature prominently here.
The bottom tier of labor relations activity, the workplace level, involves the activities through which workers, their supervisors, and their union representatives administer the labor contract and relate to one another on a daily basis. At the workplace level, adjustment to changing circumstances and new problems occurs regularly. A typical question at this level, for example, is how the introduction of employee participation programs has changed the day-to-day life of workers and supervisors.
It is through the joint effects of the environment beyond the company and the actions of the parties in this three-tiered structure that collective bargaining either meets the goals of the parties and the public or comes up short.
THE INSTITUTIONAL PERSPECTIVE
The perspective that guides our analysis of labor relations was first developed by institutional economists at the University of Wisconsin. John R. Commons (1862–1945), the person who most deserves the title father of U.S. industrial relations, defined the essence of institutional economics as “a shift from commodities, individuals, and exchanges to transactions and working rules of collective action.”4 Commons and his fellow institutionalists placed great value on negotiation and on compromise among the divergent interests of labor, management, and the public.
The institutionalists in the United States were heavily influenced in their thinking by the British economists and social reformers Sidney and Beatrice Webb, who were members of the Fabian socialist society. They viewed trade
Figure 1.1. The three-tiered approach to the study of labor relations
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of an extensive rearmament program notwithstanding the financial difficulties.
It was further said that the connection of the anti-Semitic policy with aggressive war was not limited to economic matters. The German Foreign Office circular, in an article of 25 January 1939, entitled “Jewish Question as a Factor in German Foreign Policy in the Year 1938”, described the new phase in the Nazi anti-Semitic policy in these words:
“It is certainly no coincidence that the fateful year 1938 has brought nearer the solution of the Jewish question simultaneously with the realization of the idea of Greater Germany, since the Jewish policy was both the basis and consequence of the year 1938. The advance made by Jewish influence and the destructive Jewish spirit in politics, economy, and culture, paralyzed the power and the will of the German People to rise again, more perhaps even than the power policy opposition of the former enemy Allied Powers of the first World War. The healing of this sickness among the people, was therefore certainly one of the most important requirements for exerting the force which, in the year 1938, resulted in the joining together of Greater Germany in defiance of the world.”
The Nazi persecution of Jews in Germany before the war, severe and repressive as it was, cannot compare, however, with the policy pursued during the war in the occupied territories. Originally the policy was similar to that which had been in force inside Germany. Jews were required to register, were forced to live in ghettos, to wear the yellow star, and were used as slave laborers. In the summer of 1941, however, plans were made for the “final solution” of the Jewish question in Europe. This “final solution” meant the extermination of the Jews, which early in 1939 Hitler had threatened would be one of the consequences of an outbreak of war, and a special section in the Gestapo under Adolf Eichmann, as head of Section B 4 of the Gestapo, was formed to carry out the policy.
burn down the entire ghetto, without regard to the armament factories. These factories were systematically dismantled and then burnt. Jews usually left their hideouts, but frequently remained in the burning buildings, and jumped out of the windows only when the heat became unbearable. They then tried to crawl with broken bones across the street into buildings which were not afire . . . . Life in the sewers was not pleasant after the first week. Many times we could hear loud voices in the sewers . . . . Tear gas bombs were thrown into the manholes, and the Jews driven out of the sewers and captured. Countless numbers of Jews were liquidated in sewers and bunkers through blasting. The longer the resistance continued, the tougher became the members of the Waffen SS, Police and Wehrmacht, who always discharged their duties in an exemplary manner.
