Union management

The average Japanese worker is now as highly-paid as in other industrial economies such as the United States and Western Europe. However, Japan s productivity per worker is at least 1 times that of the United States and their product quality enjoys an enviable position. The cooperation between labor unions, management, government, and the financial institutions are unique to any industrial system and contribute greatly to Japan s ability to maintain a relatively stable system even in light of significant shifts in other sectors of the world s economy. 

Management probably will find it advantageous to include union representation as a source of ideas and to help promote acceptance of the results. For example, at both AT T and Borg-Warner, union-management task forces have participated in the design of new job-evaluation systems. When this occurs, the union joins with management to identify, negotiate, and resolve problems related to the job-evaluation process. As noted below, not everyone buys into this notion of cooperation. 

Do expect that the union-management relationship will change dramatically. 

Kochan, Thomas A., Lee Dyer, and David B. Lipsky. 1977. The Effectiveness of Union-Management Safety and Health Committees. Kalamazoo (MI) W. E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. 

Labor relations, including union/management cormnittees... 

The chief executive officer and the leadership team, where applicable, should sign the policy to show visible commitment to this safety declaration. If it is a joint union management policy, the union leadership should also sign the policy. 

ABSTRACT This paper explores the strengths and effectiveness of the Norwegian industrial relations system with respect to safety. How does industrial relations system in general and tripartism/bipartism in particular affect safety performance within oil and gas and metal industry By drawing upon qualitative data from the Norwegian offshore based oil- and gas industry on the one hand, and the onshore metal industry on the other, we discnss how the practice of tripartite collaboration imfolds in these two industries with respect to collaboration on increasing the safety level and the safety awareness on company level. The conclusion is that in the oil-and gas sector tripartite collaboration is institutionahzed into arenas where safety is scrutinized, while in the metal industry there is no such tripartite collaboration, only bipartite union-management collaboration on local plant level. 

Three years ago the plant faced a fatal accident where one worker died and five were injured. In our focus-group interview with plant- and union management, we did not investigate into the causes of this fatality, but rather how the social partners collaborated to learn fiwm it. Our preliminary hypothesis was that the... 

Assisting in the formation of both management and union/management safety and health committee (department heads and superintendents) and attending monthly departmental safety and health committee meetings... 

Generally there was very scanty knowledge of the committee structure. Managers, supervisors, and safety representatives were asked specifically about joint union—management safety committees. Those who knew anything were most likely to be in the operations department, but differences among grades of staff were the most marked. 

Directors and departmental safety officers generally gave less detailed responses to questions about company systems for health and safety than ones about policy. They all referred to two main checks on policy, namely inspections and audits. Only two referred to joint union—management inspections, the majority thinking of inspections as a managerial task. Inspections were the most frequently cited check on policy by the rest of the sample. Audits however were mentioned by just six managers and nobody else, although as one safety officer explained, this is because their introduction was relatively recent ... 

Safety Representatives Knowledge of Joint Union-Management Systems for Health and Safety... 

There were a number of important ways in which occupational health and safety legislation incorporates the workforce, through its safety representatives, into the routine regulation of health and safety. Safety representatives, managers, and supervisors were asked about two of these, namely joint union-management safety committees and workplace inspections. 

Do you have joint union/management safety committees ... 

A reduction in incidents is clearly beneficial to management and employees. This goal should lend itself to joint union-management effort. The union will need to participate from the beginning [7]. 

Frank Salas, Joint Union Management Safety Coordinator, once told me Discipline in safety hasn t worked for 20 years, why will it work now ... 

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