Labour & Employee Relations Flashcards
What is Employee and Labour Relations?
a cluster of competencies related to managing the relationships between employer and employees.
What is Industrial Relations?
study of both union and non union relationships
- Includes all the employment issues and relationships governing the workplace
- For example:
- The organization of the work environment
- Employment contracts
- HR management
- Employment relations
- Conflict Management
- Employee attitudes and behaviours at work
- For example:
What is Employee Relations?
- Refers to the direct employer-employee relationship
- Policies describing the company’s philosophy, rules and procedures for addressing employee-related matters and resolving problems.
- Employee relations representatives work to ensure that company policies are followed both fairly and consistently
- An employee relations program is not a one-size-fits-all solution
What is Labour Relations?
- Refers to the relationship between a union or professional association representing employees and their employer
- Union certification
- Collective Bargaining
- Conflict management
- Maintenance of agreements
How is Dismissal handled with Non-Union employees?
- Employee dismissal without cause would lead to 2 options:
- Action under employment standards legislation (specifically in regard to minimum requirements of pay or notice)
- Adjudication through courts (courts recognize that the parties have an employment contract with each other)
- Best outcome is reasonable notice and/or money in lieu
How is Dismissal handled with Unionized employees?
- Can seek redress through the union contract, including reinstatement
- Grievance-arbitration with burden of proof on employer
- Substantial protection against arbitrary dismissal
- Can bump others with less seniority in the case of downsizing
What is the intent of Employee Relations?
- fairness in the workplace is a right
Where is Employment Legislation Applicable?
Employment legislation applies to almost every aspect of the employment relationship. Including: recruiting process, hiring process, working conditions, environment, workers quitting
- Most statutes for minimum conditions of employment fall under provincial jurisdiction, unless federally regulated
What is the purpose of the Employment Standards Act?
Employment Standards are enforced under the Employment Standards Act, which sets out minimum standards that the corporation, organization and HR has to put in place.
What does the Employment Standards Act make specific provisions on?
- The minimum wage
- Hours of work and overtime
- Definition of what constitutes full time vs part time work
- Vacation and paid holidays (each of these differ by province)
- Pregnancy and parental leave
- Notice of termination for individuals and groups
- common law can take precedent which results in a greater benefit to the employee
What is the Ministry of Labour?
- Ministry of Labour administers the Employment Standards Program:
- Enforces the Employment Standards Act and it’s rules and regulations per scribed in the Act. (New HR manager and provided a new employee with orientation with rules of employment, ex: have to start at 8:30am but this employee comes in late and leaves early and creates issues with deadlines and other employees. You need to find out the reasons, how the org can help, if you communicate everything and still no change, you may need to terminate them)
- Provides information and education to employers and employees, making it easier for people to understand and comply voluntarily
- Investigates possible violations and resolves complaints
What is the Human Rights Code?
- The Code prohibits actions that discriminate against people based on protected ground in a protected social area
- HR management and the organization as a whole need to ensure fair and equal treatment when employing individuals who may fall into any of these areas
What are Protected Social Areas?
- Accommodation (housing)
- Contracts
- Employment
- Goods, services and facilities
- Membership in unions, trade, or professional associations
What are some of the Protected Grounds?
- Age
- Ancestry, Colour, Race
- Gender
- Disability
- Creed
- Sexual Orientation
What is BFOQ?
- Bona fide Occupational Qualification (BFOQ) allows employers to legally discriminate
- Examples:
- Vision requirements for pilots
- Physical strength requirements for firefighters
- Examples:
- There is also a legal duty to accommodate individuals who may not meet it
What is Pay Equity?
- The gender wage gap is the difference in earnings between men and women
- Pay equity looks to close the part of the wage gap that results from systemic gender discrimination in employer pay practices
- Factors contributing to the gender wage gap include
- differences between male and female education levels
- work experience
- hours worked
- unionization
- breaks in service due to family and home responsibility
- systemic discrimination such as hiring mostly men at a certain rate and women for the same job at a lesser rate. Rating a male dominated job higher than a female dominated.
What is the Employment Equity Act?
- Designed to ensure equitable participation in the labour force for 4 “designated” groups of people that are considered to be under-represented in the labour force and therefore disadvantaged
- Applies to federally-regulated industries, Crown corporations and other federal organizations with 100 employees or more, as well as portions of the federal public administration (which includes the Canadian Forces and the RCMP)
- The Labour Program ensures that the Employment Equity Act and its mandates are applied appropriately
What are the designated groups?
