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Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining

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Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining
HR - Chapter 13: Labor Relations and Collective Bargaining

Why do workers join Unions?

There are three main reasons why workers join unions: * Dissatisfaction with the work environment (wages, benefits, supervision) * A desire to have more influence in affecting change in the work environment * Employee believe that unions can actually improve conditions and have an impact at their own workplace

Effects of Unions

Workers join Unions to improve their wages, working conditions, and job security. In general, those who are usually paid the least tend to benefit the most from unionization.
Variation in union wage effects across industries partially occur due to the union’s ability to take “wages out of competition”.
Union advocates mantain that the “collective voice” of unions reduces worker quit rates; in addiction, management is forced to become more efficient when faced with the necessity of providing higher wages to unionized employees.
IN contrast, unions tend to have negative effects on productivity, even if positive productivity effects generally tend to be found in competitive industries with higher union wage effects.

Unions and Quality of Worklife Issues

Quality of Worklife Issues programs are as important as training, up-to-date equipment, and quality materials and resources, in order to achieve the best total quality to the market, but some employees could prefer collective bargaining process to QWL programs.
Researches show that unionized firms have more gains from employee participation that do non-union firms.
Firms must be cautious in their implementation of non-union work teams, because of the legal concerns regarding violations of laws.

Union Effect on Worker Satisfaction

Supervision, co-workers, and job content create more dissatisfaction for union workers than for non-union workers (only pay provides more union satisfaction).
Voluntary turnover rates are substantially lower under unions.

Unions and HRM

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