Labor Relations Commons^™

An Empirical Study Of Fast-Food Franchising Contracts: Towards A New "Intermediary" Theory Of Joint Employment, Kati L. Griffith

Kati Griffith

The “Fight for Fifteen and a Union” movement among fast-food workers and their allies has raised awareness about wage inequality in the United States. Rather than negotiating for better wages and working conditions with economically weak restaurant-level franchisees, the movement aims to affect the practices of what they view as the all-powerful brands—the franchisors. Few would dispute the notion that the franchisor brands, not their franchisees, set industry-wide standards and, thus, have the ability to offset rising wage inequality and improve working conditions. And yet, the movement has raised controversial law and policy questions about the legal responsibilities of these …

Unionization And The Development Of Policies For Non-Tenure Track Faculty: A Comparative Study Of Research Universities, Karen Halverson Cross

Karen Halverson Cross

This paper examines how policies at several research universities support and professionalize their full-time, non-tenure track (NTT) instructional faculty, and considers the influence of NTT faculty unions on policy development at these institutions. Faculty handbooks, collective bargaining agreements (CBAs), and other policy documents at a few institutions with and without CBAs were analyzed for the presence of institutional, NTT faculty-supportive policies. One unionized and one non-unionized institution were selected as sites for interviews with faculty and administrators. The paper finds CBAs to be a significant source of NTT faculty-supportive policies, and the union to provide important procedural safeguards against arbitrary …

Academic Librarians And Labor Unions: Attitudes And Experiences, Ian Mccullough

Ian McCullough

Panel: Unionization And The Development Of Policies For Non-Tenure Track Faculty - A Comparative Study Of Research Universities, Karen Halverson Cross

Karen Halverson Cross

Handout

Panel: Unionization And The Development Of Policies For Non-Tenure Track Faculty - A Comparative Study Of Research Universities, Karen Halverson Cross

Karen Halverson Cross

No abstract provided.

Intermediary Cooperative Associations And The Institutionalization Of Participate Work Practices: A Case Study In The Danish Public Secto, Ole Henning Sørensen, Virginia Doellgast, Anders Bojesen

Virginia Doellgast

Scandinavian countries are known for having a high adoption of cooperative models of work design. This article investigates the role of parity labour market associations, termed intermediary cooperative associations, in the dissemination of these models. Findings are based on an examination of the Centre for the Development of Human Resources and Quality Management (SCKK), a social partnership-based organization that funds workplace development projects at state workplaces, and of nine participative development projects that received financial and logistical support from the SCKK. These projects increased union and management commitment to partnership-based approaches to problem-solving, despite their ambiguous results for both …

Still A Coordinated Model? Market Liberalization And The Transformation Of Employment Relations In The German Telecommunications Industry, Virginia Doellgast

Virginia Doellgast

This paper examines recent changes in collective bargaining and employer strategies in the German telecommunications industry following market liberalization in the late 1990s. Germany’s distinctive co-determination and vocational training institutions encouraged large firms to adopt employment systems in technician and call center workplaces that relied on high levels of worker skill and discretion. However, organizational restructuring is undermining these gains, as firms use outsourcing and the creation of subsidiaries to escape or weaken company-level collective agreements. These trends have substantially weakened unions and contributed to the further disorganization of coordinated bargaining structures. Findings are based on interviews with union and …

Vertical Disintegration And The Disorganisation Of German Industrial Relations, Virginia Doellgast, Ian Greer

Virginia Doellgast

Drawing on case studies from the telecommunications and auto industries, we argue that the vertical disintegration of major German employers is contributing to the disorganisation of Germany’s dual system of in-plant and sectoral negotiations. Subcontractors, subsidiaries, and temporary agencies often have no collective bargaining institutions, weaker firm-level agreements, or are covered by different sectoral agreements. As core employers move jobs to these firms, they introduce new organisational boundaries across the production chain and disrupt traditional bargaining structures. Worker representatives are developing new campaign approaches and using residual power at large firms to establish representation in new firms and sectors, but …

Collective Voice Under Decentralized Bargaining: A Comparative Study Of Work Reorganization In Us And German Call Centres, Virginia Doellgast

Virginia Doellgast

This article compares the process of and outcomes from work reorganization in US and German call centres, based on four matched case studies in the telecommunications industry. Both German cases adopted high-involvement employment systems with broad skills and worker discretion, while the US cases relied on a narrow division of labour, tight discipline and individual incentives. These outcomes are explained by differences in institutional supports for collective voice. Works councils in the German companies used their stronger participation rights to limit monitoring and encourage upskilling at a time when US managers were rationalizing similar jobs. Findings demonstrate that industrial relations …

Harris V. Quinn And The Contradictions Of Compelled Speech, Catherine Fisk, Margaux Poueymirou

Catherine Fisk

No abstract provided.

