Collective Bargaining

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Collective Bargaining
Insert Chapter 13 opening illustration
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Key Concepts

• Collective bargaining terminology
• Labor and management practices related to
  collective bargaining
• Strengths and weaknesses of collective bargaining
• Collective bargaining and professional nursing

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Overview

• Complex, multifaceted, often emotional issue
• Information is necessary to help nursing students
  and practicing nurses make effective decisions

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Early Activities

• Protecting workers became an issue during the
  Industrial Revolution (late 19th century)
• Long working hours
• Child labor
• Unhealthy factory conditions
• Trade unionism developed when workers discovered
  power in their numbers
• Early groups sought work safety, adequate pay,
  and job security

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Federal Legislation

• Child labor outlawed minimum wage and 40-hour
  workweek established (1930s)
• National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) (1935)
• Gave employees the right to form labor unions and
  bargain collectively
• National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) (1935)
• Established to implement provision of the NLRA

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NLRA

• Initially established exemptions for nonprofit
  companies
• Employees of nonprofit hospitals were not
  protected for participation in collective
  bargaining activities
• 1974 legislation allowed for the inclusion of
  nonprofit hospitals

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Current Status

• Conflict currently characterizes unionism
• Statistics indicate an erosion of union influence
  
• Reports also indicate that unions are becoming
  stronger than ever
• Nursings future may be influenced by efforts to
  be fairly represented in the workplace

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Collective Bargaining

• Power sharing in the workplace
• Means of equalizing power between employees and
  management
• Managements goal
• Provide goods and services for a profit
• Employees goal
• Sell personal time to perform satisfying work

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Power Sharing

• Strengths
• Individual employees have limited power
• Large numbers of employees banded together
  enhance bargaining position
• Weaknesses
• Viewed as a forum for less educated workers
• May be difficult to rectify professionalism and
  unionization
• Groups may be reluctant to commit to long-term,
  binding group decisions

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Typical Goals

• Establish reasonable working conditions
• Establish formal agreements for wages and health
  and retirement benefits

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Terms Associated With Collective Bargaining

• Management
• Mediation
• Occupational unionism
• Unfair labor practices
• Union

• Arbitration
• Encroachment
• Grievance
• Industrial unionism
• Labor

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Types of Unions

• Occupational unionism
• Separate unions for each occupation within a
  given company
• May join similar groups across the country
• Industrial unionism
• Single union for all workers in a corporation
• Strong because of large number of members

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Union Organizing

• Attempts to share power may result in temporary
  distrust between staff nurses and management
• Knowing allowable processes can help alleviate
  unnecessary distress

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Potential Gains

• For employees
• Power to make certain demands of employers
• Degree of political power on a local level
• For union organization
• Additional power through more bargaining units
  and increased membership
• Increased monetary support through contributions
  from workers paychecks

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Process of Union Organizing

• Organizing drive is initiated by union forces to
  create an official, NLRB-sanctioned bargaining
  unit
• Bargaining unit is accepted or rejected through
  an election process in which nonmanagement
  employees vote

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Steps in Collective Bargaining

• Preformal period
• Nurses or employees contact a union seeking
  representation
• Union organizers work to gain employee support
• Election process
• Eligible employees vote for or against union
  representation
• After election
• Negotiations between union and management occur

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Union Organizations

• Teamsters
• United American Nurses (UAN) (arm of the American
  Nurses Association ANA)
• Service Employees International Union

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Mandatory Topics for Negotiation

• Wages
• Rules about the use of labor (work hours, worker
  safety)
• Individual workers rights and resolution of
  grievances
• Methods of enforcement, interpretation, and
  administration of the union agreement

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Signing a Card

• Method union organizers use to request
  information from employees
• Single-purpose authorization card
• Dual-purpose authorization card
• Union organizing begins when 30 of eligible
  nurses sign dual-purpose cards

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Union Organizing Practices

• Allowable
• Communication with employees by mail, in areas
  adjacent to business, and on the premises in
  nonwork areas
• Peaceful strikes and picketing for publicity
• Unallowable
• Inflame racial prejudices
• Lie about loss of jobs
• Distribute literature in work areas
• Forge documents

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Management Organizing Practices

• Allowable
• Avoid supplying a list of employees and job
  classifications for a period of time
• Circulate literature to employees
• Unallowable
• Fire employees supporting union activities
• Spy on or photograph employees in union
  activities
• Lie about what will happen if the union wins
• Question employees about preferences

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Collective Bargaining Units

• Group of employees entitled to vote in union
  elections and bargain collectively
• Two legal collective bargaining units in
  hospitals before 1984
• Professionals (included RNs and others)
• Nonprofessionals

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Collective Bargaining Unitscontd

• All-professional rule
• Diluted the power of RNs
• Challenged by nurses in 1984 and eventually
  defeated in the U.S. Supreme Court
• Eight Unit Rule
• Identified eight bargaining units in hospitals
• RNs became a separate bargaining unit

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Corporate America

• Economic consequences of collective bargaining
• High-performance work organizations (HPWOs)
• Power sharing in the boardroom

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Unions and Professional Nursing

• Despite challenging work conditions, nurses have
  difficulty reconciling professionalism with
  perceived negative union connotations
• Exercising the power of the strike is difficult
  for professionals

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Collective Bargaining Trends

• American Medical Association (AMA) has become
  involved in collective bargaining
• AMAs issues are patient advocacy and practice
  control, not salary
• ANA approved a structural change to create UAN, a
  bargaining unit

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Questions for Nurses

• Should nurses who frequently supervise the work
  of others be classified as management or labor?
• Will nurses be too reluctant to strike, a
  powerful bargaining tool?
• Are there relevant gains to be made through
  collective bargaining?

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Management or Labor?

• NLRB protection applies to nonmanagement
• Nonmanagement definition is difficult in nursing
• RNs performing charge nurse duties are not
  management
• Head nurses and shift supervisors are management
• Supervisors and staff nurses are placed on
  opposite sides of the table

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The Strike?

• Powerful economic force for health care
  facilities
• May be viewed by nurses as unprofessional
• Contingencies to protect nursings image
• 10-day notice of intent to strike
• Schedules developed to cover emergency
  department, operating room, and intensive care
  units

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Wage Gains?

• Union efforts have resulted in only modest wage
  effects in the health care sector
• Future role of unions in health care may hinge on
  gains in union vs. nonunion facilities

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American Nurses Association

• Recently expanded labor relations and
  union-organizing activities
• Developed UAN, a national labor entity
• Affiliated with the American Federation of
  LaborCongress of Industrial Organization
  (AFL-CIO)
• AFL-CIO affiliation was an unprecedented step for
  American nurses

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UAN Labor Agenda

• Increase funding for Constituent Member
  Associations (CMAs) to
• Organize collective bargaining units
• Increase staff and training in relation to
  union-organizing efforts
• Build a solid public relations base
• Upgrade legal support services

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Efforts to Organize Nurses

• 300,000 new members must be added each year to
  keep union membership steady
• There are 2.6 million RNs in the United States,
  and only 17 are unionized
• Larger unions have not been hesitant about going
  after nurses to bolster their dwindling ranks

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Trends in Collective Bargaining Negotiations

• Changing health care access and settings
• Address sites of employment
• Job expansion
• Address changing nursing roles
• Wage compression
• Address tenure steps to alleviate wage
  compression
• Hospital system changes
• Address use of unlicensed personnel and portable
  pensions