- Women
- Indigenous individuals - Indian, Inuit or Metis
- Persons with disabilities (Important to ask: is it long term or recurring physical, mental, sensory, psychiatric or learning impairment who consider themselves to be disadvantaged in employment by reason of that impairment. Did it happen at work?)
- Members of visible minorities - people other than Indigenous peoples, who are non-caucasian in race or non-white in colour
What is Employment Equity?
- Encourages the establishment of working conditions that are free of barriers
- Corrects the conditions of disadvantage in employment
- ensure the recruitment process is not discriminatory
- Promotes the principle that employment equity requires special measures and the accommodation of differences for the 4 designated groups in Canada
- A workforce should represent the population from which the organization attracts its labour, to the degree that they are qualified
- Employers have the Duty to Accommodate to the point of undue hardship
What are some reason for Employee Unionization?
- Seeking to have a collective voice. Want to be heard (want influence or power over their working conditions)
- Economic needs. Because of their collective power, employees believe they can negotiate higher pay or more benefits if they join together
- Dissatisfaction with Management
- Social and Leadership Needs. Desire to belong to a group or an avenue to grow into a management position.
- Politics or Ideology. Perhaps their parents were in a union.
How do Organization’s Respond to Unionization?
- Strategic Choice Framework
- Union Acceptance
- Union Resistance
- Union Substitution
- Union Removal
What does the Strategic Choice Framework entail?
- Long-term Strategic Level - strategic plan (does it suit their business to be unionized) (ex: if outsourced cafeteria, being unionized may be helpful to gain the contract)
- Collective Bargaining Level - policies and benefits (are there employment policies already in line with what a union would negotiate)
- Workplace Level - work flow and relationships (how work happens at the front line, supervision, design of jobs)
What is Union Acceptance?
accept the fact that they will be unionized
What is Union Resistance?
active opposition
What is Union Substitution?
eliminating employee desire by providing superior employment conditions so their employees won’t seek out unionization (give what a union would give them or better)
What is Union Removal?
union busting leading to decertification (parts of the organization are already unionized and want to convince other employees to de-unionize)
What does TIPS stand for?
Threaten: suggest the organization will close down if it becomes unionized
Intimidate: seek retaliation against those employees in favour of the union
Promise: Offer to pay better wages or benefits if they remain union free
Spy: send secret representatives to attend union/employee meetings
What does the Certification Process entail:
- Organizing meeting
- formation of an in-house organizing committee
- Application to the Labour Relations Board
- Determination of the bargaining unit (jobs that would be represented by the union). May hear presentations from the union or employer.
- Recognition or employee vote
- Contract negotiations
What 3 things could happen during the Union Certification Process?
- employer may voluntarily recognize the union
- Labour Board said enough cards were signed to certify the union
- vote take place for all employees filling jobs that have been identified as being in the bargaining unit (depends, employee vote may be mandatory in some provinces)
What is Collective Bargaining?
- collective bargaining is a process where a union and an employer negotiate either first collective agreement or the renewal of a previous collective agreement
- the parties usually focus on issues like wages, working conditions, grievance procedures, grievance process and fringe benefits such as holidays, etc
- Trying to expand the minimum standards established by different Acts. Minimum is just the minimum guideline
When do Negotiations Start?
- if a union has just been certified, it will then give the employer written notice of its desire to bargain. If bound by a collective agreement, then either party may give notice to bargain:
- Usually within the 90 days before the agreement is due to expire, or
- During any period set out in the agreement
- In either case the union and the employer must meet within a certain amount of days as outlined by labour relations legislation from the giving of notice, unless they agree to some other time period.
What are the Collective Bargaining Styles?
- Distributive Bargaining (win-lose approach) or Positional Bargaining
- Interest-based, Integrative, or Mutual Gains Bargaining (all 3 used interchangeably)
- Attitudinal Structuring
- Intra-organizational Bargaining
- Bargaining Zone
What is Distributive Bargaining (win-lose approach) or Positional Bargaining?
- Adversarial
- Focuses on one’s position
- Two parties compete over the distribution of fixed resources
- Both sides strive for maximum personal gain at the expense of the other, resulting in a zero-sum game.
