INSTITUTE OF LIVER AND BILIARY SCIENCES, NEW DELHI

ASSIGNMENT
ON
COLLECTIVE
BARGAINING

Presented to: Mrs. Madhavi Verma Presented by: Zeenat Naz

READER M.Sc. Nursing, I year

CON-ILBS CON-ILBS
HISTORY OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING/LABOR LAW
In 1935, National Labor Relation Act (Nlra) or the Wagner Act was passed to end the depression. It
prevented the employers from cutting the wages. A National Labor Relation Board was created to
take an administrative action against employers who violated the act.
National Labor Relations Act: The primary law governing collective bargaining in the United
States is the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA). As previously mentioned, this act is made-up of
the original Wagner Act (1935) and the Taft-Hartley Amendments (1947). Section 7 of the NLRA
states the basic rights granted to employees—the right to organize or be free from organization.
Section 7 states that “employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor
organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in
other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid or protection”.
Definition
Collective bargaining consists of two words-Collective + bargaining. Collective means group action
through its representatives. Bargaining means negotiations.
Collective bargaining is the joining together of employees for the purpose of increasing their ability
to influence the employer and improve working condition (Delong, 1998).
There are several essential features of collective bargaining, all of which cannot be reflected in a
single definition or description of the process:
• It is not equivalent to collective agreements because collective bargaining refers to the process or
means, and collective agreements to the possible result, of bargaining. Collective bargaining may not
always lead to a collective agreement.
• It is a method used by trade unions to improve the terms and conditions of employment of their
members. • It seeks to restore the unequal bargaining position between employer and employee.
• Where it leads to an agreement, it modifies, rather than replaces, the individual contract of
employment, because it does not create the employer-employee relationship.
• The process is bipartite, but in some developing countries the state plays a role in the form of a
conciliator where disagreements occur, or where collective bargaining impinges on government
policy.
CHARACTERISTICS OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
The main features of collective bargaining are:
• It is a group action which is initiated through the representatives of the workers.
• It is flexible and movable.
• It is not rigid rather has a wide scope of compromise for mutual give and take before the final
agreement is reached.
• It is two-party process in which both parties are involved. It is not a take-it or leave-it policy.
• It is a continuous process which provides a mechanism for continuing an organized relationship
between trade unions and management.
• It is scientific, factual and systematic.
• It is an industrial democracy at work.

Purposes of collective bargaining

The employees join the union to increase their power to get certain responses from the management.
Major reasons are:
• Poor quality of immediate supervision
• Arbitrary treatment from management
• Poor working conditions
• Poor communication between employers and employee
• Individual job rights
• Union and management rights in bargaining relationship
• Method of enforcement by interpretation and administration of the agreement including resolution
of grievances. So instead of quitting their jobs, giving up their seniority, security and friends, they
form a union.

PRINCIPLES OF COLLECTIVE BARGAINING

Principles for Management

• The management must grant recognition to the trade union without any reservations and accept it as
a constructive force in the organization.
• The management should not assure the employee goodwill will always exist. It should periodically
examine the rules and regulations to determine the attitudes and degree of comfort of its employees
and gain the goodwill and cooperation.
• The management should extend fair treatment to the labor union in order to make it a responsible
and conservative body.
• The management should not wait for the trade union to bring employee grievances to its notice but
rather create the conditions in which employees can approach the management themselves without
involving the trade union.
• The management should deal only with one trade union in the organization.

Principles for the Trade Union

 In view of the rights granted to organized labor, the trade union should eliminate racketeering
and other undemocratic practices within their own organization.
 Trade union members should resort on strike only when all other methods of settlement of
dispute have failed.
 Trade union leaders should assist in the removal of such restrictive rules and regulations that
are likely to increase costs and prices and reduce the amount that can be paid as wages.

Principles for Trade Union and Management

• CB should be made an education as well as bargaining process.
• It should offer to trade union leaders an opportunity to present to the management the wants desires,
grievances, and attitudes of its employees.
• It should make it possible for the management to explain to the union leaders and through them, to
its employees the economic problems which it is confronted with.
• The trade unions and management must look upon CB as a means of finding the best possible
solutions and not as a means of acquiring as much as one can while conceding the minimum. There
must be an honest attempt to solve the problems.
• Both parties to a dispute should command the respect for each other and should have enough
bargaining power to enforce the terms of agreement that they may arrive at.
• There must be mutual confidence and good faith and a desire to make CB effective in practice.
• There should be an honest, able and responsible leadership, for only this kind of leadership will
make CB effective and meaningful.
• The two parties should meticulously observe and abide by all the national and state laws, which are
applicable to CB.

