Collective Bargaining Commons^™

Trade Unions And Collective Bargaining: Suggestions For Emerging Democracies In Eastern Europe And The Former Soviet Union, Harry C. Katz, Sarosh Kuruvilla, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

This paper provides lessons for industrial relations reform efforts in the new nations emerging from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Bloc. Our purpose is to identify the basic industrial-relations practices that enable the advanced industrial countries to compete in world markets. The paper does not provide a detailed descriptive account of the existing industrial-relations institutions in the formerly communist countries, nor does it assess the likely short-run consequences of the economic restructuring under way across the new nations. Rather, our focus is on the experiences in the advanced economies and the lessons those experiences contain regarding successful industrial-relations practice.

Public Sector Collective Bargaining And The Imperative For Service Delivery: An Overview, Jonathan Brock, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] When public sector officials and union leaders are willing to enter into cooperative arrangements, the evidence in this volume and elsewhere suggests they usually find that cooperation results in improvements in both the delivery of public services and the quality of work life. Certainly there have been instances when cooperation has failed to produce desirable results, but this volume includes ample testimony to its potential beneficial effects and depicts successful experiences with cooperation at the federal government level, in a number of state governments, in Indianapolis, and elsewhere. Also, we know that in places such as Los Angeles; Phoenix; …

Online Dispute Resolution Through The Lens Of Bargaining And Negotiation Theory: Toward An Integrated Model, David B. Lipsky, Ariel C. Avgar

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In this article we apply negotiation and bargaining theory to the analysis of online dispute resolution. Our principal objective is to develop testable hypotheses based on negotiation theory that can be used in ODR research. We have not conducted the research necessary to test the hypotheses we develop; however, in a later section of the article we suggest a possible methodology for doing so. There is a vast literature on negotiation and bargaining theory. For the purposes of this article, we realized at the outset that we could only use a small part of that literature in developing a …

The Conflict Over Conflict Management, David B. Lipsky, Ariel C. Avgar

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In this article we look at the traditional approach to workplace conflict, the evolution of conflict management, criticism of this process by progressive and traditional critics, and then consider whether they can be reconciled by taking what we call a strategic view of conflict management in the workplace. This view calls for an alignment between the goals of the conflict management system and the overarching nature of the organization in which that system is implemented. The management of conflict, according to this approach, should complement the organization’s strategic posture and existing structures. We maintain that the level of fit …

Workplace Arbitration In The Current Economic Crisis, David B. Lipsky

David B Lipsky

[Excerpt] In the midst of our economic crisis, arbitrators are facing unprecedented challenges. As the financial implosion has spread from Wall Street to Main Street, we are hearing cases that require us to decide issues the parties never anticipated when their arbitration programs were established. Take labor-management arbitration as an example. Unlike in the past, when labor arbitrators sometimes had to decide whether a layoff complied with the collective bargaining agreement, today they are addressing the repercussions of mass layoffs resulting from plant shutdowns. Similarly, in previous years, labor arbitrators frequently decided cases dealing with alleged infractions of Title VII …

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

Lowell Turner

[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 …

The Politics Of The Labor Movement Revitalization: The Need For A Revitalized Perspective, Lucio Baccaro, Kerstin Haman, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] Unions everywhere are struggling. Globalization, with its supporting neo-liberal ideology, encourages employers and governments to push vigorously against the constraints of employment regulation. Unions have to fight to protect past gains, resist decline and find new allies. To some extent, labor is always on the defensive in a capitalist economy, where ownership and economic decision-making lie largely beyond the reach of workers and unions. Yet the competitive pressures of today's increasingly global capitalism accentuate the pressure. Firms have new options and increasing mobility, far beyond those that most workers and unions can claim. One response is common to all …

Level-Of-Aspiration Theory And Initial Stance In Bargaining, Bruce K. Macmurray, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

This research focuses on the effect of initial stance in bargaining. Following level-of-aspiration theory, the research examines whether the pattern of early concession making modifies the impact of tough vs. soft initial stance. The experiment manipulated opponent's concession pattern (decreasing, constant, increasing) in the early phase of bargaining within an overall tough or soft initial stance. Results indicated that a decreasing concession pattern within the early bargaining extracted larger initial concessions than a constant or increasing concession pattern. Implications for Siegel and Fouraker's (1960) level-of-aspiration theory are discussed.

Making Transnational Collaboration Work, Michael Gordon, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] The need for transnational collaboration among unions across the world is great and growing in the global economy. Case studies presented in this book demonstrate the active fermentation in cross-border relations and a variety of different approaches, goals, and targets. Yet the barriers to successful collaboration among unions in different countries remain immense: from differences in union structure, ideology, and culture to conflicting interests and differing levels of economic development. What unions have accomplished by operating internationally is important, indeed much more substantial today than ever before. Yet these efforts remain a drop in the bucket compared to the …

Conclusion: Uncertain Outcomes Of Conflict And Negotiation, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

[Excerpt] To elaborate on each of these points, the findings presented in this book can be summarized as follows. First of all, the German model, that is, a social partnership approach to the negotiation of terms and conditions for the organization of an advanced market economy has worked in the past. We believe, on the basis of extensive collective research on different aspects of the political economy of the Federal Republic, both before and after unification, that the preservation of a reformed social partnership in Germany is highly desirable as an alternative to less regulated forms of capitalism in the …

Institutions And Activism: Crisis And Opportunity For A German Labor Movement In Decline, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

In recent decades, German unions have rested on their institutional laurels even as the ground has slipped away. This article analyzes two recent innovative campaigns based on grassroots mobilization that, the author argues, offer possibilities for renewed union strength. A breakthrough campaign against a militantly anti-union firm in the retail industry demonstrates the potential for a German brand of social movement unionism. The story line and institution-building strategy of this campaign fall entirely outside the framework of traditional German industrial relations. A second, very different campaign, from deep inside that traditional framework, has mobilized union members in Nordrhein-Westfalen (IG Metall’s …

Codetermination In Comparative Perspective, Kathleen Thelen, Lowell Turner

Lowell Turner

The trend of western industrialised societies is towards decentralization of collective bargaining and the active participation of the workforce in productivity and efficiency improvements. How well does the German model of co-determination perform in competition with liberal market economies? Compared with other countries, how adaptable is it?