- Assumes inherent conflict of interest between management and the union
- Can result in win-lose outcomes
- Control over communication is critical
- One spokesperson for each party
What is Interest-based, Integrative, or Mutual Gains Bargaining (all 3 used interchangeably)
- focus is on each other’s interests
- Results in win-win outcomes
- Sharing of information is key to the process
- Willingness to share information can be a test of commitment to this joint problem-solving approach
- Issues are often resolved through a joint committee structure
- Many voices and an array of possible solutions characterize the process
- Ex: the union is arguing for 2% increase in pay but in reality they are really looking for better working conditions. Through a committee, they can look into this. More voices = better range of ideas
What is Attitudinal Bargaining?
- The processes and interaction that lead to the attitudes one party has about the other
- A process of identifying mutual interest, distributive, and hybrid issues and negotiating and dealing with them separately build trust and mutual respect between parties.
- The Emergent Relationship
- In real life, some issues require a distributive approach while others may accommodate an integrative approach. Separate issues an starting with the easy ones first shows good faith
- When conflict occurs, no one will truly win in most cases
- Collusion, management is not holding best interest or union isn’t holding best interest of members
What is Intra-organizational Bargaining?
- The bargaining spokespersons have to respond to two demands - those from across the table and those from their own political organization
- It may be that the union HQ needs to see a certain outcome to set a precedent for other org
- As if the negotiator is being pulled in multiple directions
What is the Bargaining Zone?
- Minimum acceptable demand and MGMT’s highest offer overlap
- union makes high demand and MGMT make low offer (usually starts this way)
- But know they may have to adjust so keep most and least amounts willing to accept in their back pockets.
What can happen if there is no agreement on the terms?
- Conciliation/Mediation
- Interest-Arbitration
- Med-Arb
What is Conciliation/Mediation?
-can turn to Labour Relations Board to appoint someone for this (look at ongoing relationship, issues in the environment, conditions in the past, other collective agreements) Try to mediate a process so it is negotiated and resolved. A facilitation process like marriage counseling. They don’t make any decisions and no recommendations are legally binding.
What is Interest- Arbitration?
Used to settle collective bargaining deadlocks. Arbitrator is arbitrating the parties interests and those will fill the clauses in the collective agreement that govern the relationship for a number of years. Arbitration is binding
3 Types:
- Conventional - both submit offer and may choose some in favour of the union and some in favour of the employer
- Final-offer - parties submit final offers and arbitrator must pick one or the other. Benefit = forced party to put forward reasonable offers because if not reasonable they know it won’t be chosen.
- First Agreement - mandatory requirement to go to arbitration.
What is Med-Arb?
combo of conciliation and arbitration can be used. Conciliator used to mediate an agreement and when not possible the conciliator turns into an arbitrator and makes a final binding decision on their behalf
What is a Collective Agreement?
- A collective agreement is a written contract of employment covering a group of employees who are represented by a trade union
- The agreement contains provisions governing the terms and conditions of the employment relationship
- It also contains the rights, privileges and duties of the employer, the trade union and employees
- outlines the rules of the workplace, what the employer is able to do, what the union has the right to expect
What are the Provisions of the Collective Agreement?
1) Provisions for rights and obligations of parties - i.e. purpose, definitions, management rights, union recognition, how they are represented, etc
2) Conditions of employment - i.e. wages, hours of work, overtime, shift premium vacations, paid and unpaid leave, etc
3) General work rules - i.e. layoffs, transfers
4) Work Environment - i.e. discipline procedures, health and safety, discrimination articles, how grievances are handled, etc.
What are mandatory provisions?
No-strike/lock-out clauses and grievance and arbitration provisions are mandatory clauses (illegal for the union to go on strike or employer to lockout the employees)
What is the Union Security Clause?
- These recognize the union, union rights, officials and the collection of dues
- They also address whether employees are required to be union members
What are Management Rights/Residual Rights?
These affirm an employer’s right to to run the enterprise as it did before unionization, except for changes triggered by the clauses in the collective agreement. If there is no clause in the collective agreement prohibiting the employer from taking some action (ex: restructuring) then management still has the freedom to do it.
What are Canada’s 4 different work/unionized workplaces?
- Closed Shop
- Open Shop
- Union Shop
- Agency Shop
What is Closed Shop?
