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Institutional Affiliation
Understanding Labor Relations & Collective Bargaining
Introduction
Labor relations and collective bargaining represents the ways in which workers organize themselves in order to increase their bargaining power with the employer. The employers join or set up a union that is expected to represent their grievances that relate to fair and competitive wages, pensions, bonuses as well as good working conditions. The union as a consequence of representing the workers receives a small percentage of the earnings due to the workers which they pay the office holders with the balance being invested or being held intrust for the welfare of the workers …show more content…
As such the unions that represent the American Airline Employees would of course take the position of the employee in order to safeguard the earnings being enjoyed by the employees. However, the union must assess the realities on the ground in order to make an informed decision regarding the issue that is affecting the employees. In order to make an informed response, the first thing that must be done by the unions is to interrogate the proposals being tabled in light of all the available information and select the course of action that is most beneficial to the employees. The options that were being addressed were to accept the pay cuts that were being proposed by the CEO and the board of directors or risk the bankruptcy of the American …show more content…
It is usually in the interest of all parties to keep the company operational since all parties concerned reap their daily bread from the company. The case also represents the usual disconnect between executives and common workers where the union officials failed to give all relevant information concerning the deal since it would have jeopardized the votes being undertaken by the workers. In this issue the union bosses were being strategic rather than self- serving in the quest to ensure their working team chooses the best decision available. However as happened in the aftermath of their decision to conceal information, their motives became irrelevant as their members felt cheated and accused the representatives of collusion and wanted to kick them out of office. The betrayal felt worse when the union members realized that management considered them second class workers since they can raise enough resources to guarantee bonuses to the select management team while reducing their wages and laying off some of their