Management Relations Discussion Paper

Primary Discussion Response is due by Friday (11:59:59pm Central), Peer Responses are due by Tuesday (11:59:59pm Central).

The value of negotiation in labor management relations is such that both parties bargain in good faith and are able to come to agreement on all mandatory collective bargaining items. It is important to understand details of this process to avoid an impasse. A strike or lockout might occur if there is an impasse. An impasse can have costly consequences for the union, management, and consumers.

With your fellow classmates, discuss the following:

What is good faith bargaining?
What items are mandatory and illegal in the collective bargaining process?
If labor and management come to an impasse over employee benefits and a strike occurs, what strategies would you recommend to break the impasse? Provide an example using a real-life case.

Management relations

What is good faith bargaining?

Good faith bargaining is a business and legal principle that refers to the expected duty of parties addressing management issues to meet and negotiate at a reasonable time. It requires that all be parties to express the willingness to arrive at an agreement without any coercions to make concessions or agree to a presented proposal. The principle requires that all negotiating parties behave in an honest manner that upholds agreements and promised without taking unfair advantage of any party or subjecting them to an impossible standard. The principle is typically applied in a range of management issues to include arbitration, settlement negotiations, mediation, contract negotiations, and business dealings. Management Relations Discussion Paper  The principle is an expected imperative of all negotiating parties, and relies on two standards. The first standard is that bargaining must be reasonable with all dealings conducted in good faith in fulfilling the terms of the agreement. The second standard is that bargaining must be based on the right intent. Violating any one of the two standards is considered as a violation of the good faith bargaining principle, and justification for a legal suit (Ozbiglin, Groutsis & Harvey, 2014). Overall, parties engaged in ten business environment are expected to bargain in good faith as an obligation. For instance, if the negotiating parties are unable to agree on meeting in the others location, and decide to hold the negotiation in a neutral location that is paid for. Should one party refuse to pay part of the costs, the other party can file a suite against the non-paying party for bad faith bargaining.

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What items are mandatory and illegal in the collective bargaining process?

Collective bargaining is the negotiation process between an employer and a union representative. The intention is to reach a contract agreement for a specified time period that could cover new application processes, workplace tools, training process, seniority, layoff procedures, health plans, sick leave, vacation time, performance evaluation, job classification, incentive programs, health benefits, and pay structure and rates. Mandatory items in the collective bargaining process are issues that are implied even if not discussed to include benefits, work conditions, management rights, safety, health, and wages. Illegal items are issues that cannot be discussed in any way, to include any issue of a discriminatory nature or any matter that would be considered as contravening the prevailing legislation (Ozbiglin, Groutsis & Harvey, 2014).

If labor and management come to an impasse over employee benefits and a strike occurs, what strategies would you recommend to break the impasse? Provide an example using a real-life case.

A bargaining impasse occurs when labor and management are unable to reach a consensus on the collective bargaining agreement. The result is that members will show their displeasure with the impasse by organizing and participating in strikes. Breaking such an impasse requires the application of two dispute resolution strategies. The firs strategy is to have open communication lines that demonstrate an interest in building a rapport, negotiating and exploring available options together. The second strategy is to refuse to place limits on the number of topics that can be discussed. This helps in improving the change of discovering tradeoffs that would satisfy the negotiating parties (Crawley, Swailes & Walsh, 2013).

An example of this can be seen in the GM workers strike that concluded in October 2019 after six weeks of workers downing their tools. The strike involved approximately 48,000 GM workers who were represented by the United Auto Workers Union in negotiations with the company representatives. The strike cost the workers about $1 billion in lost wages and the company $2 billion in lost production. Through applying the two strategies mentioned, the strike was resolved with the workers benefiting with the health care cost remaining the same, better work terms for transitional and temporary workers, factory investment on jobs, and pay rises. Also, they lost with the company expected to cut 6,000 jobs by relocating factories out of the country. The implication is that the strike ended when the parties were amenable to making gains and losses (Campbell, 2019).

References

Campbell, A. F. (2019). The GM strike has officially ended: here’s what workers won and lost. Retrieved from https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/10/25/20930350/gm-workers-vote-end-strike

Crawley, E., Swailes, S. & Walsh, D. (2013). Introduction to international human resource management. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Ozbiglin, M., Groutsis, D. & Harvey, W. (2014). International human resource management. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.  Management Relations Discussion Paper