Chapter 10: Organized labor and the fire officer Flashcards
Arbitration
Resolution of a dispute by a mediator or a group rather than a court of law. Any civil matter may be settled in this way; some labor-management agreements include a binding arbitration clause.
Collective bargaining
Method whereby representatives of employee’s (unions) and employers determine the conditions of employment through direct negotiation, normally resulting in a written contract setting forth the wages, hours, and other conditions to be observed for a stipulated period (e.g. 3 years). This term also applies to union-management dealings during the terms of the agreement.
Fair Labor Standards Act
Federal legislation passed in 1938 that provides the minimum standards for both wages and overtime entitlement and spells out administrative procedures by which covered work time must be compensated. Public safety workers were added to FLSA coverage in 1986.
Good faith bargaining
A legal requirement of both the union and the employer arising out of section 8(d) of the National Labor Relations Act. Enforced by the National Labor Relations board, the parties are required to meet regularly to bargain collectively for wages, hours, and other conditions of employment.
Grievance
A dispute, claim, or complaint that any employee or group of employee’s may have a relation to the interpretation, application, and/or alleged violation of some provision of the labor agreement of personnel regulations.
Grievance procedure
A formal structured process that is employed within an organization to resolve a grievance. In most cases, the grievance procedure is incorporated in the personnel rules or the labor agreement and specifies a series of steps that must be followed in a particular order.
Impasse
A situation in which the parties in a dispute have reached a deadlock in negotiations; also described as the demarcation line between bargaining and negotiation. A declaration of an impasse in labor-management negotiations brings in a state of federal negotiator who will start a fact-finding process that will lead to a binging arbitration resolution.
Mediation
The intervention of a neutral third party in an industrial dispute. The object is to enable the two sides to reach a compromise solution to their differences, which the mediator usually does be seeing representatives from both sides separately and then together.
Negotiation
Mutual discussion and arrangement of the terms of an agreement.
Political action committee (PAC)
An organization formed by corporations, unions, and other interest groups that solicits campaign contributions from private individuals and distributes these funds to political candidates.
Right to work
A worker cannot be compelled, as a condition of employment, to join or not join or to pay dues to a labor union.
Shop Steward
A union member appointed or elected to be the first line of labor representation at the workplace. The steward enforces the contract, collective agreement, or memorandum of understanding and represents the union members at the fire station or work location.
Strike
A concerted act by a group of employees who withhold their labor for the purpose of effecting a change in wages, hours, or working conditions.
Unfair labor practices
Employer or union practices forbidden by the National Labor Relations Board or state/local laws, subject to court appeal. It often involves the employer’s efforts to avoid bargaining in good faith.
Yellow dog contracts
Pledges that employers required workers to sign indication that they would not join a union as long as the company employed them. Such contracts were declared unenforceable by the Norris-LaGuardia Act or 1932.
