Option #1: Management Perspectives for Collective Bargaining

Option #1: Management Perspectives for Collective Bargaining

Although union membership percentages have dramatically declined, there are still thousands of employees and businesses that strive to be productive within a union environment. Some past negotiations have been adversarial, such as the Communication Workers of America in negotiations with Verizon and ATT, while others have been positive, such as the United Auto Workers in negotiations with Ford Motor Company, and the unions that negotiate with Southwest Airlines. As an HR professional, you may be engaged in a contract negotiation process.

For your final Portfolio Project, identify an existing company, or create your own, that you wish to represent as the Vice President of Human Resources. You will be the chief spokesperson on behalf of the company for its upcoming labor contract negotiations, and therefore, you must develop the strategic plan for negotiations from the perspective of the company.

With that as the background, develop a slide presentation, along with talking points for each slide, for the company’s CEO and Board of Directors. The presentation will inform them of your strategic plan and will include graphics, illustrations, charts, tables, or other visuals that engage and appeal to the audience.

Your strategic plan should address the following components:

Provide a brief overview of the company you selected (or created) and the union that will be involved in contract negotiations.
Analyze the issues, both economic and non-economic, that are most likely to be on the table for contract negotiations, including the potential monetary and non-monetary costs associated with each issue. You may want to research and consider recent examples of contract negotiations between other organizations and unions when identifying and analyzing potential issues.
Assess best practices for fostering a win/win climate with the union both prior to and during negotiations, including relationship-building, negotiating tactics, etiquette at the bargaining table, and desired outcomes on behalf of the company.
Develop a three-point contingency plan for ensuring potential continuity of operations and the safety of existing nonunion employees in the unlikely event of a strike.
Finally, discuss and evaluate how successful negotiations and the ratification of a 4-year collective bargaining agreement would impact the company’s culture, the non-unionized employees, and the future working relationship between the company and the union.

Requirements:

Develop a 15-20 slide presentation, not including the required title and reference slides.
You must include on each slide a minimum of two paragraphs of notes, within the Speaker’s note section.
To enhance readability by preventing clutter–realizing this is a slide presentation for leadership–use bullet points on your slides.
You may use PowerPoint or another tool.
Your presentation must be properly cited and formatted according to the CSU Global Writing Center.
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This is an individual presentation; however, you should reflect on our discussion forums and incorporate ideas from there, as appropriate.
You must support your analysis with at least 10-12 scholarly references which can include resources from this course. The CSU Global Library
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is a good place to find sources. You cannot use Wikipedia or any CSU Global assignment. For this assignment, a credible source is defined as:
a scholarly or peer-reviewed journal article,
a government-based website or publication, or
a trade or industry journal article, publication, or website, including those from trade organizations such as SHRM.org and TD.org.