CHAPTER 9- section 3

UNIONS/ STRIKE/ LOCKOUT

COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

UNIONS

• A trade union (British English) or labor union (American English) is an organization of workers who have banded together to achieve common goals such as better working conditions.

FYI

• The trade union, through its leadership, bargains with the employer on behalf of union members (rank and file[1] members) and negotiates labor contracts (collective bargaining) with employers. This may include the negotiation of wages, work rules, complaint procedures, rules governing hiring, firing and promotion of workers, benefits, workplace safety and policies.

FYI

• The agreements negotiated by the union leaders are binding on the rank and file members and the employer and in some cases on other non-member workers.

UNIONS

• Although labor unions have been celebrated in folk songs and stories as fearless champions of the downtrodden working man, this is not how economists see them.

FYI

• Economists who study unions—including some who are avowedly pro-union—analyze them as cartels that raise wages above competitive levels by restricting the supply of labor to various firms and industries.

UNIONS

• Many unions have won higher wages and better working conditions for their members. In doing so, however, they have reduced the number of jobs available in unionized companies.

FYI

• That second effect occurs because of the basic law of demand: if unions successfully raise the price of labor, employers will purchase less of it. Thus, unions are a major anticompetitive force in labor markets. Their gains come at the expense of consumers, nonunion workers, the jobless, taxpayers, and owners of corporations.

The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act

• The National Labor Relations Act or Wagner Act (after its sponsor, Senator Robert F. Wagner) is a 1935 United States federal law that limits the means with which employers may react to workers in the private sector that create labor unions, engage in collective bargaining, and take part in strikes and other forms of concerted activity in support of their demands.

FYI

• The Act does not apply to workers who are covered by the Railway Labor Act, agricultural employees, domestic employees, supervisors, federal, state or local government workers, independent contractors and some close relatives of individual employers.

Taft-Hartley Labor Act, 1947

• Taft-Hartley Labor Act, 1947, passed by the U.S. Congress, officially known as the Labor-Management Relations Act. Sponsored by Senator Robert Alphonso Taft and Representative Fred Allan Hartley, the act qualified or amended much of the National Labor Relations (Wagner) Act of 1935, the federal law regulating labor relations of enterprises engaged in interstate commerce, and it nullified parts of the Federal Anti-Injunction (Norris-LaGuardia) Act of 1932.

FYI

• The act established control of labor disputes on a new basis by enlarging the National Labor Relations Board and providing that the union or the employer must, before terminating a collective-bargaining agreement, serve notice on the other party and on a government mediation service. The government was empowered to obtain an 80-day injunction against any strike that it deemed a peril to national health or safety.

AF of L & CIO

• The American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations, commonly AFL-CIO, is a national trade union center, the largest federation of unions in the United States, made up of 56 national and international unions,[3] together representing more than 11 million workers (as of June 2008, the most recent official statistic).[1]

FYI

• It was formed in 1955 when the AFL and the CIO merged after a long estrangement. From 1955 until 2005, the AFL-CIO's member unions represented nearly all unionized workers in the United States. The largest union in the AFL-CIO is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), with more than a million members, since 2005 when several large unions split away from AFL-CIO.

FAIR LABOR STANDARDS ACT

• The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938[1] (abbreviated as FLSA; also referred to as the Wages and Hours Bill[2]) is a United States federal law. It applies to employees engaged in interstate commerce or employed by an enterprise engaged in commerce or in the production of goods for commerce[3], unless the employer can claim an exemption from coverage. The FLSA established a national minimum wage,[4] guaranteed 'time-and-a-half' for overtime in certain jobs,[5] and prohibited most employment of minors in "oppressive child labor," a term defined in the statute.[6]

FYI

• It was formed in 1955 when the AFL and the CIO merged after a long estrangement. From 1955 until 2005, the AFL-CIO's member unions represented nearly all unionized workers in the United States. The largest union in the AFL-CIO is the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), with more than a million members, since 2005 when several large unions split away from AFL-CIO.

OPEN UNION SHOP

• An open shop is a place of employment at which one is not required to join or financially support a union as a condition of hiring or continued employment. Open shop is also known as merit shop.

CLOSED UNION SHOP

• A closed shop is a form of union security agreement under which the employer agrees to only hire union members, and employees must remain members of the union at all times in order to remain employed.[1]

AGENCY SHOP

• An agency shop is a form of union security agreement where the employer may hire union or non-union workers, and employees need not join the union in order to remain employed.[1] However, the non-union worker must pay a fee to cover collective bargaining costs.[1] The fee paid by non-union members under the agency shop is known as the "agency fee."[2][3]

FYI

• Where the agency shop is illegal, as is common in labor law governing American public sector unions, a "fair share provision" may be agreed to by the union and the employer.[2][3] The provision requires non-union employees a pay "fair share fee" to cover the costs of the union's collective bargaining activities.

