Search results

The purpose of this article is to provide analysis of organizational communication used by one major US airline during a Teamsters unionizing campaign as a means for readers to examine what airlines do when faced with the threat of unionization, how they prepare front‐line management for communication with employees, and what role these managers play in unionizing campaigns.

A range of corporate communications from the airline were gathered within a seven‐month period and qualitatively analyzed, including management training manuals, e‐mails, and conference calls between line managers and regional directors.

Anti‐union communication strategies position front‐line managers in the key persuasive role of controlling and disseminating essential top‐down information in the effort to keep employees union‐free, utilizing a complex and multi‐layered organizational approach to train managers for employee communication during a unionizing campaign.

While granted access by America West to observe conference calls and view internal documents the authors were not granted access to listen to Teamsters Union conversations or view Teamsters' internal documents. As a result, the authors realize that their study is limited to an analysis of only one side of the story. Additional research into this topic could include data from both campaigns.

Analysis of organizational anti‐union campaigns and the role of front‐line managers in these campaigns identify key areas of interest for both organizations and unions. This analysis, in conjunction with assessment of the overall results of a unionizing campaign, provides information that organizations can use when selecting strategies for internal communication in times of potential change.

This paper provides useful information about the complex function of line management in supporting and promoting the organization when external factors are perceived as endangering internal infrastructure. It also offers a practical glimpse into a unique type of managerial communication whose aim is to be both cautious and persuasive.

Union membership has declined in many countries reducing union capacity to bargain and contribute to economic equality. This paper aims to explore a more hopeful case in an Australian state, where the dramatic anti-union strategies of conservative governments have been reversed by Labor governments.

The research frames union recognition and union security in an international context, highlighting differences between US, Canadian, UK and Australian approaches. The research focuses on the Australian state of Queensland, providing an historical account of changes to union recognition and union preference provisions, drawing on legislation, major public service agreements, newspapers and parliamentary transcripts.

Conservative governments in Australia have implemented anti-union strategies, and Labor governments have often failed to restore union-friendly provisions when re-elected. In contrast, the Queensland study demonstrates a substantial restoration of union security provisions when Labor governments are re-elected, rebuilding political capital with unions and potentially supporting union membership. This difference is due to unique political and institutional factors that provide governments with unfettered powers to legislate their industrial relations agenda, whether in support or otherwise of unions, and has led to the more distinctive pendulum swings to the right and left than occurred elsewhere in Australia.

The research contributes to debates about the factors related to declining union membership and highlights a case where unions have achieved restoration of many provisions that increase their influence and potentially their membership.

Cluster analysis is applied to the union and employer tactics used in a sample of Ontario organising campaigns to identify the combinations of tactics or strategies that are used most often. Seven union organising strategies and five employer resistance strategies are revealed. Contingency table analysis shows that the union and employer strategies are not independent of one another. More active campaigns by one side (in terms of more tactics used) are met by more active campaigns by the other side. Regression analysis is used to estimate the effects of the strategies on the outcome of the organising campaign. The most active strategies, including intensive communication with workers and worker committees, work best for the employers. For unions, strategies emphasising personal communication through house calls are the most effective.

On both sides of the Atlantic, there is much talk amongst academics and practitioners about the “new” industrial relations, based on flexibility, employee involvement, anti‐union strategies and Japanese employment practices. However, the “old” industrial relations lives on; it is concluded that where management is farsighted and unions are strong and vigilant, it has produced benefits for both parties.

This paper provides a perspective on the field of nonmarket strategy. It does not attempt to survey the literature but instead focuses on the substantive content of research in the field. The paper discusses the origins of the field and the roles of nonmarket strategy. The political economy framework is used and contrasted with the current form of the resource-based theory. The paper argues that research should focus on the firm level and argues that the strategy of self-regulation can be useful in reducing the likelihood of challenges from private and public politics. The political economy perspective is illustrated using three examples: (1) public politics: Uber, (2) private politics: Rainforest Action Network and Citigroup, and (3) integrated strategy and private and public politics: The Fast Food Campaign. The paper concludes with a discussion of research issues in theory, empirics, and normative assessment.

Since the late 1970s, the study of the role, structure and functions of personnel management in the United Kingdom has been greatly facilitated by surveys emerging from a number of large‐scale surveys. A major interest in interpreting the data from these surveys has been to evaluate the impact of recession, and, latterly, recovery on the power, structure and roles of personnel departments and personnel specialists in recent years. The survey data are used comparatively to evaluate the empirical plausibility of the different scenarios which have arisen, and to account for the results that emerge.

Based on longitudinal case study research amongst ancillary staff in two health service trusts in the same region, this article analyses the strategies that management and trade unions adopted in their approach towards workplace social partnership. The article highlights the differentiated principles, practices and outcomes of partnership in the two trusts, by initially drawing on the “deliberate” and “emergent” strategy spectrum of Mintzberg and Waters. Whilst “deliberate” strategy focuses on direction and control, “emergent” strategy suggests a learning process in the search for effective patterns of behaviour and decision making outcomes. However, departing from the essentially managerialist underpinnings of the conceptualisation, the article seeks to understand how organised labour interacts with management in the creation and development of strategy in both ideal type scenarios. In this respect, the article utilises the “theory of the firm”, in particular, transaction cost analysis and the resource based view of the organisation, to aid our understanding of this complex process.

This paper focuses on the employment practices of both multinational corporations (MNCs) and large national competitors in the German fast‐food industry, such as Burger King, Pizza Hut, Nordsee, McDonald’s, Churrasco and Blockhaus. The paper poses a number of questions. Have the activities of MNCs affected the employment practices of national companies? Are companies adopting union exclusion policies and if so why and to what extent? Does the “country of origin effect” help explain the activities of MNCs? What changes are evident in workers’ terms and conditions and how effective are statutory systems of employee representation in practice? The findings suggest that Anglo‐Saxon‐based MNCs are more likely to adopt anti‐works council and non‐union policies in the sector, suggesting that MNCs may indeed be able to transfer their management practices across borders, imposing their employer‐based systems with little regard for German institutional arrangements.

In many countries trade unions faced major problems in the 1970s and 1980s. Total membership declined as did the proportion of the working population unionised. This picture is by no means universal and, as Kelly has argued, if the figures are considered carefully, then the problems may be less significant than often imagined. One of the countries where unions appear to have been able to escape almost unscathed is Canada. They have done so, despite facing many of the problems that have been largely responsible for creating the difficult environment in which unions have had to operate in other countries. In particular, they had to face difficult economic conditions and shifts in the make‐up of the labour force with an increasing emphasis on service sector employment. The apparent success of Canadian unions is even more interesting when it is recalled that over the same period union membership in the USA has declined sharply and to some extent the same unions organise in both the USA and Canada. This paper seeks to examine the recent trends in trade union membership in Canada and reviews possible explanations.

This chapter presents an alternative model of industrial relations in which multiple spheres of labor policy coexist with varied political dynamics and contrasting outcomes. Despite evidence of wide public support for unionism and collective action, uneven patterns of voter participation, racial polarization, and political structures determine policies. Disparate historical trajectories also influence local variance. The unusual level of differentiation in US industrial relations ultimately derives from the constitutional regime: the absence of a nationally guaranteed right to vote and right to organize despite the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments.