The process that labor unions and management use to agree on a union contract is a negotiation tool referred to as "collective bargaining. On the union side, the negotiation team may consist of the local president, its business representative and a shop steward.
For management, the negotiation team may include the company president, a human resources leader and a labor relations specialist. Collective bargaining refers to a process whereby each party has members who represent the interests of several individuals or an entity; the end result is an agreement about pay, benefits and various working conditions for union workers.
Because collective activity is a function of organized labor, the collective bargaining agent is the labor union that the union workers elected to represent their interests.
However, the term "bargaining agent" is probably more widely used than "collective bargaining agent," for which the acronym would be CBA. CBA is an acronym more often used to refer to the collective bargaining agreement, or the union contract. Labor unions are designated as the bargaining agent for employees only upon an official vote, which is a process mandated by the National Labor Relations Act.
An agent from the National Labor Relations Board conducts all union elections and certifies the labor union as the bargaining agent, or the designated representative for the company's employees. The unions are sometimes able to set standards that other employers follow. For example, the collective bargaining agreements reached by unions on the freight railroads class 1 , where there is high union density, set a pattern for unionized commuter rail and smaller railroads.
Unions can join together in a coalition to bargain with a nationwide employer on behalf of different groups of employees. For decades, a coalition of unions has bargained with General Electric through a coordinated bargaining council.
Because of corporate changes, downsizing, and loss of jobs to outsourcing and trade, currently only approximately 6, workers are covered by collective bargaining agreements at GE. Under pattern bargaining, a union will bargain with an initial employer to reach an agreement that then becomes the pattern for subsequent agreements with other employers in the industry.
The collective bargaining agreements negotiated through bargaining with the three automakers not only set wages and benefits for tens of thousands of autoworkers, but also have an impact on nonunion auto manufacturers, which try to keep their wages competitive with their unionized counterparts.
In , the target was General Motors. After failing to reach an agreement by the expiration of the contract, 49, GM workers went on strike for six weeks in the fall of in an effort to win a better agreement from GM. As a result of the strike, workers protected their health care benefits and won a substantial pay raise in the form of base wage increases and an accelerated progression to top pay for newer workers.
A challenge faced by the UAW and other unions in their respective industries is when employers try to evade the terms of the collective bargaining agreement by establishing new operations outside the scope of the agreement. Seven different UNITE HERE locals in seven locations—Detroit, Boston, San Francisco, Oakland, San Jose, San Diego, and Hawaii—bargained separate contracts, but because the prior collective bargaining agreements expired at the same time, the workers had more leverage than they would have had if they had been bargaining in a single location.
In the aerospace manufacturing and services industry, the Machinists Union bargains major national contracts with Boeing and Lockheed Martin that establish standards for the industry that the Machinists seek to achieve at other manufacturers. Unions will sometimes negotiate a master contract with an employer or an employer association and then insist that newly organized employers sign on to the master agreement rather than negotiating an individual agreement.
This arrangement is commonplace in the construction and entertainment industries, but is also used by other unions in other industries. See examples of multi-employer bargaining below. Unions in several industries have bargaining relationships with groups or associations of employers—an arrangement that allows them to negotiate wage and benefit standards across an industry or geographic area.
The industry with the most widespread practice of multi-employer bargaining is the construction industry. By long-standing practice and tradition, unions in the building trades bargain multi-employer master agreements with employer associations in their craft, and employers, including newly organized employers, adopt the master agreement often by signing letters of assent agreeing to be bound by the master agreement.
Most of these agreements are bargained locally or regionally by the individual construction unions with their counterpart employer associations. Bargaining is streamlined by the national IBEW and NECA through the development of standard contract language that is approved by both national organizations. In addition, the national building trades unions, through their trade department at the AFL-CIO, bargain national agreements with contractors for both construction and maintenance projects.
For example, currently there are national building trades agreements covering maintenance projects in 34 states involving signatory employers. Local 32BJ of the Service Employees International Union SEIU offers a compelling example of what workers and their unions are able to accomplish when they have density and bargaining power. The union—which represents workers in 12 states and Washington, D. Recently, the union completed negotiations for approximately 75, commercial building cleaners up and down the East Coast.
The New York City agreement alone covers 22, commercial cleaners. In other words, by way of example, in the New York City agreement, employers in New York City agree to abide by the collective bargaining agreement in Philadelphia if they have operations in Philadelphia.
