- Learning Objectives

- Trace the history of organized labour in Canada

- Discuss the major legislation affecting labour unions
- DEscribe the collective bargaining process
- Outline the objectives of labour unions
- Describe the negotiation tactics used by labour and management during conflicts
- Explain some of today’s employee management issues
- Employee-Management ISsues
- A labour union is an employee organization whose main goal is representing its
members in employee-management negotiations of job-related issues.
- Private vs. Public sector
- Private-sector employees include those who work as employees of a
private firm or business
- Public-sector employees are those who work for a local, provincial, or
federal government.
- Labour Unions Yesterday and Today
- Today’s critics of organized labour maintain that few of the inhumane conditions
once dominant in Canada exist in the modern workplace
- They argue that organized labout is an industry in itself, and protecting workers
has become secondary.
- On the other hand, supporters of organized labor believe that labor unions
provide a valuable service.
- Learning Objective 1: Trace the history of organized labor in Canada
- A craft union is an organization of skilled specialists in a particular craft or trade,
typically local or regional.
- Many craft unions were established to achieve some short-range goal
(e.g a pay increase) and often disbanded after attaining their goals.
- An industrial union is one that consists of unskilled and semiskilled workers in
mass-production industries such as automobile manufacturing and mining.
- The structure of labor unions in Canada
- The most basic unit is an independent local organization, which is a union
that is not formally connector affiliated with any other labor organization.
- Contrast this with a directly chartered union, which is a union that is
directly affiliated to a labor congress.
- Labor congresses are also known as union centrals.
- A national union is a union that only represents workers in Canada.
- An international union has its headquarters outside of Canada (usually in
the United States)
- Diagram of unions
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- Union coverage
- The unionization rate (AKA union destiny) refers to the number of
employed individuals who are union members as a proportion of the total
number of employed individuals
- The union coverage rate refers to the proportion of employed individuals,
both union members and non-unionized employees, covered by a
collective agreement.
- Canada’s Largest Unions
- Canadian union of public employees (CUPE)
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- UNIFOR
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- Learning Objective 2: Discuss the major legislation affecting labor unions

- Workplace laws
- Legislation protects workers against health and safety hazards in the
workplace.
 - According to CCOHS (Canadian Center for Occupational Health and
Safety), employees have the following three basic rights:
- The right to refuse unsafe work
- The right to participate in the workplace health and safety
activities through the health and safety committee or as a worker
health and safety representative
- The right to know, or the right to be informed about, actual and
potential dangers in the workplace.
- By knowing about workplace hazards, workers can ensure that employers
make work safer, provide protection to workers, and give training so that
employees can work with the smallest possibility of injury or illness.
- Sexual harassment
- Supreme court of canada defined sexual harassment as “unwelcome
conduct of a sexual nature that detrimentally affects the work environment
or leads to adverse job-related consequences for the victims of the
harassment.
- Conduct on the job can be considered illegal under specific conditions:

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- Violence and bullying in the workplace
- CCOHS defines workplace violence as “any act in which a person is
abused, threatened, intimidated or assaulted in their employment”.
- Certain work factors, processes, and interactions can put people at
increased risk from workplace violence. Examples include:
- Working with the following
- Handling money, valuables or prescription drugs
- Carrying out inspection or enforcement duties
- Providing service, care, advice or education
- Working in premises where alcohol is served.
- Workplace design, administrative practices, and work practices are
preventative measures that have helped curtail workplace violence.
- Workplace bullying
- CCOHS defines bullying as acts or verbal comments that could
mentally hurt or isolate a person in the workplace.
- Bullying is 4x as common than sexual harassment on the job.
- Labour Relations Boards
- Labour relations boards (LRBs) investigate violations of the law and have
the power to determine:
 - (1) whether a person is an employee for the purposes of the law
- (2) whether an employee is a member of a trade union
- (3) whether an organization is an appropriate bargaining agent for
bargaining purposes
- (4) whether a collective agreement is in force
- (5) whether any given party is bound by it
- Learning Objective 3: Describe the collective bargaining process
- The LRB oversees collective bargaining, which is the entire process whereby
union and management representatives negotiate a contract for workers.
- Determines how unions are selected
- Actions that are allows during the period prior to certification
- Ongoing contract negotiations
- Certification is a formal process whereby a union is recognized by the LRB as the
bargaining agent for a group of employees
- Decertification is the process by which workers can take away a union’s right to
represent them.
- Steps in collective bargaining

