LR Final Exam Flashcards
What are the four main objectives of unions?
- Improving terms and conditions of work for their members
- Protecting employees against arbitrary management actions
- Providing a process for conflict resolution and employee input
- Pursuing economic and social change
What is it called when a union gets a favourable deal with one employer, and uses that as leverage with others?
Whipsawing.
What are the four sub-processes (of negotiation) involved in bargaining?
- Intra-organizational bargaining
- Distributive bargaining
- Integrative bargaining
- Attitudinal structuring
What factors determine the union-management relationship?
- External economic, technological, and legal factors
- Personalities of leaders
- Beliefs and values of leaders
- Experience with collective bargaining
What are the five types of union-management relationship?
- Conflict
- Containment-aggression
- Accomodation
- Cooperation
- Collusion
What factors affect union demands? (7)
- Experience with the collective agreement
- Grievances and complaints filed by bargaining unit members
- Arbitration decisions
- Inputs from bargaining unit members
- Input from national or international unions
- Economic forecasts
- Other contract settlements, industry and local
What factors affect employer demands? (6)
- Experience with the collective agreement
- Grievance and arbitration decisions
- Feedback from managers
- Strategic business plans
- Short and long-range economic forecasts
- Contract settlements, by industrial sector and regional or local area
What are the three stages of negotiation?
- Establishing the negotiation range
- Search phase
- Crisis phase
What are nine actions deemed to indicate bad faith?
- Refusal to meet
- Refusal to recognize the union
- Not giving the negotiating team power to bargain
- Surface bargaining
- Deception
- Concealing important information
- Deliberate provocation during the bargaining
- Refusal to justify a bargaining position
- Refusing to make every reasonable effort to enter into a collective agreement
What seven factors affect an employer’s bargaining power?
- Inventory levels
- Interdependence of bargaining unit
- Competitive position of employer
- Time of negotiations
- Ability to continue operations
- Bargaining structure
- Public opinion
What eight factors affect a union’s bargaining power?
- Support of bargaining unit members
- Size of strike fund
- Timing of a strike
- Effectiveness of a strike
- Effect of picketing
- Labour cost/total cost
- Elasticity of demand for product or service provided by employer
- Public opinion
What are nine factors that affect strikes?
- Differences in information between union and employer
- Economic environment
- Bargaining unit characteristics
- Internal conflicts within the union or employer
- The relationship between the union and the employer
- Negotiators’ skill and experience
- Bargaining history
- Legislative environment
- Worker discontent
What are the six requirements for a strike or lockout?
- No collective agreement currently in force
- Parties have bargained in good faith
- Conciliation or mediation process completed
- Strike vote
- Notice of strike or lockout
- Essential services agreement in place
What are the five mandatory terms?
- Recognition clause
- Prohibition against strikes/lockouts during the term
- Arbitration of grievances (grievance/arbitration process)
- Minimum term of one year
- A “check off” clause - requiring the employer to deduct union dues from the pay of unionized employees
What is the name for the assumption that any rights not specifically laid out in the collective agreement are management rights?
Reserved or residual rights theory.
What is the name for a provision that seniority will only be referred to if the skill and ability of two employees competing for a job are relatively equal?
A relative or competitive ability clause.
What six requirements must management rights meet?
- Must not be inconsistent with the collective agreement
- Must not be unreasonable
- Must be clear and unequivocal
- Must be brought to the attention of the employee affected before the company can act on it
- The employee concerned must have been notified that a breach of such rule could result in his discharge if the rule is used as a foundation for discharge
- Such rule should have been consistently enforced by the company from the time it was introduced
What three primary obligations do employees who require accommodation have?
- They must communicate their need to the employer
- They must cooperate with the employer in attempts to provide accommodation
- They must accept reasonable attempts to accommodate
What are the three primary functions of the grievance process?
- Provides a dispute settlement mechanism
- Ensures compliance with the collective agreement
- Provides a forum for additional bargaining during the term of the collective agreement
What are the mutual benefits of the grievance process? (2)
- Settles disputes without interruption of work
- Settles disputes prior to the next round of negotiations
What are the benefits specific to mangement of the grievance process? (3)
- Provides a communication mechanism for the parties
- Establishes a check on the quality and consistency of management decisions
- Provides a voice mechanism for unionized workers that reduces turnover
What are the benefits specific to Unions of the grievance process? (4)
- Provides a potential pressure tactic
- Provides a method to oppose or resist management directives
- Increases union solidarity
- Provides political benefits to union leaders
What are the benefits specific to unionized employees of the grievance process? (2)
- Provides a review of the workplace decisions by outside party
- Increases job security
What is the grievance rate?
The number of grievances filed divided by the number of employees in the bargaining unit.
What are four advantages of grievance mediation?
- Takes less time
- Lower cost
- Potential to develop better solutions
- Protection of relationship between parties
What are ten grounds for discipline?
- Failure to attend work
- Leaving work without permission
- Lateness
- Theft
- Falsification of employment records
- Misconduct on the job, including property damage and assault
- Incompetence related to job duties
- Insubordination, including refusal to follow orders of supervisors
- Off-duty behaviour that affects the employer’s business
- Breach of company rules
What is the term meaning that an arbitration award should reflect the agreement that the parties would have reached in negotiations?
The replication principle.
What are the four different contract dispute relation methods in the public sector?
- Unrestricted strike
- No-strike, interest arbitration
- Designated or controlled strike
- Legislation
What ten factors would an arbitrator consider when reviewing the discipline imposed by an employer?
- The seriousness of the misconduct
- The length of service of the grievor
- The previous record of the grievor
- Provocation by management or other employees
- Whether the misconduct was premeditated or committed on the spur of the moment
- Whether the penalty creates special economic hardship
- The uniformity of enforcement of rules
- Whether rules were brought to the attention of employees
- Whether the grievor initially denied or admitted the misconduct
- Other factors that might be considered—for example, the failure of the grievor to apologize
