Union Management Relations
...by examining
what unions do to managerial practice in the workplace. Unions can be an instrument of social
change but even when they play a larger role in society, their core activity remains focused at the
workplace. Their principal engagement is with management though their actions may extend to
lobbying, politics, and the community at both local and international levels. Therefore, in any
consideration of the question, what do unions do to the workplace, it is important to examine the
impact of unions on management in general and on human resource management (HRM), in
particular. The main focus for Freeman and Medoff, in their 1984 book, What Do Unions Do,
(hereafter F-M) was not on this question but rather on union effects on outcomes such as
productivity. Their findings have been influential in advancing our knowledge of union impact on
organizational outcomes. They offer a number of explanations for their finding of a positive union
effect on productivity. Apart from lower quit rates, three other possible explanations are suggested:
seniority-based rewards, better job production standards (and better management accountability in
general), and more employer-employee communications (pp. 14-15). The latter two of these
explanations concern managerial practice but were not directly investigated in the study. This paper
fills a gap in research by examining empirical support (or lack thereof) accumulated since the early
1980s, for some of these and other explanations for a positive union effect on management practice
at the workplace level.
2
Citing a landmark study by Slichter, Healy and Livernash (1960) (hereafter, SHL), F-M
argue that unions can improve efficiency by “putting pressure on management to tighten jobproduction
standards and accountability in order to preserve profits in the face of higher wages”
(p.15). The SHL study put the...
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