Stroop recorded that his action at Warsaw eliminated “a proved total of 56,065 people. To that we have to add the number of those killed through blasting, fire, etc., which cannot be counted.” Grim evidence of mass murders of Jews was also presented to the Tribunal in cinematograph films depicting the communal graves of hundreds of victims which were subsequently discovered by the Allies. These atrocities were all part and parcel of the policy inaugurated in 1941, and it is not surprising that there should be evidence that one or two German officials entered vain protests against the brutal manner in which the killings were carried out. But the methods employed never conformed to a single pattern. The massacres of Rowno and Dubno, of which the German engineer Graebe spoke, were examples of one method; the systematic extermination of Jews in concentration camps, was another. Part of the “final solution” was the gathering of Jews from all German-occupied Europe in concentration camps. Their physical condition was the test of life or death. All who were fit to work were used as slave laborers in the concentration camps; all who were not fit to work were destroyed in gas chambers and their bodies burnt. Certain concentration camps
such as Treblinka and Auschwitz were set aside for this main purpose. With regard to Auschwitz, the Tribunal heard the evidence of Höss, the commandant of the camp from 1 May 1940 to 1 December 1943. He estimated that in the camp of Auschwitz alone in that time 2,500,000 persons were exterminated, and that a further 500,000 died from disease and starvation. Höss described the screening for extermination by stating in evidence:
“We had two SS doctors on duty at Auschwitz to examine the incoming transports of prisoners. The prisoners would be marched by one of the doctors who would make spot decisions as they walked by. Those who were fit for work were sent into the camp. Others were sent immediately to the extermination plants. Children of tender years were invariably exterminated since by reason of their youth they were unable to work. Still another improvement we made over Treblinka was that at Treblinka the victims almost always knew that they were to be exterminated and at Auschwitz we endeavored to fool the victims into thinking that they were to go through a delousing process. Of course, frequently they realized our true intentions and we sometimes had riots and difficulties due to that fact. Very frequently women would hide their children under their clothes, but of course when we found them we would send the children in to be exterminated.”
He described the actual killing by stating:
“It took from three to fifteen minutes to kill the people in the death chamber, depending upon climatic conditions. We knew when the people were dead because their screaming stopped. We usually waited about one half-hour before we opened the doors and removed the bodies. After the bodies were removed our special commandos took off the rings and extracted the gold from the teeth of the corpses.”
Beating, starvation, torture, and killing were general. The inmates were subjected to cruel experiments; at Dachau in August 1942,
victims were immersed in cold water until their body temperature was reduced to 28° Centigrade, when they died immediately. Other experiments included high altitude experiments in pressure chambers, experiments to determine how long human beings could survive in freezing water, experiments with poison bullets, experiments with contagious diseases, and experiments dealing with sterilization of men and women by X-rays and other methods.
Evidence was given of the treatment of the inmates before and after their extermination. There was testimony that the hair of women victims was cut off before they were killed, and shipped to Germany, there to be used in the manufacture of mattresses. The clothes, money, and valuables of the inmates were also salvaged and sent to the appropriate agencies for disposition. After the extermination the gold teeth and fillings were taken from the heads of the corpses and sent to the Reichsbank.
After cremation the ashes were used for fertilizer, and in some instances attempts were made to utilize the fat from the bodies of the victims in the commercial manufacture of soap. Special groups traveled through Europe to find Jews and subject them to the “final solution”. German missions were sent to such satellite countries as Hungary and Bulgaria, to arrange for the shipment of Jews to extermination camps and it is known that by the end of 1944, 400,000 Jews from Hungary had been murdered at Auschwitz. Evidence has also been given of the evacuation of 110,000 Jews from part of Rumania for “liquidation”. Adolf Eichmann, who had been put in charge of this program by Hitler, has estimated that the policy pursued resulted in the killing of 6 million Jews, of which 4 million were killed in the extermination institutions.
Hague Convention of 1907. That clause provided:
“The provisions contained in the regulations (Rules of Land Warfare) referred to in Article I as well as in the present Convention do not apply except between contracting powers, and then only if all the belligerents, are parties to the Convention.”
Several of the belligerents in the recent war were not parties to this Convention.
In the opinion of the Tribunal it is not necessary to decide this question. The rules of land warfare expressed in the Convention undoubtedly represented an advance over existing international law at the time of their adoption. But the convention expressly stated that it was an attempt “to revise the general laws and customs of war”, which it thus recognized to be then existing, but by 1939 these rules laid down in the Convention were recognized by all civilized nations, and were regarded as being declaratory of the laws and customs of war which are referred to in Article 6 (b) of the Charter.
A further submission was made that Germany was no longer bound by the rules of land warfare in many of the territories occupied during the war, because Germany had completely subjugated those countries and incorporated them into the German Reich, a fact which gave Germany authority to deal with the occupied countries as though they were part of Germany. In the view of the Tribunal it is unnecessary in this case to decide whether this doctrine of subjugation, dependent as it is upon military conquest, has any application where the subjugation is the result of the crime of aggressive war. The doctrine was never considered to be applicable so long as there was an army in the field attempting to restore the occupied countries to their true owners, and in this case, therefore, the doctrine could not apply to any territories occupied after 1 September 1939. As to the War Crimes committed in Bohemia and Moravia, it is a sufficient answer that these territories were never added to the Reich, but a mere protectorate was established over them.
