Posts Tagged ‘Labor Relations’

As the old song says, “People are people where ever they are.” Seems the Good Lord wired the vast majority of folks with a fairly keen sense of right and wrong, along with an innate ability to tell when they’ve been lied to by others.

Your workforce is no different. Employees will figure out who to trust really fast. They know when somebody is being sincere or if they are just feeding them a line. That is why the number one rule in labor relations is “DON’T LIE”. Always tell the truth.

A big mistake many managers make, however, is to adopt the line from the Jack Nicholas, Tom Cruse movie “YOU CAN’T HANDLE THE TRUTH!” Leaders sometime think that employees can’t deal with reality or that they will make bad assumptions so they tell them something different than the truth. Big mistake.

The manager that does this doesn’t think of it as a lie or manipulative but their employees do and their perception is reality. The leader who gets tagged as somebody that can’t be trusted will struggle working with the team from that point on.

Along with telling the truth, supervisors and managers have to be sincere. They have to say what they mean and mean what they say. It is a leaders ability to convey sincerity that determines their ability to inspire and lead their team. Often young managers will “rally” the troops around working hard to hit a number for the good of the cause but their delivery is so insincere that the team walks away jaded and resentful. The response is often a skeptical workforces who ends up wasting time speculating about what is really going on, as opposed to focusing on the task at hand.

Once an employee begins to question your motives, they start losing trust in what you do and say. There are a few rules to remember to avoid losing the trust of your team:

1. Treat people like you would want to be treated
2. Never lie to your team
3. Be sincere in all your dealings with people that you supervise
4. Treat your people like adults
5. Your actions will speak louder than your words so walk the talk at all times

If your leadership team lives by these five guidelines, you will have an organization that is built on trust and communicates in a healthy manner.  This doesn’t mean everyone will always agree or that you will never have conflicts.  You will.  These tough issues, however, will be much easier to deal with if your people trust what you are saying and believe that you really do care.

Always, sincerely, tell the truth.

Many business owners never hear of the National Labor Relations Board , until they get a letter notifying them that their employees have petitioned for a union election. So what is the NLRB? Simply put, the NLRB is an arm of the government that protects the rights of employees to either organize and join a union, remain union free, or decertify and effectively kick the union out. According to the NLRB Web Site:

The National Labor Relations Board is an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1935 to administer the National Labor Relations Act, the primary law governing relations between unions and employers in the private sector. The statute guarantees the right of employees to organize and to bargain collectively with their employers, and to engage in other protected concerted activity with or without a union, or to refrain from all such activity.

However, if you sit in any NLRB office for a few minutes you will quickly realize that the NLRB is NOT unbiased.  In fact, they are very much PRO-UNION. As one official once told me, “We are in the business of making it easy to organize.” This bias comes as a surprise to many business people when they go to an NLRB hearing where a member of the NLRB sits as judge and jury on the issue of the day.

Employees too, can be surprised by the response of the NLRB. If employees want to organize, they will be rushed into an office and a friendly NLRB attorney will carefully walk them through the process. However, decerification is often met with cold response. They will answer your questions if you ask directly, but you have to ask. Employees must ask directly:

• What do I need to do to deceritify a union where I work?
• What forms must be completed to file for decertification?
• Will you give me a blank form and walk me through how to fill it out?
• Can I have extra copies of the form?
• What wording do I need to have on the “Decertification Petition”?

The answers the NLRB gives employees will be all they need to know to legally decertify the union.  You can follow the this link to find the NLRB office nearest you. You can call or visit the office nearest you to get more information. The NLRB is there to protect employees. Everyone has a right to seek and receive their help. Quoting the NLRB web site says:

Employees have the right to form, join, support or assist unions, also known as labor organizations, who may bargain collectively with the employer on the employees’ behalf seeking to modify wages or working conditions. Employees also have the right to engage in other protected concerted activities without a union seeking to improve their wages and other working conditions.

Employees also have the right to refrain from engaging in these activities or to seek removal of a union from the workplace.

Focusing only on the bottom line is not the best way to improve profitability. That’s the conclusion of recent research conducted by Mary Sully de Luque and Nathan T. Washburn of Thunderbird School of Global Management; David A. Waldman, of Arizona State University West; and Robert J. House, of the University of Pennsylvania, that underscores the risk of single-minded pursuit of profits.

