What Professionals Want: Union and Employer Tactics in Representation Elections of Professional Workers

ILR Review ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 693-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel Aleks

Using matched data from an original survey administered to organizers throughout the United States and election reports from the National Labor Relations Board, the author analyzes organizing campaigns of professional and non-professional workers. Professional workers have long been thought of as difficult to organize, yet they are strategically important to unions given their growing numbers in today’s economy. The author assesses whether unions and employers use different approaches in their organizing drives for professionals. An interactive model is used to test whether professionals’ distinct identity moderates the effect of common determinants of a representation election on the election outcome. The results show the benefit of an interactive model, as it highlights the importance of developing a campaign strategy unique to the group being organized.

2017 ◽  
Vol 62 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Pietro Manzella ◽  
Karl Koch

AbstractThis paper examines one consequence of the increasingly multilingual and multicultural labor market, resulting from migratory flows caused in part by globalization. It focuses on selected legal and translation issues in labor relations arising from misinterpretations and cultural disparities in communication between different languages and cultures. It draws on decisions of the United States National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), where there were misleading and ambiguous translations. It employs a theoretical approach based on concepts from cross-cultural management, including cultural theory, and thereby expands the discipline of Translation Studies. The findings suggest that an understanding of the cultural content, particularly in the practice of intercultural management, is imperative. The paper concludes that a systematic methodology linking culture and language in labor relations should be adopted.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Hunter ◽  
Hector R. Lozada ◽  
John H. Shannon

This article is a summary discussion of the main issues faced by faculty at private, often church-sponsored, universities who sought to be represented by a union in collective bargaining with their employers. The discussion begins by tracing the origins of the rule that faculty at private universities are managers and not employees under the aegis of the National Relations Act in the Supreme Court case of Yeshiva University. The summary then follows developments over the years up to the most recent decision of the National Labor Relations Board that sanctioned the efforts of adjunct professors at Elon University to seek union representation. In examining these two book-end cases, the article discusses issues relating to the effect of the religion clauses of the First Amendment in the context of the National Labor Relations Board’s shifting views on the topic. Last, the authors discuss unionization in the context of church-sponsored colleges and universities. Is it now time for the Supreme Court to review its seminal decision in Yeshiva University and for church-sponsored colleges and universities to rethink their positions as well?


2019 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin N. Narváez

Abolition forced planters in the post-Civil War US South to consider new sources and forms of labor. Some looked to Spanish America for answers. Cuba had long played a prominent role in the American imagination because of its proximity, geostrategic location, and potential as a slave state prior to the Civil War. Even as the United States embraced abolition and Cuba maintained slavery, the island presented Southern planters with potential labor solutions. Cuban elites had been using male Chinese indentured workers (“coolies” or colonos asiáticos) to supplement slave labor and delay the rise of free labor since 1847. Planters in coastal Peru similarly embraced Chinese indentured labor in 1849 as abolition neared. Before the Civil War, Southerners generally had noted these developments with anxiety, fearing that coolies were morally corrupt and detrimental to slavery. However, for many, these concerns receded once legal slavery ended. Planters wanted cheap exploitable labor, which coolies appeared to offer. Thus, during Reconstruction, Southern elites, especially in Louisiana, attempted to use Chinese indentured workers to minimize changes in labor relations.


1980 ◽  
Vol 8 (5) ◽  
pp. 195-205
Author(s):  
Erwin C. Surrency

The law regulating labor relations in the United States has grown in complexity as numerous statutes, both federal and state, have been enacted to regulate many matters growing out of the employer-employee relationship. Since these statutes have a wide application, the lawyer, regardless of his geographical location or type of practice must have some knowledge of the literature which has been spawned by this ever-expanding subject. The list of research tools in labor law includes not only legal publications in the narrow sense, but also materials on subjects such as employment statistics and the cost of living. The purpose of this paper is to provide an introduction to the labor law literature and to the agencies responsible for its administration. Obviously, a detailed analysis of each source is impossible here and would be tedious at any rate. Sources are suggested and their contents indicated but only a perusal of the publication itself will clearly demonstrate its usefulness.


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