Academic literature on the topic 'Collective bargaining'

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University, 1994.<br>Includes tables and appendices. Typescript; issued also on microfilm. Sponsor: Jonathan T. Hughes. Dissertation Committee: Margaret Terry Orr. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 159-163).

Competitive forces in the market force employers to change the way they operate their businesses. The changes that employers have to make often demand an alteration of the employees’ terms and conditions of employment. By law employers are not permitted to unilaterally effect changes to the employee’s terms and conditions of employment. They have to obtain the consent of the affected employees. This is where collective bargaining fits in. The employer has to negotiate with the employees. One way in which through the process of collective bargaining an employer can exert pressure on the employees to accept the changes is to effect a lock-out. Under the Labour Relations Act 28 of 1956 within the context of a lock-out, an employer was permitted to use conditional dismissal as a bargaining weapon. This conditional dismissal had to be coupled with an offer of reemployment should the employees accept an employer’s demand. In essence, the lock-out had a bite in the form of the conditional dismissal. This made the lock-out quite effective. The 1995 Labour Relations Act prohibits in no uncertain terms the use of a dismissal as a means of compelling employees to accept an employer’s demand in any matter of mutual interest. Within the collective bargaining context, dismissal is not a legitimate option. The employer only has the lock-out as a tool of compulsion. The definition of a lock-out in terms of this Act does not accommodate the use of dismissal. This makes the lock-out option to be less potent than it was under the 1956 Labour Relations Act. However, employers are permitted to dismiss on operational grounds, provided that they follow a fair procedure. Terms and conditions of employment greatly feature in the operational requirements of a business. If the employees’ terms and conditions of employment are not responsive to the operational requirements of the business and they are unwilling to accept changes to those terms, the employer has the right to dismiss them. The employer will not be dismissing the employees as a way of inducing them to accept the changes. He will instead be dismissing them on the basis of operational requirements. iv The question that then arises is how should a dismissal that is intended to compel employees to accept an employers demand (falling within section 187(1)(c) of the 1995 Labour Relations Act be distinguished from a dismissal that is genuinely based on operational requirements as contemplated by section 188(1)(a)(ii). Doesn’t the fact that section 187(1)(c) explicitly prohibits the use of dismissal within the context of collective bargaining give rise to some tension with section 188(1)(a)(ii) which categorically gives employers the right to dismiss on operational grounds. The decision of the Labour Appeal Court in Fry’s Metals v NUMSA has stated that there is no tension whatsoever between the two sections. The court has also ruled that the dismissals that are hit by section 187(1)(c) are those dismissals that are accompanied by an offer of reemployment. According to the court, this offer is indicative of the real purpose of the employer, namely to compel employees to accept his demand. Dismissals not accompanied by an offer of re-employment are on the other hand a true reflection of the fact that the employer is indeed dismissing the employees for operational requirements. This literal interpretation of the meaning and scope of section 187(1)(c) has the potential of opening the floodgates. Instead of resorting to the use of the lock-out to secure the agreement of employees in the collective bargaining process, employers now have a potent tool in the form of a dismissal. As long as the employer makes it abundantly clear that the dismissal is final and irrevocable, he is free from the claws of section 187(1)(c). Given the fact that the lock-out option is not always effective, employers may find it hard to resist the temptation to use the threat of permanent dismissal as a bargaining chip. It is an option that is emasculated by the fact that in an employer initiated lock-out the use of replacement labour is prohibited. The threat of not just a conditional dismissal but a permanent one may force employees to capitulate to the employer’s demand during negotiations. This would effectively render negotiations about changes to terms and conditions of employment a farce. The employer would have an upper hand. The implications of this narrow interpretation are quite far-reaching. The long held view that dismissal is not a legitimate weapon of coercion in the collective bargaining process is under serious challenge. Only conditional dismissals are illegitimate in the collective bargaining v arena. Permanent dismissals are permitted. This negates the very purpose of the collective bargaining process. This study seeks to examine the anomalies that flow from this interpretation of the meaning of section 187(1)(c). The study further investigates if this interpretation is not at odds with what the legislation really intended to achieve by enacting this clause. The study also explores ways in which the sanctity of collective bargaining could be restored. Recommendations are made to that effect.

