What do unions negotiate

Engage in bad-faith, surface, or piecemeal bargaining. Refuse to furnish information the union requests that is relevant to the bargaining process or to the employees' terms or conditions of employment. Refuse to sign a writing that incorporates a collective-bargaining agreement you have reached with the union. Modify any term of a collective-bargaining agreement without the union's consent.

Make unilateral changes in terms and conditions of employment during the term of a collective-bargaining agreement, unless the union has clearly and unmistakably waived its right to bargain or the change is too minor to require bargaining.

Do not assume that a change you deem minor would be so viewed by the Board. Refuse to bargain over the effects of a change in the scope and direction of your enterprise, even though you need not bargain over the change itself because it concerns a matter at the core of your entrepreneurial control of your business. Whether a proposed change is a non-bargainable "scope and direction" change or a mandatory subject of bargaining may present a difficult legal question.

However, subcontracting that merely substitutes one group of workers for another to do the same work under similar conditions of employment is not a non-bargainable "scope and direction" change.

Refuse to recognize and bargain with a union that represents employees of an employer whose business you are acquiring if you are a Burns successor. See NLRB v. Burns International Security Services, U. You are a Burns successor if you hire the majority of your employees from the predecessor's workforce, and from their perspective day-to-day life at work remains largely unchanged.

You may, however, before hiring your workforce, set initial terms and conditions of employment without bargaining with the union, unless you are a "perfectly clear" Burns successor.

See below. Set initial terms and conditions of employment before bargaining with the union if you are a "perfectly clear" Burns successor - that is, if you make it perfectly clear that you plan to retain all of the predecessor's employees, or at least enough of them to make it evident that the union's majority status will continue, without informing them that they will be expected to work under different terms.

Refuse to recognize and bargain with a union that represents employees of an employer whose business you are acquiring, if you refuse to hire the predecessor's employees because they are unionized. In other words, if you discriminate in hiring to avoid becoming a Burns successor, you become a Burns successor - and a "perfectly clear" one at that. Set initial terms and conditions of employment before bargaining with the union, if you acquire a business and refuse to hire employees of the predecessor to avoid becoming a Burns successor.

Set initial terms and conditions of employment before bargaining with the union, if you are a Burns successor and you tell your employees that you will not permit them to be represented by the union.

Evade your bargaining or contractual duties under the Act by transferring operations to a nominally different business entity that is merely the disguised continuance or "alter ego" of your former unionized business. The power of the collective bargaining process.

How to negotiate a union contract? You and your coworkers decide together that you want a contract. You come together to determine what you want to discuss with your employer. Meeting dates, sometimes referred to as bargaining sessions, are scheduled. Your union and the company will go back and forth on terms. Members accept or reject the contract.

Have more questions about how negotiations work for your contract? Organize and unionize your workplace Are you and your coworkers ready to negotiate together for bigger paychecks, stronger benefits and better lives? Members can contribute to discussions by talking to their reps while negotiations take place. Workplace bargaining and negotiating is also a golden opportunity to build a strong local union. Claims and agreements are a great way of recruiting new members and getting more members involved in the union.

A group of UNISON reps may form a collective bargaining group to reach an agreement for better pay or changes to pensions, for example. This may happen at either a local or national level. They may also negotiate over non pay-related issues, such as working hours, planned redundancies or the right to flexible working for carers and parents.

At the moment, there is no legal requirement for employers to comply with requests for flexible working, so bargaining may be a useful way to encourage an employer to implement flexible working arrangements. This is usually achieved through a recognition agreement which sets out the procedures for negotiations between management and the unions, and the facilities such as time off available to the unions.

Negotiating is not always a skill that comes naturally, which is why UNISON provides regular training courses, through the regions, to help support reps and improve their skills in this vital work. On the other hand, most of the individuals indicating an interest in unionization suggested a desire for less confrontational labor-management relationships. Representative unions can no longer sit down with employer agents and simply negotiate the terms they would prefer to have.

In our global economy, they must understand the impact of their bargaining decisions on firm competitiveness. If they unduly increase labor costs or lower productivity, corporate earnings will decline, and workers will be laid off. They have to work together as partners to achieve results that reward employees for their contributions to firm success.

Simultaneously, they must recognize the need to keep companies competitive. A number of successful unionized firms have taken courses together on interest-based bargaining. These courses teach labor and management representatives on how to look for ways to satisfy the underlying needs of both sides simultaneously.

The authors discussed the need for participants to prioritize their underlying interests and seek ways to maximize the returns achieved by both sides. When complicated issues arise, teams may use separate committees to explore different options they can use to handle these matters.

Companies such as The Negotiation Experts teach in their Sales Training in Seattle seminars that negotiation teams can meet away from public bargaining sessions.

Groups can look for pioneering alternatives that might not have been used previously. Without the glower of public scrutiny, they can explore options that might not be ultimately adopted without the fear of embarrassment. Management officials often complain to Labour Law teachers about how difficult it is to determine whether particular topics are mandatory bargaining subjects that must be discussed with union agents. Some subcontracting decisions that merely involve the substitution of less expensive outside workers for present employees must usually be bargained about.

Other decisions involving partial department closures or other fundamental changes in the business do not have to be discussed. NLRB, U. When basic firm decisions are based chiefly on labor cost considerations and do not entail significant changes in company operations, bargaining will generally be required. On the other hand, when the decisions do not include concern labor costs and do involve changes in basic operations, bargaining will not be necessary.

Where to draw the line between required bargaining and non-mandatory bargaining is not clear. This fact should not, however, frighten management officials. As noted earlier, the duty to bargain does not require that either side agrees to particular demands or the making of concessions.

If company leaders are considering changes that might arguably be subject to mandatory bargaining, they should resolve doubts in favor of collective negotiations. Company leaders should advise union officials of their contemplated changes and offer to bargain. They should carefully explain the reasons for the proposed changes and ask for a union response. If the union is able to respond appropriately to their needs, company officials may decide to retain their current workers and adopt the union proposal.

If union negotiators do not work to satisfy firm concerns, the company negotiators need only bargain to a good-faith impasse. At this point, they may legally effectuate their previous proposal despite union objection. They have to be sure to satisfy two crucial prerequisites to such unilateral changes. First, they must be sure they have arrived at a good-faith impasse. This is when after thorough bargaining, the sides have reached presently irreconcilable positions.

When in doubt, they should offer to have another bargaining session to be certain they have reached this point. Second, the changes they unilaterally implement cannot be more generous to the workers than those already offered by their side at the bargaining table. People who must partake in collective bargaining interactions should take a good training course on negotiating if they can.

Collective bargainers should prepare for long, drawn-out talks which will take time to develop. This is both because of the many issues to address and the political nature of union representatives. These negotiators should also distinguish that most bargaining encounters will not be settled until shortly before the existing contract is due to expire.

If labor leaders agree to terms too early, unit personnel may suspect they have become too comfortable with management and vote against contract ratification. If, on the other hand, management negotiators allow the union agents to take credit for the gains they achieved through their last-minute efforts, the affected employees are likely to be satisfied with the final results.

Very informative look at collective bargainaing. As a union member i can say that we have the right to capitalize on our labor, just as the corporation has the right to capitalize. We would be a undesirable society with no middle class. Unions are still needed in my opinion, simply due to the fact that corporations are profit maximizing machines that would cut labor costs down to slavery if they could.

Our econmoy is consumer driven. The more we have to spend, the more we spend. Henry Ford based his company on this premise and over paid his employees so they could afford to buy his products. Very informative.

This article breaks down collective bargaining in a way that anyone can understand.