New Swipe Card System At London Heathrow Airport

Every year in this country, there are major labor disputes that result in strikes or work stoppages. In each case, the organization, the labor union, and the public are negatively affected. Why can 't there be a better way of resolving disputes between the management and labor unions to avert unnecessary strikes? Why does the relationship between the labor unions and management have to be adversarial in nature? Does anybody benefit from strikes and work stoppages? These are some of the questions that I will explore in this study.

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

However, the power of employees has grown considerably since the early 1990s. Even though UPS was a manager owned private firm, the employees went on strike in 1997 and successfully obtained wage rises and other benefits. Federal Express handed out $20 Million worth of bonuses at the same time to thank their employees as well as make sure that they did not consider similar actions. This shows that employee power has increased in recent times leading to lower industry attractiveness.

There were a lot of issues that prompted employees at the Frontier hotel to take striking as an action to be heard. When watching this documentary for the first time I didn’t realize how long these workers were on strike for. One word to describe the owners of these hotels is “savages”. They started to fire individuals for no apparent reason it seemed the owners wanted to cut back. There was one girl that worked in the culinary department for eight years and she was let go. The hotel also took away health insurance benefits, pension contributions for employees trying to retire and the most important cutting employee wages for the hotel to save money and for the owners to profit even more letting these employees work next to nothing. A lot of workers said they felt their pride was being taken away also trying to take care of their own family will be even more inflexible. The hotel took away everything so these employees had no chose but to strike.

“It is the refusal of employers to grant such reasonable conditions and to deal with their employees through collective bargaining that leads to widespread labor unrest. The strikes which have broken out… especially in the automobile industry, are due to such “employee trouble.” (Document G)

• A catastrophic industry crisis as 200 000 staff were cut in the world aviation industry.

It amazes me how the ones in charge didn't know anything about their own workers, not even how much they were getting paid. If I was in charge that would be one of the most important things to know but the owners didn't care enough to keep track. I am glad that everybody became fed up with being treated that way and started a general strike. The strike eventually led to a grievance system that was put into place but most still didn't follow

During the legal dispute, pickets were set up across the ports as a form of industrial action from the sacked workers in an attempt to hinder the movement of port traffic and slow down waterside productivity. Yet these were promptly removed through court injunctions. In short, the use of the mechanism of corporate restructure, in the case of Patricks, allowed them both to evade paying employee entitlements and dismissing almost its entire unionised workforce. The Waterfront Dispute was heavily debated by all parties on 60 Minutes and all the issues of unionism on the waterside and productivity were discussed. This prompted debate on whether other employers could use such tactics to their advantage.

The manager’s retaliatory approach to lower the loss percentage was not a motivational factor for the employees at all when he changed the number of hours employees had to work to receive free food from 6 hours a day to 12 hours. Evidently the employees did not respect his authority as the change did not seem to have an effect on them nor did it give them any motivation to do better. These jobs where minimum pay jobs

Empowering broad-based action—the company should continually check barriers of change and remove obstacles to make the change strategy successful. BA (2010) announced that striking staff would forfeit cheap travel perks. This action aimed to reduce strikes and penalized strikers. In addition, more than 80 crew members (2010) had been suspended and 13 had been permanently dismissed from BA. BA took actions to remove barriers. However, it did not help Cabin Crew to meet their needs, and caused new barriers.

There definitely was a crisis happening in that airline. They didn’t seem to have a cohesive culture and it seemed as if they continued down this path they would no longer have a business either. British Airways had this divide between BEA and BOAC.

How was the accompanying reading, “Re-Energizing the Mature Organization,” germane to the case on British Airways?

Low morale among employees in any company eventually leads to decreased profits with other factors of the business decreasing along the way. “And US Airways employees, who have seen their pay cut by more than 20 percent and their health insurance and pension plans shrink, are certainly an unhappy lot” (Claudia H. Deutsch). In order to increase profits, the airline has decreased pay and took away some of the earned vacation. “Company executives say they are taking steps that will improve working conditions and profitability” (Claudia H. Deutsch). Many employees were calling in sick which the company believed would eventually lead to poor customer service.

British Airways (BA) is a company that encountered several difficulties back in the 1970’s and 1980’s. The poor performances of the organization, was leading the company to failure. BA was offering a service that even though it accomplished the mission of the company, was not providing customer satisfaction. The organization was not taking into consideration the needs of the costumer and was not providing an acceptable customer service experience. “Productivity at BA in the 1970s was strikingly bad, especially in contrast to other leading foreign airlines” (Jick, Peiperl, 2010, p.28). Due to numerous changes, the company increased their revenues and became a respectful and well know organization.

This event however, highlighted a weakness between the workforce and the managers of the company which could be the source of many problems in future. If workers in other plants, as result of the Kilmarnock/Glasgow incident assume that the company views them as disposable labour, not only could the company land themselves a demotivated workforce; which in turn could lead to 'shirking