This study examines collective bargaining in 14 unionized community colleges in British Columbia. It provides a broad overview of bargaining in the colleges and insights into the tensions commonly associated with collective bargaining. The study combines qualitative data and quantitative data through the use of interviews, contractual analysis and two questionnaires. One survey examined the opinions of board members, senior administrators and faculty leaders on various aspects of collective bargaining. The latter included the competitive characteristics of distributive bargaining, governance, the scope of the collective agreements and a number of proposed modifications aimed at improving bargaining in the colleges. The study is significant as it fills a void in the research related to the above issues in British Columbia's colleges. The literature review encompassed a wide range of research. This included material related to the evolution of collective bargaining in higher education; factors that influence opinions of bargaining; constructive conflict, destructive conflict and dysfunctional competition; conflict resolution techniques associated with bargaining; and integrative bargaining. The study revealed a competitive collective bargaining climate in the colleges, characterized by such factors as a lack of trust and respect, inexperienced faculty negotiators, contractual constraints and a lack of bargaining priorities. The competitive climate was aggravated by a number of external factors (government policies); internal factors (the management style of a president); the composition of the faculty associations (combined vocational and academic faculty associations); and personal factors (age and political preferences). In terms of governance issues, the scope of the collective agreements and their political orientation, the board members and the senior administrators are essentially from the same population. The faculty leaders come from a different population. The respondents favour modifications that would enhance communications, training, and equal access to information, as well as the resolution of labour matters at the local level rather than at the provincial level. Distributive bargaining will likely remain the cornerstone of negotiations in British Columbia's colleges. Although it does not have to be as competitive as it is, the distributive model appears to be best suited to the resolution of Level I issues, e.g. salaries, benefits. Given the collegial traditions of higher education, the varying professional needs of the faculty, the issue of management rights and the intrinsic values of the parties involved, a more collaborative model of bargaining is necessary to accommodate Level II issues. The latter include faculty participation in college governance, peer evaluation, and the selection of other faculty. The study contributed to the research literature and produced a number of recommendations for practice.<br>Education, Faculty of<br>Graduate

Nursing workload and time worked are two key working conditions tied to the risk of adverse events and medical error. In Canada at the provincial level, these issues, which I call “patient safety issues”, are raised, negotiated and ultimately resolved within collective bargaining structures that are based on traditional “Wagnerist” labour law theory. I reviewed the results of decisions on patient safety issues within fifteen years of nurse collective bargaining in six of the thirteen provinces/territories. My findings are that patient safety issues of workload are inadequately addressed in nurse collective agreements, but at the same time these agreements contained strong patient safety-driven protections relating to time-worked issues of scheduling, hours of work and overtime. I further conclude that these limitations can be attributed to a series of trends in the process of nurse collective bargaining that tended to limit the ability of nurses’ unions to push for patient safety protections and more generally to marginalize patient safety issues in the bargaining process in favour of more traditional economic issues. To overcome these problems, I propose that patient safety issues in nursing be decided instead in locally-based “patient safety committees” instead of in the current traditional labour law model.

In this roundtable, our speakers analyze, evaluate and criticize the new legal scenario which is the collective labor law, specifically related to collective bargaining, in an area influenced by the development of capitalism, which is beginning to cause different forms business organizations that break the paradigm of the definition of company we know, and thus leads us to redesign legal parameters to meet the challenges of the now called “business groups” and “network companies” for a proper defense of the collective rights of workers and defend the interests of employers.<br>En la presente mesa redonda, nuestros ponentes analizan, evalúan y critican el nuevo escenario legal en el cual se encuentra el derecho colectivo del trabajo, específicamente relacionado con las negociaciones colectivas, en un ámbito influenciado por desarrollo del capitalismo, que empieza a originar distintas formas de organizaciones empresariales, que rompen el paradigma de la definición de empresa que conocemos, y que de esta manera, nos lleva a rediseñar parámetros legales para sobrellevar los desafíos de los ahora llamados “grupos empresariales” y “empresas en red” para un adecuada defensa de los derechos colectivos de los trabajadores y la defensa de los intereses de los empleadores.