The primary motivation for this article is my quest to help clients achieve better employee engagement in the face of labor negotiations that can sour management employee relations. Although labor management partnerships (LMP’s) are separate from the collective bargaining process, they are instrumental in building relationships and mutual understanding of the challenges facing the organization.
As I sat down recently to write an article about an employee health care committee that has successfully reduced health care costs, in a union environment, I decided I first needed to know more about the state of labor management partnerships today. Just how unusual is it to find a workplace where unionized workers are willing to participate in a committee with a goal to bring down health care costs? Certainly, many of my clients would look at me askew, or at least a bit skeptical if I suggested this was possible. But I propose it is quite possible if the intention is to engage employees in mutual problem solving and workplace improvement.
But, where does one begin?
According to Daniel O’Meara and Adam Taliaferro[i]
The goal of an LMP is to bring employees, managers and union officials together to make full use of each group’s and each individual’s knowledge. An LMP properly created can eliminate waste, improve service or quality of care and improve profitability. Employees, who do the job every day, are able to offer novel resolutions to the problems at hand, allowing managers to move away from directing how work is done and into coaching and mentoring roles.
First, it is good to know what has worked and how a committee or partnership might look. My recollection of working in the field of labor relations in the 80’s was that labor management partnerships flourished. Today, it appears that formal partnerships are less prevalent. Although, in the mid-1990’s, President Clinton gave an executive order for labor management partnership initiatives, the labor community has expressed mixed views on whether these initiatives were good for labor. Another chilling effect on labor management partnerships came with an NLRB ruling in 2001 that found that, well, not ALL labor management committees are illegal, but many are. The ruling, in effect, stated that employers and employees must not engage in anything that looks like bargaining when they are holding labor management committee meetings. More on that here.
Today, one clear example of a thriving LMP can be found in the health care community. Kaiser Permanente has the largest and most comprehensive labor management partnership in the country, and displays their ambitious efforts on-line for others to learn from. But on balance, the references to LMPs are few and the signs are not encouraging. If one is searching for information about how to move in a constructive direction toward labor management cooperation, I can suggest a few helpful resources I relied upon for this blog post:
Labor Management Solutions
http://www.labormanagementsolutions.org/Resources
Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service
http://www.fmcs.gov/internet/categoryList.asp?categoryID=57
Article by Daniel O’Meara and Adam Taliaferro, of Montgomery McCracken Walker and Rhoads, Six Steps to an Effective Labor Management Partnership
CorpCounsel.com
http://www.law.com/jsp/cc/PubArticleCC.jsp?id=1202433126509
Labor management partnerships require both labor and management groups to adopt practices of openness and disclosure. The challenge is to create mutual understanding of the links between financial information and performance. This relates back to the point raised in the previous article about creating feedback loops. Reports, with meaningful data that can be understood by all, can be a vehicle for an effective feedback loop. It can measure progress and create a common framework for understanding how the organization is doing.
Finally, employees may have to take the initiative to affect change in their union ranks in order to bring about changes that are necessary to support a labor management partnership. Management must stay the course and not interfere with employees as they work through the changes needed for their bargaining unit.
O’Meara and Taliaferro, in the article cited above (here) provide an overview of the six steps to an effective Labor Management partnership:
- Create realistic goals and expectations.
- Get top level support.
- Separate the LMP from the collective bargaining relationship.
- Choose the right structure and the best people.
- Address discrete issues one at a time.
- Conduct meetings in ways that work.
[i] O’Meara and Taliaferro, “Six Steps to Effective Labor Management Partnership”,The Legal Intelligencer, August 2009.
