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labour relations
Management sometimes mistakenly believes that
employees join unions because they want more pay.
As a result, many managers in every business,
including tourism, attempt to fight unionisation by
offering greater pay for employees. However, pay is
only one of the reasons that employees join unions.
Employees join unions primarily because they
believe this will help them accomplish their goals,
such as economic security, comfortable working
conditions, respect, control over their own work
and more. From an employee's perspective,
managers have control over various working means
and conditions and thus those who vote to certify
unions in their workplace are more likely to be
voting against management, than for unions.
In the United States, the first real effort to
prevent mistreatment of employees by management
came about with the passage of the Wagner
Act in 1935. Provisions of it gave employees the
right to organise and to engage in collective
bargaining. The act is still in force and plays a
very significant role in union-management relations
and is the basis for the responsibility of
employers to bargain in good faith. The five key
`unfair labour practice' provisions of this act
prohibit employers from interfering with or coercing
employees from forming or joining unions;
attempting to dominate or influence the operation
of unions; from discriminating in hiring or tenure
of employees because of their membership or
activity in unions; from retaliating against employees
who file unfair labour practice charges with
National Labour Relations Board; and failing to
bargain in good faith.
The intent in the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 was
to balance power between unions and employers.
Provisions of this act prohibited closed shops;
established the rights of states to enact right-towork
laws; established unfair labour practice
charges that could be filed against unions for
coercing employees to join unions and other
actions; eliminated `featherbedding' or charging
members for services not provided by the union;
established the Federal Mediation and Conciliation
Service to help unions and management reach
agreements; provided for civil suits against either
employer or employee for failure to follow terms of
agreements; gave National Labour Relations Board
power to enforce cease and desist orders through
court injunctions if either side engaged in unfair
labour practices; and gave management the right
to discuss advantages and disadvantages of unions
with employees as long as they did not either
threaten to punish employees who joined unions or
to pay extra benefits to those who did not join. The
McClelland Committee on Anti-Racketeering uncovered
abuses of power, unethical conduct and
corrupt practices in some unions.
The US government employees were first
allowed to organise and bargain collectively by
Executive Order 10988 issued by President
Kennedy in 1962. Legal rights of government
employees were further defined by passage of the
Civil Service Reform Act of 1981which allowed
federal employees' roles more consistent with union
members in other fields. All these labour relations
development issues and acts, in the United States