Community Workforce Provisions In Project Labor Agreements: A Tool For Building Middle-Class Careers, Maria Figueroa, Jeffrey Grabelsky, Ryan Lamare

Jeffrey Grabelsky

[Excerpt] Project Labor Agreements are comprehensive contracts between a construction client and a consortium of unions. They have been used in the construction industry for over 60 years to achieve uniform labor standards, stability and high quality for large construction projects, and are currently evolving to address broader social and community issues. Community Workforce Agreements are PLAs that contain social investment or targeted hiring provisions to create employment and career path opportunities for individuals from low income communities.

Pioneering examples of CWAs included the Los Angeles Community College District PLA (signed in April of 2001), providing for 30 percent of …

Coming Together For Human Rights, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

Trade unionists and human rights advocates started analysing antiunion tactics as violations of international human rights standards. They decided to reargue American labour law on a human rights foundation

Contesting The Dinosaur Image: The Labor Movement's Search For A Future, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] As labor contests the dinosaur image it will find no easy answers. Hard work, careful assessment of options, and a willingness to take risks are all required. Without widespread experimentation and a significant reallocation of resources to organizing, extinction awaits.

Comparing Mandatory Arbitration And Litigation: Access, Process, And Outcomes, Alexander Colvin, Mark D. Gough

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] What do we know about mandatory arbitration and its impact? Some existing studies have examined samples of employment arbitration cases, usually obtained from the American Arbitration Association (AAA), which is currently the largest arbitration service provider in the employment area. Although some early studies found relatively high employee win rates and damage awards in arbitration, comparable to those in litigation, these results were mainly based on arbitration under individually negotiated agreements or in the securities industry and involved relatively highly paid individuals. More recent studies using larger samples of cases based on mandatory arbitration agreements find much lower employee …

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Sarosh Kuruvilla

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …

Two Paths To The High Road: The Dynamics Of Coalition Building In Seattle And Buffalo, Ian Greer, Barbara Byrd, Lou Jean Fleron

Ian Greer

[Excerpt] Labor-community coalitions are not a new concept. Unions approach such coalitions now, as in the past, as one way to enhance their bargaining power with an employer. Such coalitions are temporary and often issue-based. In recent years, however, some local labor movements have begun to look at coalitions in a broader way – as a means of improving their public image and building power in the political arena. This broad-based approach requires the development of coalitions for the longer run, not just for temporary expediency. This paper develops the notion of a high road social infrastructure as a way …

Automobile Workers Strikes, Ian Greer

Ian Greer

Automobile workers' strikes occurred in essentially four eras: the lost strikes by the industry's craft unions in the early twentieth century, the dramatic sit-down victories of the 1930s, the mixture of wildcat and authorized strikes during the postwar economic boom from the 1940s through the 1970s, and the decline of strikes that accompanied the policy of "jointness' between company and union after J9S0. Autoworkers' strike strategies reflected, in part, the particular structure of the industry, which took shape in the 1920s. Auto production is a complex process of interdependent operations to produce parts and assemble vehicles, each containing tens of …

Industrial Relations, Migration, And Neoliberal Politics: The Case Of The European Construction Sector, Nathan Lillie, Ian Greer

Ian Greer

Transnational politics and labor markets are undermining national industrial relations systems in Europe. This article examines the construction industry, where the internationalization of the labor market has gone especially far. To test hypotheses about differences between “national systems,” the authors examine the United Kingdom, Finland, and Germany, alongside European-level policy making. Regardless of overall national institutional framework, employers seek to avoid industrial relations rules, while unions attempt to relocalize labor relations. Both use shop-floor, national, and European power resources. The authors argue that comparative industrial relations should take seriously the connection between action at the national and transnational levels.

Effects Of Unionization On Graduate Student Employees: Faculty-Student Relations, Academic Freedom, And Pay, Sean Rogers, Adrienne E. Eaton, Paula B. Voos

Sean Edmund Rogers

In cases involving unionization of graduate student research and teaching assistants at private U.S. universities, the National Labor Relations Board has, at times, denied collective bargaining rights on the presumption that unionization would harm faculty-student relations and academic freedom. Using survey data collected from PhD students in five academic disciplines across eight public U.S. universities, the authors compare represented and non-represented graduate student employees in terms of faculty-student relations, academic freedom, and pay. Unionization does not have the presumed negative effect on student outcomes, and in some cases has a positive effect. Union-represented graduate student employees report higher levels of …

Experimentation And Decentralization In China’S Labor Relations, Eli D. Friedman, Sarosh Kuruvilla

Eli D Friedman

In this introduction to the special issue ‘Changing work, labour and employment relations in China’, we argue that China is taking an experimental and decentralized approach to the development of new labor relations frameworks. Particular political constraints in China prevent interest aggregation among workers, as the central state sees this as posing a risk to social stability. Firms and local governments have been given a degree of space to experiment with different arrangements, as long as the categorical ban on independent unions is not violated. The consequence has been an increasingly differentiated labor relations landscape, with significant variation by region …

Getting Through The Hard Times Together? Chinese Workers And Unions Respond To The Economic Crisis, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