Collective bargaining

• Collective bargaining is a process between employers and employees to reach an agreement regarding the rights and duties of people at work. Collective bargaining aims to reach a collective agreement which usually sets out issues such as employees pay, working hours, training, health and safety, and rights to participate in workplace or company affairs.[1]

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FYI

• During the bargaining process, employees are typically represented by a trade union.[2] The union may negotiate with a single employer (who is typically representing a company's shareholders) or may negotiate with a federation of businesses, depending on the country, to reach an industry wide agreement

REAL MONEY/ Money wage

• Money wage refers to a wage that is concerned purely with money. This is not inflation proof.

Real wage means that the total "amount of things that this can buy," is equal to Real wage.

FYI

• For e.g. you are paid $10, with which you can buy one gallon of milk. After sometime, you are paid $12, but you can still buy just one gallon of milk. This is known as rise in "money wage." Had the amount of milk that you could buy with the given money increased, it would have been Real Wage.

ESCALATOR CLAUSE

• A provision of a contract which calls for an increase in price in the event of an increase in certain costs.

FYI

• For example, an escalator clause may specify that rent due will increase with inflation. also called escalation clause. opposite of de-escalation clause.

STRIKE

• A work stoppage undertaken in support of a bargaining position or in protest of some aspect of a previous agreement or proposed agreement between labor and management.

RIGHT TO WORK LAWS

• Right-to-work laws are statutes enforced in twenty-two U.S. states, mostly in the southern or western U.S., allowed under provisions of the Taft-Hartley Act, which prohibit agreements between trade unions and employers making membership or payment of union dues or "fees" a condition of employment, either before or after hiring.

BOYCOTT

• A boycott is a form of consumer activism involving the act of voluntarily abstaining from using, buying, or dealing with a person, organization, or country as an expression of protest, usually for political reasons.

PRIMARY BOYCOTT

• A primary boycott occurs when a union or other political or community organization encourages both its members and the general public not to buy the products of a firm involved in a labor or political dispute.

FYI

• Primary boycotts generally occur during labor negotiations and are a way for a union to either get management to the negotiating table or to help the union press for its demands. Success involving primary boycotts is mixed.

SECONDARY BOYCOTT

• A secondary boycott is an attempt by labor to convince others to stop doing business with a particular firm because that firm does business with another firm that is the subject of a strike and/or a primary boycott.

LOCKOUT

• A lockout is a work stoppage in which an employer prevents employees from working. This is different from a strike, in which employees refuse to work.

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lockout may happen for several reasons

• A lockout may happen for several reasons. When only part of a trade union votes to strike, the purpose of a lockout is to put pressure on a union by reducing the number of members who are able to work.

FYI

• For example, if the anticipated strike severely hampers work of non-striking workers, the employer may declare a lockout until the workers end the strike. Another case in which an employer may impose a lockout is to avoid slowdowns or intermittent work-stoppages

INJUNCTION

• Law . a judicial process or order requiring the person or persons to whom it is directed to do a particular act or to refrain from doing a particular act.

INJUNCTION

• Emergency injunctions that are in effect only a short time are called temporary restraining orders.

FYI

• Courts can also issue preliminary injunctions to take effect immediately and effective until a decision is made on a permanent injunction, which can stay in effect indefinitely or until certain conditions are met.

STRIKE BREAKER

• An employee hired to replace a striking worker. (See scab.)

•  A worker who refuses membership in a labor union.

• An employee who works while others are on strike; a strikebreaker.

• A person hired to replace a striking worker.

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES & STRIKES

• Labor Law: Stopping Public-Employee Strikes

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES & STRIKES

• There is no right to strike against the public safety by anybody, anywhere, at any time," declared Massachusetts' Governor Calvin Coolidge when he broke the Boston police strike in 1919. "A strike of public employees is unthinkable and intolerable," added President Roosevelt in 1937.

FYI

• On pain of one year's imprisonment, federal employees are forbidden even to belong to a union that advocates strikes; other bans against public-employee strikes are on the books in eleven states, ranging from New York to Hawaii.

FYI

• And even without specific laws, the country's courts have almost universally upheld Government authority and enjoined public-employees' strikes throughout U.S. history.