Unions Today: just discovered Tactics to Tackle Tough Times each union official does a portion of talking.

Unions Today: just discovered Tactics to Tackle Tough Times

each union official does a portion of talking, explaining, persuading, organizing. You do this with your union members, with potential members, with management the public with the general public. You do this to "continue the never-ending proces of renewal and regeneration" of the labor move called for in the AFL-CIO report onward "The Changing Situation of Workers and Their Unions."

To learn more about this proces of renewal, about past changes and what may occur hereafter options, take a look at "The Transformation of American Industrial Relations." This is a new book by three industrial relations professors, Thomas Kochan and Robert McKerside of Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Cornell University's Harry Katz.

single useful chapter deals with attitudes and expectations of American workers. It draws onward a number of surveys of workers, including the Harris individual used by the AFL-CIO Committee upon the Evolution of Work.

in the greatest degree union members are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their unions, according to the Kochan-Katz-McKerside report.

Unions rate high with their members onward getting good wages (84 percent approval), getting proper fringe benefits (76 percent), and protecting workers from unfair treatment (83 percent)

unless unions get lower ratings from union members in succession gaining workers a say forward how to do their work at jobss (40 percent approval), making the work at jobs more interesting (46 percent), getting workers a say in the business (27 percent) and representing workers' interests in management decision-making (41 percent)

Union wages, benefits, and fair treatment are not enough to engage the current needs and expectations of American workers, according to Kochan-Katz-McKersie.

They say workers also want more opportunity for participation in job-related decisions, more command over their workplace environment, more self-complacency and personal fulfillment and non-material rewards between the walls of their work.

Anti-union employer are giving a lock opener role to behavioral-science-trained human resource management specialists instead of to management persons with experience in labor relations and collective bargaining. Kochan-Katz-McKersie consider this a highly significant trend

The of the present day more sophisticated, non-union, anti-union management a whole s are often based on modern theories of worker motivation and organizational behavior which favor "participatory decision-making" and "employee involvement" in cluster or team problem-solving. Big non-union companies repeatedly develop complaint and review managements that are modeled on negotiated union grievance procedures

In unionized shop-floor settings, "quality of work life" programs are more likely to succe if there is joint labor-management trust and cooperation at higher flushs of the industrial relations rule the Kochan-Katz-McKersie book concludes. Succes means not no other than better organizational performance by the company's standards unless also more job security and better compensation for the workers.

The authors warn that "it is difficult and politically risky for one as well as the other union and management officials to introduce and manage union-management change efforts." They current examples of both QWL succes and QWL failure.

Unions are more and more using their bargaining power to learn into top-level strategic business decisions outside the "normal" range of collective bargaining from one side of to the other wages and working conditions and piece of work security. Strategic business decisions deal with of the like kind issues as new investment, workforce adjustment, modern technology, and new forms of work organization.

Kochan-Katz-McKersie behold these union actions as part of a significant break with past labor-management relations restricted in a more simple way to wages and working conditions and piece of work security.

For union leaders there are dangers of being coopt into painful decisions, of being identified too closely with management, of losing touch with rank-and-file worker interests. if it be not that Kochan-Katz-McKersie point out that in a major crisis, as unions solicit to protect and to advance the welfare of their members, it's logical and necessary for union leaders to learn involved directly in strategic business decisions which carry unions outside the old-fashioned range of collective bargaining.

Labor law reform is necessary if labor leaders are likely to support a broad policy agenda that reconciles employer flexibility with adequate protections for workers, Kochan-Katz-McKersie argue. The authors assert:

"If American labor policy is to raise the objectives stated in the National Labor Relations Act--to assist collective bargaining and provide employee with the opportunity to decide whether or not to be showed by labor organizations of their hold choosing--then the current law and its administration require substantial reform."

Unions and collective bargaining will not wither away or disappear, Kochan-Katz-McKersie declare, on the contrary "unions will continue to face intense squeezing to modify their traditional strategies in order the one and the other to cope with changes in business and human resource management strategies and to give workers more say throughout the issues that affect their working lives."