Employers are required to hire and employ only members of a particular union. Frequently through a union hiring haul or from lists maintained by the union. (common in construction industry and in some industries where craft unions predominate)
What is Open Shop?
Union membership is not required as a condition of employment. Ex: some constructions work places or job sites these 2 employees work side by side (both union or non-union or different unions). Least secure and that means it is less common
What is Union Shop?
Employer may hire employees who are not union members, but each employee in the bargaining unit must join the union. Remain a member of good standing. The majority of the collective agreements have a time period (Ex: probation period)
What is Agency Shop?
All employees in a bargaining unit, as a condition of employment, are required to pay union dues or an equivalent amount, whether or not they choose to be union members. Regardless of their decision, required to pay union dues. Still enjoy all benefits negotiated by the union. If there’s a grievance, the union needs to represent them. Only not able to vote on union matters.
What is the Rand Formula?
A form of Agency Shop developed by Justice Ivan Rand in 1946, which provides for mandatory “dues check off” of union dues or their equivalent, but does not require employees to join a union
What is a reason why one may be able to opt out of paying union dues?
Regardless of the security clause, individuals can opt out for religious reasons with an amount equivalent to their union dues directed to a charity
What is Union Density?
Statistic that measures the percentage of workers in the labour force who are union members. (ex: unionization in US and Canada is declining)
What is the Yellow Dog Contract?
The former practice of requiring employees to sign a legal contract indicating they would not join a union. Today this is illegal. All workers have the right to unionize as per the Charter except those exempted like national security forces.
What is Whipsaw?
a union negotiating tactic that plays one employer off against another.
What is Job Control?
a collective agreement clause that limits job assignment freedom. One of the most restrictive clauses in collective agreements.
What is Estoppel?
When a clause in the collective agreement is not upheld, it can be claimed that the party has given up their right to the clause
- is a legal concept providing that if a party makes a representation that an issue will be dealt with in a manner different from the provisions of the collective agreement, it will not be able to later insist upon the collective agreement being enforced as written.
What is Bumping?
The ability of a displaced worker to “bump” another worker with low seniority from their job. As long as they can show they are qualified.
What is a Strike?
a legal stoppage by employees. Only when no collective agreement is in place (Ex: it is expired). Happens when a majority of employees in the bargaining unit have voted in favour of going on strike.
- is the refusal to work or the restriction of output by unionized employees.
What is a Wildcat Strike?
an illegal work stoppage
What is Work to Rule?
a form of strike resulting in a a reduction of productivity. Employees do bare minimum of work required. (leads to low production which leads to a form of strike)
What is the Essential Service Agreement
this restricts the ability to for workers whose absence may significantly impact public interest. (Ex: essential services, if medical workers are seen as essential, they would not be able to strike or a certain minimum number would have to still work)
What is a Lock-out
a legal work stoppage by the employer.
What is a Business Agent
employed by the union full-time to represent their affairs, negotiate agreements and handle grievances
Shop Steward/Union Steward:
someone that is employed by the employers organization and elected by their peers to be their onsite representative
Who is the Chief Steward?
The employer’s most senior Shop Steward employed in the bargaining unit.
Who is the Bargaining Unit?
The Union
- -The bargaining agent is not a person, it is the union that reps the employees. Ex: Unifor is a bargaining agent
What is a Grievance?
The definition of what constitutes a “grievance” is usually defined in a collective agreement
- An alleged violation of one or more provisions of the collective agreement and a claim for redress of any damages. If it isn’t written in the collective agreement they cannot go into grievance with management.
- it provides a forum for the resolution of disputes arising from the collective agreement without a work stoppage
- when a formal grievance is submitted, employers are obliged to meet with the union even if they think that the contract has not been violated. A grievance can be filed and management can say no it is not in the collective agreement so why are you grieving but still have to meet with the union
Is the grievance procedure is required by labour legislation?
Yes
What are the 2 Categories of Grievances?
- Application Grievance
- Interpretation Grievance
What are the 3 Types of Grievances?
- Individual: applies to one person.
- Group: a number of employees that file the same grievance together. More powerful than individual from an HR or management perspective. The union at this point says this may be happening organization wide. Since it can effect many now and in the future, can be put into policy grievance
- Policy: a grievance impacts the interpretation of a clause such that it could impact everyone
