Introduction- In today’s business environment, it is essential for organization to clearly define the roles and rights of management and labor unions in order to develop the relationship between labor and management. This paper discusses the three pieces of legislation that are important for defining the rights of management and unions.
Important Legislations
The three pieces of legislation those are important for management-labor relationships are as follow:
The Wagner Act: The Wagner Act is also called as the National Labor Relations Act of 1935. The main purpose of this act was to give rights to the employees to form and join unions, to make collective bargaining, make strike against their employers and to engage in practices that support their mutual interests. This act is basically bills of rights for union that supported employees to develop effective relationship with the management and organization. This act also provided directions to the employers to make effective bargaining on the issues such as wages, hours and terms and condition of employment. With the introduction of Wagner Act, the government of US also established National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) (Botson, 2005). The board has five members appointed by the president of USA.
The main responsibility of this board was to determine appropriate bargaining units, performing elections to determine union representation and avoiding and correcting employer actions that could lead to unfair labor practices. Through this, labor unions identified their roles and responsibilities and rights in the organizations (Dewhirst & Rausch, 2009). This act also helped labor unions to achieve legal identification as legitimate interests groups in American Society.
The Taft-Hartley Act: The Taft-Hartley Act is used by the unions as an improved version of Wagner Act through addressing the employers’ concerns about the unfair union labor practices. The Taft-Hartley Act includes some points that promote unfair labor practices by unions such as engaging in illegal strikes, refusing for collectively bargaining, charge excessive or discriminatory fees under union shop contracts and obtain compensations for the work that not to be performed. This helps the employees and management to identify their rights and responsibilities within the organization effectively (Bohlander & Snell, 2009). In this act, the Taft-Hartley declared close shop illegal because this type of union security arrangement dominated the labor contracts.
In the closed shop arrangement, labor union controlled the source of labor. Through this arrangement, an individual can join the union, be trained by the union and send individual for the work to the employer by the unions. This act is also helpful for the employers and unions to identify the rights of management and labor at the time of strikes against employer. This act also provides the rights to the workers to decertify their union representatives. With the introduction of Taft-Hartley Act, the US government also established an independent agency called Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service (FMCS) (McConnell, 2011). This agency is separated from the department of labor that helped the companies by sending trained representatives to assists in dispute negotiations between management and labor.
The main role of this act is also related to provide directions to the unions and employers to reach at an agreement that saves the interests of both the parties effectively. This act also provided the effective platform for the parties to bargain, deal and demonstrate their interests to reach a mutually acceptable agreement (Genovese, 2010).
Landrum-Griffin Act: The Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 is also an important piece of legislation that helps in defining the rights of unions and management effectively. This act was also a correcting act of Taft-Hartley and Wagner Act. The main role of this act is to monitor the internal union activities through making them official. The internal union activities include union funds, elections and other business and representational matters. These activities helped the workers and management to identify their rights in managing internal union activities effectively. The main aim of this act is to make efforts to prevent corrupt practices and to keep organized crime by gaining control of the labor movement (Sims, 2002).
The policies in this act also allowed all members of a union to vote without any obligation of race, sex and national origin etc. This helps the workers and union members to receive certain rights that supported in maintaining effective relationship with the management within the organizations in effective manner. This act is also beneficial in defining the rights of management and labor union because this act establishes a Bill of Rights for union members, reporting requirements for labor organizations, union officers and employees, employers, labor relations consultants, standards for elections of union officers and safeguard for protecting the labor union funds and assets (Carper, Mckinsey & West, 2008). It helps the employer as well as labors to develop their understanding about the rights in the organizations.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the legal framework helps the organizations to establish effective and supportive labor-management relationship. In this, three legislations such as Wagner Act, Taft- Hartley Act and Landrum-Griffin Act help organizations to identify and develop the rights of labor and management.