This discussion paper reports on research that looked at whether the relationship between employee intention to quit and human resource management (HRM) changed based on union membership. The investigation first considered whether HRM reduced or increased an employee’s intention to quit. Next, the moderating effect of union membership on the relationship between HRM and quit …
Dr. Pradeep Kumar of Queen’s University School of Policy Studies is an expert in unionism, collective bargaining, and workplace change in North America. Dr. Kumar, Director of the Masters of Industrial Relations program, spoke with us recently about union-management relations, and what is likely to develop in 2005 and beyond. How important are labour relations …
The State of Our Unions – and Critical Issues in Labour-Management Relations Read More »
The Don Wood Lecture in Industrial Relations was established by friends of W. Donald Wood to honour his outstanding contribution to Canadian industrial relations. Dr Wood was Director of the Industrial Relations Centre from 1960 to 1985, and the first Director of the School of Industrial Relations, established in 1983. The lecture brings to Queen’s …
Globalization and North American Integration: Implications for the Union Movement Read More »
Why is there no consensus about best practices for managing individual employee performance (IEP) in unionized workplaces? This paper discusses the reasons, investigating the success of collectivist or high-performance work systems; why managers and unions need to address IEP issues and what’s in it for them; what academic research says about best practices; and workable …
Skill-based pay plans (SBPs) in unionized companies is the subject of this paper. It focuses on a unionized mining company, detailing problems and successes, and also provides guidelines for implementing skill-based pay plans.
Drawing on interviews with key players in coalition-building in Canada, the author looks at current trends, difficulties and the advantages for unions and their members, and the probable direction of future coalition-building efforts.
This paper examines change management and labour organizations. Specifically, the research surveys the impacts of workplace changes such as downsizing and restructuring on unions and the work-life quality of employees.
If Canadian industries are to compete successfully in the new economy, unions and management must move away from their traditional adversarial relationships. This study analyzes a conflict resolution method, known as Relationships by Objectives (RBO), that directs unions and management away from conflict and towards cooperation through joint problem solving. RBO was part of the Preventive Mediation Program provided by the Ontario Ministry of Labour beginning in 1978.
Although several recent articles have underscored the importance of human resource management, employee involvement, and labour-management cooperation, there has been very little research addressing these topics from the perspective of organized labour. This study is aimed at providing some practical information about labour-management relations across the country.
Many unions around the globe have been experiencing a drop in membership and a decline in density over the last ten years. The union response, as documented in this paper based on a survey of innovations and change in Canadian labour organizations, has been both defensive and pro-active, focusing on protecting current levels of wages …
Adapting To Change: Union Priorites in The 1990s Read More »
Electronic meeting systems (EMS) can help conflicting groups move from disagreement to consensus and help enable management and unions to become strategic partners says the author of the study, which provides a detailed account of the operation of an EMS system, potential benefits, and pitfalls to avoid.
How do you manage change while promoting labour-management collaboration? In today’s organizations, unions and management are increasingly being asked to work together in areas that stretch far beyond collective agreements, such as organizational design and business and profitability planning.
In this health care-related paper, learn the results of a survey of major hospitals across Canada. The research explores workforce management and culture; unionization and labour-management relations; workforce reduction behaviour; and organizational performance.
Learn how a strategic grievance procedure can improve labour management relations. This current issues paper explores the four key roles of a grievance procedure, secondary roles, and how solid procedure facilitates conflict management and dispute resolution.
This article from 1996 takes a look at CP Rail, and the tremendous pressures for change it was being confronted with. Environmental forces, government policy and the responses of management and labour to their environment had a significant impact on industrial relations policies and practices at CP Rail. The story at CP Rail represents a classic case of an old system of industrial relations finally yielding to overwhelming forces for change.
This study examines the case of Northern Telecom & the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers (CEP) Union of Canada. The authors look at the North York Plant's 1993 and 1995 negotiations, and examine what can be learned from these negotiations.
While Robert McKersie was visiting the Queen's University School of Industrial Relations and the Queen's University Industrial Relations Centre to give the annual Don Wood Lecture in Industrial Relations, Mary Lou Coates took the opportunity to talk with Robert about his views and theories on the future of industrial relations and human resource management.
In spring 1995, Bob White met with Pradeep Kumar and Bryan Downie of the School of Industrial Relations at Queen's University for a conversation on the labour movement in Canada, where it is and where it is going, and on Bob White's vision of the role and future of the movement..
This paper examines the relationship between stressful working conditions and union members' dissatisfaction with their union. Few studies to date have examined this relationship and existing studies report contradictory findings. That is, some studies find that stressful work is associated with satisfaction with the union while other studies find either no relationship or that stressful work is associated with dissatisfaction with the union.
This paper was presented at the Annual Conference of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association, Carleton University, Ottawa on June 3-5, 1993. The paper is based on a larger study of the role of unions and collective bargaining in human resource innovations undertaken by the author as a part of a research project on Human Resource Management in Canada under the auspices of Industrial Relations Centre, Queen's University.
The labour movement in Canada has been under tremendous pressure in recent years. Intense global competition, economic integration and restructuring, trade liberalization initiatives such as the Canada-US Free Trade Agreement, rapid and pervasive technological change, the growing service economy and dramatic changes in the growth and composition of the workforce have ushered in a drastically altered economic, labour market and public policy environment within which unions operate.
Do you remember when workers could smoke in the workplace? This article was written in 1992, at a time when concern over environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) was being identified as a leading occupational health hazard and policy makers were instituting smoking restrictions and bans in workplaces.
The current proposals to amend Ontario's collective bargaining laws have given rise to a loud, and frequently intemperate, debate that has not only divided Ontario's labour relations community but has now moved to the centre of Ontario's political stage. Underlying this debate is a realignment of the relative political influence of business and labour that came with the NDP's election victory in the fall of 1990.
This paper was presented at the annual meeting of the Canadian Industrial Relations Association, held at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario on June 2-4, 1991. The purpose of this paper to explore the determinants of union beliefs and attitudes of workers in Canada, and to examine if attitudes towards unions differ systematically by gender, that is, whether men and women differ in their union beliefs and their disposition towards joining a union.
The purpose of this paper is to examine the jurisprudence surrounding unionization attempts in the Canadian chartered banks (supplemented by decisions of the Ontario Labour Relations Board dealing with trust companies and credit unions) and to analyze the efficacy of legislation in dealing with the intransigence of the banking counter-campaign in order to identify possible areas for resolution of the barriers to collective representation for bank and other service sector workers. Prior to examination of the jurisprudence, the paper focuses on the nature of employment in the banking sector in order to provide a contextual framework for analysis of the efficacy of labour board decisions.