The Union Of The Australian University Sector : Union Strategy And Non Union Forms Of Employee Participation

A union is an organization of workers who join together in order to have a voice in improving their jobs and the quality of work within the organization. In many occasions, unions help employees of an organization negotiate pay, benefits, flexible hours and other work conditions that may arise. Unions have a role because some degree of conflict is inevitable between workers and management (Noe, 2003). In this paper, I will be discussing the impact of unions and labor relations within an organization.

- Focus statement: This paper will focus on the opposition between western Canadian labour unions’ resolve to play a larger role in politics and industry and employers’ objection to comply with them.

Employers initially resisted unions as they were seen as a ‘tool of worker power’, and some countries even banned the groups all together (Baoill 2011). Although these restraints have been lifted, restrictions and guidelines have been put in place by government bodies to govern union activity; and employees internationally have the right to form unions (Baoill 2011).

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.

A union is an organization of workers who join together in order to have a voice in improving their jobs and the quality of work within the organization. In many occasions, unions help employees of an organization negotiate pay, benefits, flexible hours and other work conditions that may arise. Unions have a role because some degree of conflict is inevitable between workers and management (Noe, 2003). In this paper, I will be discussing the impact of unions and labor relations within an organization.

Trade unions around the world are falling on hard times in the organized workplace. The phrase ‘union live and die at the workplace’ is becoming a reality sooner than later. The likely obituary of trade unions world-wide are declining membership, density collapse, weaken bargaining power, and the lost of prominence and place in polity. Analyses of trade unionism in the literature for some 20 years now have commonly referring to a crisis of trade unionism. Most authors puts it ‘unions under siege’, ‘stagnant and declining’, and ‘experiencing near death’. Touraine (1986, p. 157) for one has argued that ‘movements such as unionism have a life history: infancy, youth, maturity, old age and death.’ Whereas, Metcalf (2005, p. 28) in his analysis

Barnes, A., MacMillan, C., & Markey, R. (2014): Maintaining union voice in the Australian university sector: Union strategy and non-union forms of employee participation: Journal of Industrial Relations: http://dx.doi.org/DOI: 10.1177/0022185613489414

“Collective voice achieves what a lone voice could never do”. Collective representation is also the foundation of a partnership relationship between employers, employees and unions that bring positive benefits for the business (Prosser, 2001).

The impact of unions exceeds the direct benefits enjoyed by member workers. Changes brought about in the workplace through the influence of labor unions have been substantial and far-reaching. Labor unions have effected the perceptions of members of societies with regard to fair wages and total compensation, fringe benefits, workplace safety and protections, and acceptable parameters for workers with regard to age, gender, race, and nation of origin (Mishel & Walters, 2003). Regardless of their labor or professional associations, members of society owe a debt to labor unions for their undaunted pursuit of legislation that serves to protect workers and establish basic worker rights. Some of the gains achieved by labor unions in this regard include: Health and safety regulations, overtime rules, and the provision of medical and family leave to workers (Mishel & Walters, 2003). That these regulations exist, and are enforced by state and federal agencies, is a direct result of the relentless lobbying of union members often at peril of their own lives. Unions strive to keep their workers informed about their rights and the regulations that are designed to protect those rights (Mishel & Walters, 2003). Labor union members are more likely to benefit from federal social insurance programs (i.e., workers' compensation and unemployment insurance) because they are informed about these programs and because labor unions purposefully conduct lay-offs and the follow-up to

What criteria, then, should unions use in deciding whether to participate in a QWL program? Can a union accurately measure an employer 's "sincerity" in urging cooperation? In committing itself and its members to QWL, what steps can a union take to protect and strengthen its own role? For unions, these are critical questions, and while rewards exist, the risks are even greater. These decisions are further complicated by the serious lack of labor-oriented resources or training materials. The vast quantity of QWL material in existence is either designed for management personnel or tor joint labor-management groups. Although many international unions have issued statements of principle, guidelines and checklists to assist locals in making decisions about QWL, no systematic study or training manual has been compiled with the express purpose of helping unions protect their interests within a QWL process. Inside the Circle: A Union Guide to QWL by Mike Parker represents an important breakthrough on this front. The book examines a variety of union experiences with QWL, detailing the problems and pitfalls in existing programs, while at the same time providing ideas and guidelines on how unions can participate to their own advantage. A union activist, Parker draws heavily on his background in QWL. Throughout the book, he analyzes the ideological assumptions and organizational

