Negotiation Analysis Essay

In early August of 1997 the United Parcel Service (UPS) had a predicament on its hands, a teamsters strike. UPS, the world 's largest package distribution company was coming off a year [1996] in which they reported sales of $22.4 billion. UPS Employed 75,000 management and non-union employees compared with 185,000 teamsters who are part of the AFL-CIO that were going on strike. The teamsters rejected a contract extension offer from the company leaving the fate of millions of packages carrying everything from lobsters to laser printers up in the air (Johnson).

UPS proposed a plan that would increase the monthly pension benefits for full and part-time employees an average of 50 percent. The current pension plan benefited thousands of teamsters retirees that never even worked for UPS . Basically, UPS wanted UPS dollars to go to UPS people (UPS vs Teamsters). Before the strike, in many regions UPS participated in multi-employer benefit plans in which several shipping employers jointly pay for employee benefits. If one employer goes out of business or gets behind on payments, the other employers must compensate for the loss. This explains why it is said that UPS pays for the retirement and benefits of people that never worked for them (Business News New Jersey).

The United Parcel Service (UPS) adopted a business strategy of mostly hiring part-time workers – attractive to young workers who were given work at off-time shifts earning union-negotiated wages and benefits. However, part-time work presented almost no opportunity for advancement. By 1996, this part-time UPS’s workforce grew to 182,000 part-time employees, working approximately 26-28 hours/week. The Teamster Union, handling the bargaining negotiations for UPS worker-members, researched the rights of the part-time worker and analyzed the disparities in salaries, retirement fund benefits and limited opportunities for full-time hiring between the part-time and full-time workers. The Teamster Union members’ called for strike after presenting this picture of UPS had exploited part-time workers to cut costs. This 1997 strike against UPS was as successful as it was disruptive. The strike was disruptive to the businesses across the country because it upset the shipping patterns. Yet, the strikers had gained large general public support over the company. The strike was led Teamsters president Ron Carey successfully because of its strategic execution. Namely, Carey made good use of media and generated public sentiment to pressure UPS to settle in his favor. From the first, the Teamsters had the high ground given the nature of the dispute and the fact that the public was also concerned about the issue of part-time work and the way companies were using part-time workers to avoid paying

Company Overview1 United Parcel Service was founded in 1907. It has locations in the United States as well as around the world. Its corporate headquarters is located in Atlanta, Georgia. UPS is the world’s largest package distribution company delivering more than 13 million documents and parcels every day and generating revenues of more than $27 billion a year. UPS is also the world’s largest express package and document delivery company, delivering more packages in two days or less that are tracked and guaranteed than any other company in the industry. It serves more than 200 countries and territories. The company operates in five international regions: Europe/Middle East & Africa; Asia Pacific; Latin America/Caribbean; Canada and the United States. The company is broken down into several divisions because of this. These divisions include UPS Air Cargo, UPS Aviation Technologies,

Since its establishment in year 1907, UPS gradually underwent several organizational and functional reformations to become a successful firm by late 1980. Improved means of communication aided the organization to render quick services to the customer by internal replacement of the delivery vehicles from streetcar and bicycles to its first delivery car in the year 1913.Apart from the company approach towards service modifications, it modeled the union-management partnership to ensure employee to be part of UPS and union membership at the same time by putting forward remarkable features like differential start times, work across job classification and overtimes as needed. These

When comparing both claims from both parties, union and the company, it will be the union. I believe that Union had a stronger case and from the union perspective, there were several arguments made that were persuasive and they are; the threatening of employees with deprivation of benefits if the union should be elected to represent them, repeatedly interrogated employees concerning their union activities, and promising to pay and paying employees for certain medical benefits to discourage them from supporting the union.” The interrogation of employees concerning union activities in particular is an affirmation in the case where the company’s past employee maintenance, Larry Melton, called George Thompson, an employee who works at the company

In this negotiation exercise, I was assigned as the Seaborne Governor’s negotiator as part of a six member party meeting to negotiate a deal with Harborco to build and operate a deepwater port off the coast of Seaborne. The Governor on the whole was very interested in seeing this deepwater port built in Seaborne as she believes that the size of the project would provide the stimulus for a dramatic recovery in the state.

     Unions have become commonplace in the labor arena. They provide employees with a valuable tool that allows them to stand together against their employer to make sure that their rights are upheld in the workplace. This paper will focus on labor unions with regards to how they work in two very different companies, Ford Motor Company and United Airlines. Also, a brief history will be outlined as well as legislation regarding unions.

Labor Unions have become an important factor in our industries. For many years, labor unions have served as the main voice of the workers to their employers. The continuous effort of labor unions in helping the laborers ensure their rights in their jobs, acquire all the benefits they need and to eliminate the injustice experienced by workers in their workplace is still an ongoing process. In order to understand labor unions in general, knowing the roots of it is the best way to start. In this paper, the progress of the labor unions throughout history, the issues faced the developments it achieved, laws passed and the problem faced by today’s unions will be tackled.

To be honest, I was not fully aware of what unions were or how they operated exactly until having to reading about them with this section. While I was completing the form on 13.2.1, the following statements were the ones that I were very unaware of and needed to do further research on: union wages are not competitive in a global economy, unions are a big help to workers, and U.S. productivity would be much higher if it weren't for unions. There are a few different reasons for why people join unions. Some employees join unions because they are dissatisfied with the work environment, including work conditions, compensations, and supervision while other employees join because they have a desire to have more influence in affecting change in the

The main question that this case study addresses is do unions help organizational productivity? If not then do unions hurt a company’s overall productivity? This can be a difficult question because workers unions all operate in different ways and work to achieve different levels of goals. At a basic level a labor union is an organization that allows employees to work as a unit in order to negotiate with their employers about areas of their employment such as compensation, hours of employment, labor disputes, and conditions of work, among others.

“The keystone of successful business is cooperation. Friction retards progress” (Penney, n.d., para. 1). Stagnant relationships between labor, management and the unions at Ellard Williams, Incorporated (EWI) is causing employee motivation to decrease while the number of union-filed grievances increases. This paper will describe how unions can add to the success of an organization, the causes of turbulent relationships between labor and management, and offers three strategies to improve union and management relations and stimulate production.

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).

In the 19th century, the Union movement first emerges. This was a tie when wages were low with long hours and safety regulations were virtually non-existent, employees organized to address these issues. According to Pynes (2013), “private sector labor-management relations were initially governed by the National Labor Relations Act of 1935 (NLRA). The NLRA permitted employees to organize and join unions for the purposes of collective bargaining (2013, p. 342).” It was defined to defend the rights of the employee benefit through collective bargaining. A collective bargaining is a deal with of arbitration between both parties; Union representatives and a corporation, trying to attain the best welfares of both groups. From an employee perspective, what are three advantages and disadvantage of an unionized organization; why. Also from a management what are three advantages and disadvantage of an unionized organization; why.

In the early 18th century, industrial revolution had first happened in England. At that time, a large numbers of vulnerable groups such as women, children, and farmers turn into labour. The workers had no power and suffered oppression. In order to fight against, they pushed together and created union to defend their benefits. At present, union has been popular in different industries, which can effectively deal with problems between employers and employees. Meanwhile, with the development of economy and the change of human values, people call into question whether union is beneficial for the society or not. There have both advantages and disadvantages for employee and employer in unionized and non-unionized workplace. Also, in the future, union has to try to be more creative to adapt the changing workforce.