This finding is based on survey data gathered from 520 business organizations in 17 countries designed to test if a CEO’s primary focus on profit maximization resulted in employees developing negative feelings toward the organization. The result? Employees in these companies tend to perceive the CEO as autocratic and focused on the short term, and they report being somewhat less willing to sacrifice for the company. Corporate performance is poorer as a result.

But when the CEO makes it a priority to balance the concerns of customers, employees, and the community while also taking environmental impact into account, employees perceive him or her as visionary and participatory. And they report being more willing to exert extra effort, and corporate results improve.

So does this mean that CEO’s don’t have to worry about profits. No. What it does mean is that if you want a motivated workforce who will support all your goals, including bottom line goals, show them that you have a balanced approach. It also means that taking a balanced, “sustainable” approach is more profitable.

This research also confirms what many progressive companies such as Walmart, P&G, and Dell already know. That is that focusing on sustainability, aka – the triple bottom line, is not only good PR, but is the best strategy to maximize long term bottom line results.

In the supply chain world, turnover is an area that can have a big impact on costs, production, and quality. Many distribution centers live with 33% to 100% turnover per year.

It has been estimated that the recruiting, hiring, orientation and training of warehouse workers can cost $4,000 per worker. If you run a facility that has 200 people and have to replace 60 people every year due to turnover, this will cost your company $240,000. Clearly, retaining trained, dependable employees is a great way to increase the bottom line.

If you have a turn over problem in your supply chain, develop relationships and programs to hire disabled people. Disabled people have many advantages over hiring employees off the street, from the general public.

Most disabled people are hired through a non-profit organization. These organizations will provide special job coaches and training classes that you don’t have to pay for. Many will provide on site supervision as well.

Speaking from first hand experience, disabled people are very reliable. They take great pride in their job and follow direction much better than most employees. Once they are trained, you have a dependable employee for life.

In a recent article, Walgreens said they opened a new DC with 40% disabled workers. This is great for the community and really says something about Walgreens. However, Walgreens will see a big win financially as well. While unemployment for the disabled is over 70%, their turnover rate, once trained and oriented, is much better than the average employee workforce.

It has been proven through numerous studies that over time, productivity for the disabled is equal to that of a “non-disabled” workforce. This is true for quality and safety as well. Disabled employees have better attendance and less workplace issues than other employees. This combined with the support, training, and oversight a company gets from the numerous non-profit organizations makes hiring disabled workers a best practice for supply chain managers.

Bottom line – turnover costs business a lot of money. Every manager wants a dependable workforce that is enjoyable to work with. You can dramatically improve your turnover rate by hiring disabled employees without sacrificing productivity, quality or safety. Oh yea, one more thing, you will feel really good about making a huge difference in a disabled person’s life. Now that is really cool.

According to a recent email sent to their members, Teamsters are asking their members to call their Senators and voice concerns over the “excise taxes” built into the current Health Care Bill being debated by the Senate.  They write:

“It is important that Senators understand the damage that the excise tax provision could have on working Americans. This tax would fall on one-third of Americans in 10 years. The average affected household will pay $7,600 more in taxes between 2013 and 2019, according to a recent analysis of the proposal.

Please call and/or e-mail your Senators and inform them of the burden that the excise tax will put on working families and encourage them to work to have the excise tax provision removed from the final bill. Call 1-877-264-4226 to be connected to your Senators’ offices, or send an e-mail right now.”

It is interesting that they do not mention of $10 Billion bailout of underfunded union pension plans. They are happy to increase the deficit of the country while putting billions in their own pension fund lined pockets.

If you had to choose one quote that is the foundation of managing any part of a supply chain, it would be “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.” Every operational area that involves people or product movement must be measured in digestible time increments.

Whether you are managing a transportation fleet, a million square foot distribution facility, a computer return center, or a liquidation facility, developing a way to measure productivity and inventory is THE critical step to driving bottom line performance.

Once you figure out how to measure an activity, you can set goals and drive for improvements.

The first facility I ran had no productivity measuring system and the workforce had no goals other than not to get hurt. For six months, the leadership team gathered information and experimented with how to capture data. Back then, we had no systems so everything was manual.

Once we figured out how to capture the data, we started telling the employees how they were doing, posting their individual results in the break room, and counseling people who were lagging behind the pack. After six month of communicating and tweaking the measuring process, we develop productivity goals for each area based on their previous productivity we tracked plus 15%. Along with this, we put in an incentive program to pay employees when they achieved the goal.

Within three years we had doubled productivity and improved quality to a 99.5% accuracy level. We also set a Walmart DC record for the most days without a lost time accident. That team was focused, motivated and we all shared in the rewards.