How do post-socialist unions respond to market crisis? And what are the implications of this response for labor representation? Drawing on literature on post-socialist labor and union democracy, I argue that economic crisis affects not just labor – capital and labor – state relations, but also the relationship between union representatives and workers. Such a dynamic is highlighted by an empirical account of the divergent activities of workers and All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) unions in China following the economic crisis of 2008. While the union responded to mass unemployment with an administrative and policy-oriented strategy, workers took to …

Insurgency And Institutionalization: The Polanyian Countermovement And Chinese Labor Politics, Eli D. Friedman

Eli D Friedman

Why is it that in the nearly 10 years since the Chinese central government began making symbolic and material moves towards class compromise that labor unrest has expanded greatly? In this article I reconfigure Karl Polanyi's theory of the countermovement to account for recent developments in Chinese labor politics. Specifically, I argue that countermovements must be broken down into two constituent but intertwined "moments": the insurgent moment that consists of spontaneous resistance to the market, and the institutional moment, when class compromise is established in the economic and political spheres. In China, the transition from insurgency to institutionalization has thus …

Labor Relations In A Globalizing World, Harry C. Katz, Thomas A. Kochan, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] This book traces how labor, management, and governments acting 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 and groups of workers, unions and other forms of collective representation, employers and their organizations, and the environment in which these parties interact.

An Overview Of Collective Bargaining In The United States, Lance A. Compa

Lance A Compa

[Excerpt] American history reflects a long cycle of trade union decline and growth. Analysts routinely predict the death of the labor movement. (Yeselson 2012). Heralds of labor’s demise often argue that unions were needed in the past, but modem, enlightened management and the need for economic competitiveness make them obsolete. (Troy 1999). But then, workers fed up with employers’ exploitation decide to find new ways to defend themselves. History does not repeat itself, and conditions now are not the same as those spurring the great organizing drives of the 1930s and ‘40s. Still, American workers have shown deep resourcefulness over …

Lessons From The Nba Lockout: Union Democracy, Public Support, And The Folly Of The National Basketball Players Association, Matthew J. Parlow

Matthew Parlow

Union-Free Bargaining Strategies And First Contract Failures, Richard W. Hurd

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The objective of this paper is to investigate what happens during first contract negotiations, especially the unproductive ones that do not result in an agreement. Complete files were reviewed of 54 first contract cases collected by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department in 1993. Nineteen of these cases were updated during 1995 with follow-up interviews. Interpretation of the case studies was facilitated by a detailed analysis of 195 responses to a 1994 first contract survey conducted by the AFL-CIO Task Force on Labor Law. The original research was supplemented with a review of recent NLRB decisions on surface bargaining and …

Reviving The American Labor Movement: Institutions And Mobilization, Richard W. Hurd, Ruth Milkman, Lowell Turner

Richard W Hurd

[Excerpt] The reawakening of the American labor movement under new leadership with new strategic orientations is a remarkable chapter in late 20thcentury American economic and political history. Given up for dead by so many at home and abroad, under relentless attack from American employers and with government supports disappearing, the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFLCIO) and a core of key member unions have re-emerged since the mid-1990s as prominent workplace, community and political actors. With both strategic reorientation and new local mobilization, these unions have fought to reverse decline and re-energize the movement. While the …

Collective Bargaining In American Higher Education, Ronald G. Ehrenberg, Daniel B. Klaff, Adam T. Kezbom, Matthew P. Nagowski

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] No discussion of governance in higher education would be complete without a consideration of the role of collective bargaining. Historically, most researchers interested in the subject have directed their attention to the unionization of faculty members. Given several recent decisions by the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) that leave open the possibility that unionization of faculty in private colleges and universities may increase in the future, we discuss collective bargaining for faculty in the first section (Leatherman 2000, A16). Recently, however, attention has been also directed at the unionization of two other groups in the higher education workforce. Activists …

Telecommunications: Collective Bargaining In An Era Of Industry Reconsolidation, Jeffrey Keefe, Rosemary Batt

Rosemary Batt

[Excerpt] In this paper, we examine the reconsolidation of the industry, between 1995 and 2001, focusing on the merger, acquisition, and business strategies of the major corporate players; union responses to those strategies; and the resulting evolution of union-management relations and collective bargaining outcomes. We argue that the nature of the industry and technology, coupled with its institutional legacy, provides incentives for consolidation and recentralization of the ownership structure. In this process over the last decade, former Bell affiliates have sought union support before regulatory commissions, and the unions have leveraged their political power to make important gains in collective …

Employment Arbitration: Empirical Findings And Research Needs, Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] There is vociferous opposition to employers forcing pre-dispute arbitration agreements on employees. Critics argue that employees are not voluntary participants in the process, which they say unfairly favors employers. Advocates of mandatory arbitration dispute these charges and argue that arbitration offers employees and employers significant advantages over litigation. For example, they argue, among other things, that that litigation is not as accessible as arbitration because lawyers will not take low value employment cases on a contingency basis.

Critics of mandatory employment arbitration have moved the debate into the legislative arena. Bills have been introduced in state legislatures and in …