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- Learning Objective 4: Outline the objectives of labour unions
- The negotiated labor-management agreement, informally referred to as the labor
contract, sets the tone and clarifies the terms and conditions under which
management and the union will function over a specific period.
- Labor unions generally insist that contracts contain a union security clause
stipulating that employees who benefit from a union either join or at least pay
dues to the union. There are four types of agreements:
- (1) A closed shop agreement specifies that workers have to be members
of a union before being hired for a job. In effect, hiring is done through the
union.
- (2) In a union shop agreement, the employer is free to hire anybody but
the recruit must then join the union within a prescribed period (usually 30,
60, 90 days)
- (3) The agency shop agreement sates that employers may hire workers
who are not required to jooin the union but the workers must pay a
special union fee or regular union dues.
- Based on the Rand formula, employees in a unionized
environment have to fund the bargaining and administration of the
collective agreement
- (4) An open shop agreement gives workers the option to join or not join
the union if one exists. A worker who does not join cannot be forced to
pay a fee or dues.
- Resolving Labour-Management Dispites
- A grievance is a charge by employees that management is not abiding by
or fulfilling the terms of a negotiated labout-management agreement as
they perceive it.
 - Overtime rules, promotions, layoffs, transfers and job assignments
are generally sources of employee grievances.
- Vast majority of grievances are negotiated and resolved by shop
stewards, who are union officials who work permanently in an
organization and represent employee interests on a daily basis.
- Conciliation, mediation and arbitration
- During the contract negotiation process, there is generally a bargaining
zone, which is the range of options between the initial and final offers taht
each party will consider before negotiations dissolve or reach an impasse.
- Conciliation is the use of a government-appointed third part (usually
through the minister of labor) to explore solutions to a labor-management
dispute.
- Mediation is the use of a third party, called a mediator, who encourages
both sides in a dispute to consider negotiating, and often makes
suggestions for resolving the matter.
- A more extreme approach used to resolve conflicts is arbitration, which is
an agreement to bring in an impartial third party – a single arbitrator or
arbitration panel – to render a binding decision in a labor dispute.
- Could be voluntary, where both sides decide to submit their case
to an arbitrator, or it can be compulsory, where a decision is
imposed by the government.
- Learning Objective 5: Describe the negotiation tactics used by labor and
management during conflicts
- Union tactics
- A strike occurs when workers collectively refuse to go to work. Strikes
have been the most potent union tactic – they attract public attention to a
labor dispute and can cause operations in a company to slow down or
totally cease.
- Prior to the actual strike, union leaders call for a strike cote, which
is a secret ballot completed by union members authorizing the
union leadership to call a strike.
- Unions also attempt boycotts as a means to obtain their objectives in a
labour dispute
- A primary boycott occurs when organized labor encourages both
its members and the general public not to buy the products of a
firm engaged in a labor dispute.
- A secondary boycott is an attempt by labor to convince others to
stop doing business with a firm that is the subject of primary
boycott.
- Work-to-rule, where workers, follow the operating rules of the workplace
in every detail to slow down the work, is another tactic that has been used
by unions.
- Management tactics
 - A lockout is an attempt by management to put pressure on union workers
by temporarily closing the business.
- When workers do not work, they do not get paid, however, without
products, there are no profits.
- An injunction is a court order directing someone to do something or to
refrain from doing something.
- Sometimes, a company may try to bring in replacement workers. Known
as strikebreakers (called scabs by unions), they are workers who are
hired to do the jobs of sriking employees until the labour dispute is
resolved.
- Legislation
- Back-to-work legislation is a special law passed by the federal/provincial
government that orders an end to labor management disputes in an
industry the government decides is essential to the operation of the
economy.
- Learning Objective 6: Explain some of today’s employee-management issues
- Executive compensation
- Today, executives generally receive stock options, the ability to buy
company stock, AKA shares, at a set price at a later day, and restricted
stock (sock issues directly to the CEO that cannot be sold for usually 3-4
years) as part of their compensation.
- Child-care benefits provided by employers can include:
- Discount arrangements with national child-care chains
- Vouchers that offer payments toward child care the employee selects
- Referral services that help identify high-quality child-care facilities to
employees
- On-site child-care centers where parents can visit children at lunch or
during lag times throughout the workday
- Sick-child centers to care for moderately ill children.
- Elder care