This paper seeks to analyse the characteristics of employee representation in the UK and concerns about is the UK ‘lightly regulated’ in regard of the employee representation. Employee representation can be known as the right of workers to seek a union or an individual to represent them to negotiate with their organizations with a wide range of management issues, such as wage rate, working hours, working conditions, health and safety and also their benefits. It is vital to have a formal system of employee representation in a business. This can give an

Table 1 indicates the relationships between managerial de collectivization strategies and employee responses. Six types of workers resistance are found as join union, informal collective type responses, the covert challenge to management authority, change in the work process, covert disruption to do things differently and withdrawal behaviors. The empty cells in the table told that some of the employee lack of support system to organize resistance. The first strategies which are managerial anti-unionism were highly attacked by the employees in different sectors. This is the famous form of resistance observed. For example, Servo and Tellcorp share the same response. The workers were afraid to face the union directly because the union did not be approved in the firm. The workers were disbanded from joining a union. In TEC where 6 respondents had been interviewed, they must join the union without employer notice. Moreover, a worker from Mini Steels had to forgo his membership threatened by his company. He asked to do so as a condition to receive a compensation provided. Surprisingly, there are also employees who actively join a union said the reasons they joined mainly because of personal interest such as protection and as a matter of principle.

Another actor of employment relationship is union, defined as “a continuous association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining or improving the conditions of their working lives” (S&B Webb, 1898). The function of union which is let workers join together to organise a union and the union which can empower them in the employment relationship. Union also is “legitimate voice of employees” in bargaining with employers (Nankervis et al, 2005, p.555). Unions like Queensland Teachers Union, Transport Workers Union, Queensland Public Sector Union have been successful in Australia in achieving improved wages and working conditions for employees. People join the union is because of their dissatisfaction with economic aspects of the job, a desire to influence the work environment and also believes that benefits of unionism outweigh the expected cost. According to the case, it shows that health union are battling to secure next year’s pay rise for nurses against a background of public sector cuts. Moreover, in the case, Snow (2009) believes that the union it is appropriate that staff are rewarded through training and pay where there are significant improvements in quality and services.(p 7).Unions have previously called for staff to be rewarded for efficiency savings, but employers have been reluctant to introduce such measures. (Snow, 2009, p.7). From this we can see that union also pay an important role on involvement of managers and business

Collective bargaining in the UK continues to be highly decentralised thus most bargaining being at company or workplace level, with little multi-employer bargaining outside the public sector. The findings of the 1998 Workplace Employment Relations Survey, published in late 1999 indicated that pay for 28% of employees in the private sector was determined by collective bargaining, compared with 49% in 1990 when the previous survey was undertaken. In the public sector, the pay of 54% of employees was determined by collective bargaining, compared with just over 90% in 1990, reflecting moves in the intervening period to pay-setting by review bodies or indexation formulae in large parts of the public sector. (Ref) outlines five factors which he maintains are responsible for the decline in unionisation in the industrialised world, specifically the USA and the UK: changes in the structure and composition of the labour force and employment; macroeconomic conditions unfavourable to unions; regulatory changes hostile to collectivism and unionism; employer militancy, particularly the reluctance to grant recognition to unions in new establishments; and the strategy and tactics of the unions themselves.

With a union handed to us day one apart from the selection of our bargaining team we did not have much say in what are union was and how it would be ran. We were handed a business union which is a union that is run like a business that has a process that must be followed with closed communication, specialized knowledge, and is very hierarchical. Business unions limit workers in their structural power which is the power they have to get what they want from a business such as the ability