The Distinctive
features of Employment relations in the United States?
We
would like to begin our presentation by first outlining and discussing the distinctive
features of employment relations in the United States. The majority of you
should hopefully be well aware of these features thanks to our blog exercise, so
we thought we would ask you guys what you thought the most important aspects of
employment relations in the US are?
Just
to summarize what you all said, the features of the modern United States
employment relations environment that we perceived as being the most
distinctive include:
- Declining union membership and influence (particularly in the private sector)- the share of the labour force represented by unions in the United States has continued to decline from a peak of 35% in the early 1950s, to only 12% in the early 21st century. This decline in the power of unions is particularly evident in the private sector where employers have aggressively resisted union organisation and taken advantage of new technologies and lax enforcement of labour laws to meet and combat competitive pressures and union organising efforts by shifting work within or outside the United States.
- American unions have relied upon collective bargaining and strike threats as their main weapon- However, when these increasingly less powerful unions are required to represent their members, they generally employ collective bargaining techniques along with strike threats as their main strategic weapons in reaching their goals. This strategy has heavily influenced other aspects of the labour movement and requires that unions be in a strong and solvent financial position in order to develop its credibility and ability to strike.
- Employers are the most powerful and increasingly dominant of the actors involved in US employment relations- A third distinctive feature of employment relations in the United States is heavily resultant from this nation’s liberal and capitalist ideological background and involves employers being the most powerful and increasingly dominant of the actors involved in US employment relations.
- The use of the general court system to resolve Employment Relations disputes- A very unique and distinctive feature of employment relations in the United States that is unusual in comparison to other developed market economies is that disputes involving laws are resolved through the general court system, rather than through specialised labour courts or employment tribunals such as Fair Work Australia (FWA).
- Growth in diversity in employment relations- And finally, as a product of the growth in non-union employment and the variety of employment practices that are implemented in the United States, diversity in employment relations continues to increase as a result of numerous factors such as the breakdown of pattern bargaining across enterprises and industries in the union sector.
Walmart and Costco-
One
of the essential readings for this tutorial by Goodwin and Maconachie
introduces two diametrically opposed approaches to work, labour relations and
business within the US employment relations environment. These contrasting
approaches come in the form of the ‘high road’ approach as exemplified by
Costco and the ‘low road’ approach which is implemented at WalMart.
Wal-Mart and Costco represent opposite ends of a continuum
in terms of their industrial relations philosophies and labour relations
practices.
Wal-Mart
Sam’s
Club adopts the central Wal-Mart philosophy that consumer demand for low prices
means that not only must goods be produced and sold cheaply but retail wages
must also be kept as low as possible (Herbst 2005:1). Wal-Mart demands strict
obedience from rank and file employees and has designed ‘an elaborate aptitude
test for new employees that is intended to weed out troublemakers’ (Head
2004:6). The Wal-Mart labour relations philosophy is totally anti-union.
The
company has gone to considerable lengths to prevent its employees from organising
(Miller 2004:4). Wal-Mart has issued managers with a ‘toolbox’ that lists
‘warning signs’ that workers may be organising and provides a ‘hotline number’
to company anti-union specialists (Miller 2004:4). Even a cursory search
uncovers considerable Wal-Mart anti-union activity, and only a few examples are
outlined here. Several former and current Wal-Mart executives faced a federal
grand jury investigation over allegations made by a former Vice Chairman that
the company authorised fraudulent expense reports to fund illegal anti-union
campaigns.
Costco
Possibly reflecting the current CEO and co-founder’s
background whose father was a coal miner and steelworker, Costco’s labour
relations philosophy is that employees deserve a fair share of the profits they
help generate (Herbst 2005:3). The International Brotherhood of
Teamsters (the Teamsters) appears to have representative
rights at Costco and has around
15,000 members.
The chief union negotiator with Costco is quoted as stating
that the company ‘gave us the best agreement of any retailer in the country’
(Greenhouse 2005:3). Unlike Australia, when a union wins a representative
ballot under US law all employees included in the bargaining unit must either
join the union or pay a fee to compensate the union for negotiating on their
behalf and enforcing the agreement. Thus, although only about 13 per cent of
Costco employees are union members, the ‘union effect’ at Costco stores is much
greater as the union must represent non-union employees covered by the
agreement.
Is WalMart the
‘archetypal’ employer in US employment relations?
Despite the apparent contradiction of having two such
divergent models, isomorphism is present. Mimetic processes (imitation) are
apparent in the ‘Wal-Martisation’ of the US economy. The glorification of
Wal-Mart’s labour relations in the US business media as the central reason for
its success results in many executive simply imitating the Wal-Mart low-pay
route in search of success.
What is isomorphism you might ask? Isomorphism is defined as
a ‘constraining process that forces one unit in a population to resemble other
units that face the same set of environmental conditions’. Globalisation
provides avenues for isomorphism (not only for organisations but also in terms
of professions and state policy decisions). Thus large global organisations
(such as IBM or McDonald’s) or large nation states (USA for example) are the
‘carriers’ of distinct practices which influence others’ operations such as
Australia.
How have North American
labour organisations responded to globalisation and workplace restructuring
over the last decade?
The
last decade has seen a combination of growing pressures on the United States
employment relations system, as the force of globalisation has become
particularly acute, many workplaces have been comprehensively restructured and
polarisation in both incomes and collective bargaining continue to intensify.
The major way in which North American labour organisations such as trade unions
have responded to increased international competition and other growing
pressures over the last decade has been through more aggressive management in
the way they operate.
This
more aggressive management of the labour movement has resulted in more
expenditure and the initiation of new and innovative efforts to stimulate union
membership. Another response to globalisation in recent times from North
American labour organisations has been division and conflict in the American
Federation of labour and Congress of Industrial Organisations (AFL-CIO)
regarding how best to rebuild union strength. However all in all most aspects
of the employment relations process have remained relatively stagnant in recent
times despite the various pressures of globalisation and workplace
restructuring.