Advantages
• The collaborative approach focuses on ongoing problem-solving rather than dealing with build-up
of issues presented at bargaining table.
• The cooperative environment required by collaborative bargaining helps in development of greater
mutual respect for their colleagues.
Disadvantages
One party may take negative actions against the other. Management may indulge in LAY-OFFS;
lockout workers; and launch a publicity campaign, while unions may cause slow-downs, create
bottleneck in the production of line and may sometimes resort to strikes.
The hostile actions can lead to a stalemate known as Labor Impasse, which can cause hardships to the
labor and the company.
There are several methods of negotiating over the issue concerned and avoiding the statemate:
Fact finding: Fact finding seeks to avoid a stalemate by engaging a neutral party to study the facts,
from an unbiased and neutral perspective. The results are nonbinding.
Mediation: It is a method of resolving the issues, with the aid of a third party that has a trust of both
the parties. The mediator can only propose solutions; they do not have any real power.
Arbitration: In this, the third takes the decision regarding the dispute. These are of two types:
a. Binding b. Non-binding
In binding arbitration the decision is reached after hearing the agreements of both the sides. The
parties have to agree in advance on a particular point or if they feel arbitrator is prejudiced they can
seek relief in courts. In nonbinding arbitration the decision of the arbitrator has a advisory
significance. Voluntary arbitration occurs as the parties agree to a neutral arbitrator in which they
have a trust to avoid legal costs.
Differences between Collective Bargaining and Individual Bargaining are as follows:
• Collective bargaining relates to group bargaining as opposed to individual bargaining about wages
and conditions of work. Flanders has pointed out a number of differences between collective and
individual bargaining.
• First, an individual bargain is about the buying or selling of a particular commodity whereas
collective bargaining does not involve the buying or selling of anything; it is merely an agreement on
the conditions under which buying or selling will take place.
• Secondly, an individual bargaining usually stipulates the terms and conditions of trade in detail,
whereas in collective bargaining only the minimum terms and conditions are specified. Thirdly,
individual bargaining is essentially a market activity (i.e. buying and selling) whereas collective
bargaining is essentially a political activity (a strike or lockout is really a diplomatic use of power).
• Fourthly, as collective bargaining is a political rather than economic activity, different factors have
to be taken into account, for example, collective bargaining is frequently undertaken by professional
negotiators, who recognize the need to maintain relationship with the other side and therefore will not
necessarily press their advantage to the full.
• Lastly, collective bargaining unlike individual bargaining is not restricted to a discussion of
economic matters, but is concerned with other issues also; it is concerned, for example, with workers’
rights, the control of industry and so on.
• Fox has discovered a number of errors in the above comparison of individual and collective
bargaining. Flanders has argued individual bargain as the process by which the interests of buyers
and sellers are finally adjusted in the act of exchange. The pitfall in this explanation is that it is
assorted that bargaining always ends in the act of exchange.
• In many instances this is not the case; instead the negotiations are broken off and no exchange is
concluded. Secondly, Fox argues that there is a difference between the individual and the collective
bargaining, in that the latter, not the former, is a political process involving the diplomatic use of
power.
• Fox does not deny that collective bargaining involves the diplomatic use of power: his argument is
that so does individual bargaining.
• Thirdly, Fox challenges Flanders’ assertion that the individual and the collective bargaining differ
as in the former case a refusal to conclude a contract is taken at face value, whereas in the latter case
it is seen to be a bargaining ploy; the assumption behind a strike is not that the employees will seek a
job elsewhere if the employer refuses to meet their demands, but that sooner or later their present
employer will be compelled to reinstate them.
NURSE MANAGERS ROLE IN COLLECTIVE BARGAINING
Nurse managers should evaluate their management skills and take continuing education courses to
improve them. Motivational techniques are important for the nurse administrators to possess because
they work through others. They must listen carefully to staff concerns and represent staff associates
wishes to top management. the nurse administrators need to know about the labor relations. The
director of nursing should not serve as the chief negotiator during collective bargaining because it
would put the director in adversary role. The agency legal representative is usually the negotiator.