The bottom line was that everyone from the newest guy on the dock, to the department managers, ops managers, lift drivers and every other member new their numbers, every day. Everybody knew their productivity for the month, what the goal was, and what they had to do to get there.

If you develop a way to measure productivity for each job function and set up an incentive program where everyone wins, you’ll see process improvement in every area and you’ll reach productivity levels you could never imagine.

According to an article appearing Workforce.com, employers are getting hit with lawsuits related to criminal background checks and credit checks. As always, consistency and common sense will keep you out of trouble but the trend is clear. See exerpts from the article by Fay Hansen below:

Explosive growth in the background screening industry during the past decade has generated near-universal adoption of criminal checks and a steady rise in credit checks for all U.S. job candidates.

…this growing reliance on screening is on a collision course with new legislative restrictions, legal challenges and mounting evidence that such results are poor predictors of behavior and performance.

…The EEOC says these exclusionary practices are not job-related or justified by business necessity.

…A spate of EEOC and private lawsuits are pending against other companies for unlawfully denying employment to people with criminal records or bad credit histories.

…EEOC hearings on screening practices in November 2008 included expert testimony that the results are not good predictors of employee behavior or performance. In addition to greater EEOC scrutiny of criminal record screening practices, a growing number of states now prohibit or limit pre-employment arrest inquiries.

One in five U.S. adults now have a criminal record that would show up on a routine pre-employment background check, according to estimates based on Bureau of Justice data.

…HireRight’s 2009 survey results confirm this, with 93 percent of employers reporting that they run criminality checks, up from 85 percent in 2008.

…HireRight surveyed 1,411 employers of all sizes from more than 15 industries. The survey found that 84 percent of employers conduct comprehensive screening before the first day of work; 8 percent screen immediately after the start.

…The HireRight survey found that 42 percent of employers check credit histories, up from 36 percent in 2008, but legislators are increasingly challenging the use of credit checks in pre-employment screening.

Congress is considering a bill that would prevent employers from using credit reports in their hiring or promotion decisions. In June, Hawaii joined Washington state in limiting the use of credit checks in pre-employment screening; bans or restrictions also are under consideration in Michigan, Ohio, Connecticut, Missouri, New York and Texas.

…What is clear is a growing legislative and regulatory backlash against screening practices that are not tied to demonstrable risk and business necessity.

Follow this link to the complete article.

President Barack Obama’s rival for the White House last fall will block the confirmation of one of his nominees for the National Labor Relations Board.

Sen. John McCain, R-Arizona, criticized Craig Becker, Obama’s choice for one of the Democratic slots on the board, at a Wednesday, October 21, meeting of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee.

Although the panel approved Becker and two other NLRB nominees, 15-8, McCain said that he would place a “hold” on Becker, denying him and the others a vote by the full Senate.

Echoing objections from business organizations, McCain is wary of several articles that Becker has written on labor relations. McCain asserted that Becker, currently the associate general counsel for the AFL-CIO and the Service Employees International Union, would try to circumvent labor law through NLRB rulings.

“This is probably the most controversial nominee that I’ve seen in a long time,” McCain said. “I will, and others will, put a hold on his nomination.”

The NLRB has been operating for nearly two years with only two members—one Republican and one Democrat. At full strength, it has five. With Obama in the White House, the board will have a Democratic majority.

The tenor of Becker’s articles has the business community worried that the NLRB political pendulum will swing more forcefully—this time toward unions—than it normally does when a new president takes office. The NLRB is an independent agency that governs relations between unions and employers.

McCain vented his frustration that Becker had not appeared before the committee. The chairman of the panel, Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, however, said that typically hearings are conducted only for the NLRB chairman.

“The tradition has been for a long time that we do not have hearings on these nominees,” Harkin said. “At this transition point, I want to continue that tradition.”

The committee reins passed from Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Massachusetts, to Harkin several weeks ago following Kennedy’s death. Sen. Mike Enzi, R-Wyoming and the ranking Republican on the committee, expressed reservations about Becker but voted with Harkin and the panel Democrats to approve all three NLRB nominees.

Harkin downplayed the need for a hearing, pointing out that Becker had answered 282 written questions from Republicans.

But that didn’t satisfy McCain. “There are a lot of questions about his answers to the questions,” he said.

McCain’s move was welcomed by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. The organization spearheaded an October 20 letter to the Senate Labor Committee opposing Becker’s nomination that also was signed by the Society for Human Resource Management and the HR Policy Association.

“Many of the positions taken in his writings are well outside the mainstream and would disrupt years of established precedent and the delicate balance in current labor law,” the letter states.

A chamber analysis of a 1993 Becker article for the University of Minnesota Law Review says that he “expresses the view that employers should have no role in union organizing campaigns and union representation elections.”

But worries about Becker go beyond his approach to labor law. Steven Law, chief legal officer and general counsel at the chamber, said there are questions about whether Becker played a role in the vote-buying scandal that drove former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich from office.

Law also said that Becker may have drafted Obama administration executive orders on organized labor while working at the SEIU.

“Senator McCain ensures that there will be a more substantive debate on this nominee than he received in the committee,” Law said. “We’ve got an Act II to play out next.”

An SEIU spokesman referred questions about Becker to the Senate labor committee Democratic staff.

Harkin defended Becker, a Yale Law School graduate and former UCLA law professor. He said that in his answers to committee questions Becker had pledged to “fairly and impartially decide cases based on the relevant facts and established law.”

“I am confident that he will approach his new position objectively and without bias,” Harkin said.

With a bill that would make it easier for workers to form unions stalled in the Senate, many observers say that it is possible for a Democratic-majority NLRB to implement changes that would benefit labor in organizing campaigns.

“They could achieve through decision-making a lot of the facets that the Employee Free Choice Act in its current form proposes,” said John Bowen, a partner at Ford & Harrison in Minneapolis.

But he cautioned that major policy changes made by the board would be ephemeral.

“You’d be flipping back and forth depending on who’s in the White House,” Bowen said.

—Mark Schoeff Jr.

While Washington seems concerned only with “health care reform”, Obama continues to do for the economy what he did for world peace, and unemployment is still too high, there is some good news.

The market is over 10,000 and Apple showed that if you make products that people want to buy, they will. In addition, PNC Business Banking sent out the following which is encouraging:

The Great Recession of 2008 to mid-2009 appeared to end in the summer quarter. The third quarter’s real GDP growth rate was close to 3% annualized, thus putting an end to the longest U.S. recession since the Great Depression. Third quarter GDP was supported by an end to the huge inventory drawdown of the past three quarters, the resumption of the new “normal” production at GM and Chrysler, consumer spending on automobiles motivated by the Cash-for-Clunkers program, and increasing government spending as more fiscal stimulus dollars were engaged.

After pessimism of small and mid-sized business owners rose last Spring to an all-time high in the history of the PNC Economic Outlook survey, owners are now more cautiously optimistic, still waiting for a boost from the federal stimulus program. The new Fall findings support PNC’s forecast that the U.S. economy has started a moderate U-shaped recovery in the latter half of this year that will continue throughout at least 2010. The PNC survey, which began in 2003, gauges the mood and sentiment among small and mid-sized business owners, who represent the bedrock of the American economy.

Now, if Obama and gang can keep from killing us with regulations and taxes (direct or indirect), and focus on job creation, 2010 might be a pretty decent year. As John Lennon would say “Come on Mr. President, give growth a chance.”

How does Wall Street react when the word gets out that a publicly traded company lost a union election?

The National Bureau of Economic Research found an estimated abnormal post-election returns of about negative 10% in companies where unions won certification elections, measured over the two-year period following the union’s victory.

The study analyzed all publicly traded firms that had NLRB union elections between 1961 and 1999. The data-set includes 6,114 elections gleaned from a database of nearly 200,000 certification elections.

The study’s authors analyzed stock market returns for each company for the 24 months prior to the certification election event, and for another 24 months following the election. The pre-election data were used to develop a predictive model for post-election returns for two panels of companies: those in which the union won; and those where the union lost the certification election. The predictive model accurately tracked actual returns in both panels in the 24 months before the election, and is viewed as an excellent predictor of what returns would have been during the next 24 months had an election not occurred.

The study firms’ average returns are quite close to the predicted returns every month leading up to the election, for both the panel of firms where unions were victorious, as well as those where unions ultimately lost.

But at precisely the time of the election, the actual and predicted returns diverge for companies that lost elections. The pace of the value adjustment is slow, but steady and significant over the 24 months following the election.

In contrast, companies that beat the union continued to exhibit positive returns that track closely with the predicted values.
The amount of decline in union victory firms is correlated with the union margin of victory. The largest negative returns were experienced in companies in which unions won their elections by large margins. When unions win with greater than 60% of the vote, the cumulative return is -20 to -30%.