Power And Tactics In Bargaining, Samuel B. Bacharach, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

This paper develops and tests an analytical framework for analyzing the selection of tactics in bargaining. Using a variant of power-dependence theory, the authors propose that bargainers will use different dimensions of dependence, such as the availability of alternative outcomes from other sources and the value of the outcomes at stake, to select among different tactics. To test this model, the authors conducted two simulation experiments that portrayed an employee-employer conflict over a pay raise, manipulating four dimensions of dependence: employee's outcome alternatives, employee's outcome value, employer's outcome alternatives, and employer's outcome value. Within this context, respondents estimated the likelihood …

Power Dependence In Individual Bargaining: The Expected Utility Of Influence, Edward J. Lawler, Samuel B. Bacharach

Edward J Lawler

This study examines the impact of certain dimensions of dependence on the expected effectiveness of an influence attempt in a two-person bargaining situation. Assuming the role of employer, employee, or outside observer, 1,056 college students estimated the utility of an attempt by an employee to influence his employer with respect to a pay raise under various conditions of dependence. The results show that respondents attributed greatest utility to the attempt when the employee had many alternatives (other job possibilities) and valued highly the outcomes at issue (a pay raise) and when the employer had few alternatives (other workers) and ascribed …

Municipal Government Structure, Unionization, And The Wages Of Fire Fighters, Ronald G. Ehrenberg

Ronald G. Ehrenberg

[Excerpt] Also important to any analysis of labor costs in the public sector today is, of course, the effect of collective bargaining on wages. For reasons described in a recent article by Orley Ashenfelter, fire fighters provide an excellent test of union wage effects at the city level. This study will therefore use fire fighters as an example with which to assess and compare the effects on wages of both unionism and the structure of municipal government. This article is in many respects an extension of the excellent study by Asehenfelter, who examined the effect of the International Association of …

[Review Of The Book Workplace Justice Without Unions], Alexander Colvin

Alexander Colvin

[Excerpt] This book examines one of the most important issues in contemporary industrial relations in the United States, the provision of workplace justice to the vast majority of American workers who lack union representation. In contrast to nearly all other countries, employment in the United States is governed by the default rule of employment-at-will under which workers can be fired without notice for any reason, good or bad. Exceptions to this rule are limited to specific contractual or statutory protections in areas such as discrimination and the shrinking segment of the American workforce represented by unions. The situation for the …

The Fiscal Crisis Of The Campus: The View From California, R. Jeffrey Lustig

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The significance of the disinvestment in American baccalaureate, Ph.D. and community college institutions in recent years can hardly be exaggerated. The quandary posed by the attendant reduced funding goes beyond issues of crowded classrooms and dilapidated facilities; ultimately it questions whether our higher education will continue to be a gateway to equality and guarantor of opportunity, a path to broader horizons for citizens—or if it will be transformed into a bulwark of social inequality and vehicle for narrow vocational instruction.

Determining how to successfully grapple with this decline in funding is hindered, however, by the ways in which policy-makers and …

Financing Higher Education: Privatization, Resistance And Renewal, Gerald Turkel

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

The fiscal crisis of higher education currently is being resolved largely through a financing policy of privatization, a pattern that increasingly shifts responsibility to individual students and their families. The politics of privatization makes it ever more difficult for lower-income students to attend college and has become a major financial burden for middle-income people. Beyond the direct financial consequences, privatization has increasingly subordinated the research and educational missions of higher education to the countervailing imperatives of economic growth and competitiveness. Privatization has enhanced the entrepreneurial and corporate features of universities and colleges, increasingly shifting the values of higher education away …

The Fiscal Crisis Of The Campus: The View From California, R. Jeffrey Lustig

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Over the last generation, state governments have undertaken a major disinvestment in higher education. The questions raised by these funding reductions go beyond matters of crowded classrooms, dilapidated facilities, and altered pedagogies to challenge the basic function of college and university education in the United States. Will higher education continue to be the gateway to equality and provider of broad horizons for citizens, or will it be transformed into a bulwark of social privilege and narrow conveyor of vocational skills for private consumers? These are the ultimate questions posed by the funding priorities of the state legislatures in America today.

Financing Higher Education: Privatization, Resistance, And Renewal, Gerald Turkel

Journal of Collective Bargaining in the Academy

Higher education’s financial crisis is being resolved largely through a politics of privatization, changing patterns of financing that increasingly shift responsibilities to individual students and their families. The politics of privatization makes it ever more difficult for low income students to attend college and has become a major financial burden for middle income people. Beyond cost shifting, privatization has increasingly subordinated the research and educational missions of higher education to imperatives of economic growth and competitiveness. Privatization has enhanced the entrepreneurial and corporate features of universities and colleges, changing the values of higher education away from notions of common property …