During negotiations the director of nursing defines what is best for nursing care of patients once the
contract has been negotiated, the nurse manager must learn the terms of the contract and have copies
of the contract available to them.
STRUCTURE FOR NURSE BARGAINING
One of the issues facing nurses who decide they want to bargain collectively; under the federal laws,
is the method of who should be included in the nurse bargaining unit, whether only nurses or other
professional workers.
The Approach Used by NLRB is that the appropriateness of the bargaining unit is on the basis
of the community of interest of the employees involved. Those who have the same interests
concerning wages, hours and working conditions are grouped together in a bargaining unit. For
checking the appropriateness of the unit, the following are concerned:
• Any history of collective bargaining
• Desires of employees concerned
• Extent to which the employees are organized.
Once the nurses formally begin to bargain collectively, NLRA becomes and operative federal law
and rules of NLRA apply. It is important for the nurses and others to know and understand the
specific laws and applicable regulations. For example, an NLRA prohibits an employer:
To refrain, to restrain, employers in the exercise of rights guaranteed. Any prohibited interference by
an employer with the right of the employees by an employer, constitutes a violation of the section.
Further employers must refrain from the following, NLRB (1997):
• Threatening employees with the loss of jobs, if they will vote for the union.
• Threatening to close down a plant if the union should be organized in it.
• Spying on union gatherings.
• Granting wages increases deliberately timed to discourage employees from forming or joining a
union.
Labor unions also must abide by the rules designed to impose order and fairness into the process.
Prohibition union actions include:
• Mass picketing.
• Acts of force or violence on the picket line or in connection with a strike.
• Threats to do bodily injury to non-striking employees.
• Threats to employees that they will lose their jobs unless they support the union activities.
• Statement to the employers who oppose the union that the employees will lose the jobs if the union
wins a majority in the plant.
• Fining or expelling members for crossing a picket line violates the no strike agreement act.
• Expelling the members for filing unfair labor Practice charges with the board or for participating in
an investigation conducted by the board.
HANDLING GRIEVANCES
Two methods are used:
1. Decentralized process: In this method the immediate supervisor tries to resolve as many problems
as possible and grievances rarely progress further. But there are inconsistent decisions because of the
different number of people involved in the process.
2. Centralized process: In this procedure the immediate manager denies the validity of the grievance
and it is handled by next line of management. Here the decisions are made consistently because only
few people are involved.
IS IT THE NURSE'S RIGHT OR PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION's RESPONSIBILITY?
State nurses association have clearly acted as labor organization since the early 1940s. ln addition,
the Landrum, Griffin (labor management disclosure) Act requires all organization that represent
employees in whole or part to register as labor organization. In complains with this law, ANA and all
of its state constituents that engage in collective bargaining, have been so registered since the act was
passed in 1959.
In March 1979, the NLRB finally issued a decision in “Sieera Vista” which:
1. Clearly affirms that state nurses association are legitimate labor organization.
2. States that the more presence of supervisors in a labor organization is virtually irrelevant in
determining in legal states, holds that the participation of arrangement level nurses as association
members or officers does not inherently impair the ability of an organization to represent the staff.
3. Firmly places on the employer the burden of proving in any particular case that there is unlawful
interference by supervisory nurses.
4. Because of collective bargaining activities are carried out at the state and not the national level,
and because state nurses association have taken great pains to insulate their collective bargaining
programs from potential conflict of interest, the NLRBs Sieera Vista decision basically means that
the professional association can go doing what it has been doing?
TODAY’S GREATEST THREAT
The encouragement of other labor unions:
• Small state nurses association with weaker program have recently withdrawn from collective
bargaining.
• Fragmenting the nursing profession and eroding the effectiveness of nursing organization.
• Nursing economics and practice are two side of same coin, economic increase automatically
increases quality of care also.
• Terms and conditions of employment are mandatory issues.
• No cooperation among nurses.
• Health care cost is increased.
• Inadequate staffing pattern.
• Advance technology.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Brar & Rawat, Textbook of Advanced Nursing Practice, Jaypee publishers, page no- 98-103.