COnflict at Riverside

The state of the labour unions in British Columbia and Quebec are factors that will affect Stonewall’s HR Planning. Stonewall will have to ensure they walk the tight line between ensuring they are fiscally responsible while maintaining a good relationship with these unions. This is not only important for future relations but because of the importance that is placed on public relations and ultimately

Prisons hide prisoners from society. “If an inmate population is shut in, the free community is shut out, and the vision of men held in custody is, in part, prevented from arising to prick the conscience of those who abide by the social rules” (Sykes, 1958, 8). The prison is an instrument of the state. However, the prison reacts and acts based on other groups in the free community. Some believe imprisonment

This essay will look at various methods that have been used in the historical and modern context to give employees ‘voice’ which include Voluntarism, Trade Unions (TU’s) and

The changes brought up labor unions in the United States over recent history has brought about a movement. This specific movement has shaped the way that employees and workers are treated in the workforce,and how they maintain their quality of life through this employment. Many people think that the labor unions’ influence has created a power struggle between management and union leaders. In many cases this can be considered true, as there have been countless feuds between management teams and labor unions, especially in recent history. In today’s times, on the one hand, some people believe the existence of unions are a necessity in order to ensure and promote employee freedom; while on the other hand some people view labor unions as just another problem in the line of employee success.

Two years ago the United Steel Workers organized the 400 workers at Maple Grove Foods, a food processing company in Western Ontario. Previously the company had been in operation for over thirty years as a non-union shop. Management had tried to convince employees not to join the union. The employees were paid quite well, in the view of the company.

The election of the Liberal Coalition Government saw the end of the Accords, centralised wage determination, and a lessening of the role of institutions (IRC, ACTU) in the wage determination processes. This new system lessened the power of unions by making it easier for workers to form enterprise unions. It deregulated the labour market by reducing the awards on working conditions to 20 allowable matters. This made non-union contracts more attractive. It introduced AWA’s for the first time.

In order to understand the moral fabric of the world, it is important to question any information that is given to an individual, instead of blindly accepting the majority opinion and giving it full credibility and validity based on other people’s opinions. Plato’s work, The Republic introduces the allegory of the cave, which is metaphorical scenario that attempts to explain the importance of questioning norms that may seem trivial. Plato illustrates a cave where bounded prisoners have lived all their lives in seclusion, away from the outside world. In their immobile state, they can only look at the wall in front of them which is illuminated by a small fire that has been going on behind them. The wall constantly projects shadows of people

Being part of a union gives members the benefit of negotiating with their employer collectively, as part of a group; giving them more power than if they were to negotiate as individuals (Silverman, n.d.). Overall, unions demand fairness which can lead to the unions influencing and changing ‘managerial decision-making at the workplace level’ for decisions in which employees are affected (Verma 2005). Unions are also beneficial to have present in the workplace because their bargaining of better condition will often benefit non-members as the conditions negotiated with management are implemented across the organization with no regard to membership status. Management is also able to avoid union disagreement by benchmarking conditions to that of an already unionized workplace.

In 2005, social, economic, and political conditions in Alberta were ideal for the labour dispute that mushroomed at Lakeside Packers in Brooks, Alberta between workers (and their union) and management. The primarily Caucasian, conservative, change-averse community of Brooks had a long history of farming, family, and church life that hadn’t changed much in generations (Inkster, 2007). The multimillion-dollar beef processing and packing plant (a division of American megacorporation Tyson Foods) was one of the largest slaughterhouses in North America, with a reputation of treating workers badly and being confrontationally anti-union, and had been hiring a large number of immigrant workers who flooded the community. The United Food and Commercial Workers Union had been striving for years to become the bargaining unit for Lakeside workers, and with the influx of immigrant workers, recruitment and advocacy efforts were ballooning. As well, the long-entrenched Progressive Conservative government in Alberta was a supporter of big business and labour laws did little to protect workers.

From this perspective, trade union is perceived not necessary and the role of it is creating conflict, and it is seen an unwelcome intrusion into the organization from outside competing with management for the loyalty of employees (Rose, 2004). Trade unions exist either as the result of wickedness or perverseness of individual employees, or because of a failure of management to anticipate and incorporate worker needs and concerns (Bray, Deery, Walsh and Waring, 2005).

What was at issue was not whether the prison environment as too harsh or too aseptic, too primitive or too efficient, but its very materiality as an instrument and vector of power, it is this whole technology go power over the body that the technology of the ‘soul’ - that of the educationalist, psychologists and psychiatrists - fails either to conceal or compensate, for the simple reason that it is one of its tools. (TBOTC, Foucault, pg. 28)

History shows that there has been conflict of power within the workforce between union and management. This essay will discuss if management should have the right to determine whether a union should operate within their workplace. It is necessary first to discuss the roles of unions and management in the workplace and discuss both points of view on the power distribution between unions and management in the workplace.

In the case of labor, their ability to do so is largely determined by the elasticity of demand for labor and how likely they are to be replaced by other workers and/or machinery. Conversely, management must possess the resources to withstand a strike by their workers in order to maintain a strong level of relative power. In our case, the economic channel of influence on relative power is strongly represented. It is mentioned that jobs at First National were once recognized as being some of the most secure in the Lake City area, but “the advantage of working at the bank in this respect compared to working at the auto plant had largely disappeared 10 years ago when the union first negotiated supplementary unemployment benefits, and… by negotiating a Guaranteed Annual Income which replaced the SUB.” The two main issues addressed during meetings held by union and management representatives with FNB employees were “the pension and profit-sharing plans and the lack of an employer-paid hospital-medical plan.” The profit-sharing plan is generally regarded as “highly valued” and contributes to management’s relative power. Conversely, the lack of an employer-paid medical plan should serve as a source of relative power for the union, as “The First National was the only bank in the area which did not have a hospital-medical

David Brody argues that the rise of contractual or collective bargaining relationships during the post WWII era formalized the relationship between employers and unions. The use of collective bargaining agreements to resolve workplace disputes weakened unions and the power of workers. Other actions, such as using collection bargaining as a form of substitution for direct action and using it instead of the strike for grievance and arbitration procedure served , also has weakened the unions and the power of workers. The rise of contractual or collective bargaining relationships changed the dynamic of the workplace, shifting the power from the union side to towards the employers. The perspective could best be argued suing Weber’s theory and

In this topic we talk about many different forms of leadership and how it can affect relations between the corporate leadership entities and union leadership. Most often we see or read about in the news the break down between negotiations between the corporate leaders and the union leaders causing production to come to a halt while items are being negotiated.