In the recent bargaining, SEIU Local 32BJ won substantial wage increases, improvements in pensions, new protections against sexual harassment, and more. Employers also agreed to a union recognition process for cleaners in Miami, opening the door to extending collective bargaining protections to another 1, building cleaners in that city.
Bargaining used to cover more grocers, but because of mergers in the industry, only two major chains—Ralphs and Albertsons—now participate in the bargaining. In the fall of , the union was able to reach an agreement covering 46, workers at more than stores. The agreement provided for wage increases, preserved health care benefits, guaranteed more hours, and helped close the wage differential between job classifications.
A challenge for the union is when unionized grocers enter into partnerships and other business arrangements with new entities and use them to erode bargaining unit work—by, for example, contracting out work that would be done by bargaining unit members to companies like Instacart—or when unionized grocers create lower labor standards for chains in food deserts, as Kroger did with its Food 4 Less subsidiary.
The Machinists Union has several regional multi-employer agreements covering hundreds of auto dealerships and auto repair shops in Chicago, San Francisco, New York, and other cities.
These agreements set wages and benefits for thousands of employees. The Teamsters have a long-established multi-employer bargaining relationship with the Cannery Council, an association of food processors with operations in central California, including Del Monte and Heinz.
For example, the Machinists Union has negotiated with both a government contractor and subcontractor at the table and won agreements that cover employees of both employers. Unions have also been able to win better working terms and conditions for workers through campaigns for local city ordinances. The union then won recognition as the representative of 1, Prospect Airport Services and PrimeFlight Aviation Services employees who work as baggage handlers, wheelchair attendants, cabin cleaners, and more.
The union was able to build on the minimum standards established by the ordinance and, in their first collective bargaining agreement, win provisions that exceed the requirements of the paid sick day ordinance.
Unless they work for an agency, domestic employees such as nannies, house cleaners, and gardeners are not covered by the NLRA, and their employment is dispersed throughout millions of individual households.
Since the law was introduced a decade ago, the vast majority of new recognition agreements have resulted from voluntary recognitions, and the CAC has held relatively few contested representation elections. As a result of these differences in law and employer behavior—a significant proportion of British employers still cooperate with unions and view bargaining positively—United Kingdom bargaining coverage, though it has fallen by almost half since the early s, is still more than double that of the United States.
Recognition and Bargaining in Canada: Lessons for the United States The Canadian system of industrial relations is broadly similar to that of the United States, and labor laws in several Canadian provinces have or had provisions similar to those of the EFCA.
However, Canadian labor law differs from its U. US law, in contrast, is highly centralized, with a broad and rigid federal pre-emption doctrine curtailing all but the most marginal policy experimentation at the state and local levels during the past several decades. Second, Canadian labor law is more responsive to political realignments than its U. In the United States, the need to gain a supermajority of 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster has presented a formidable obstacle in the path of labor law reform proposals in recent decades.
Canadian labor law also provides an interesting comparison with the United States because, while the labor policy issues are very similar to those in the United States, the policy debate is very different. Thus, with a left of center government, we see the adoption majority sign up and other reforms, but when the political pendulum swings in the opposite direction, contested elections are reintroduced.
Currently, five Canadian jurisdictions have laws that include majority sign-up processes: the federal jurisdiction, Quebec, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and Prince Edward Island. Opponents of the EFCA in the United States have repeatedly pointed to Canada as a country in which, as a direct result of their experience with majority sign-up, lawmakers now recognize the superiority of mandatory elections.
Nine out of ten Canadian provinces used majority sign up in the late s, they point out, while only four out of ten use it today. Two decades ago, majority sign-up covered over 90 percent of Canadian employees; today, these same provisions cover about 40 percent of Canadian employees. But claims that majority sign up has been discredited in Canada and replaced by U. First, as mentioned previously, union elections in Canada are very different from management-dominated NLRB elections.
Second, five Canadian jurisdictions—including large and influential ones such as the federal jurisdictions and Quebec—still have majority sign up. Finally, the policy situation is far from static and Canadian laws are much more malleable than their U. In May , for example, the Ontario Legislature considered a bill to reintroduce majority sign up. Thus, majority sign-up could, once again, become the norm in Canada. The principal refrain of employer groups opposed to majority sign-up is that it would expose employees to coercion and intimidation by unscrupulous union organizers.
What does the Canadian experience suggest?
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