Question

You work as the lead HR Manager for BWA Enterprises, a company that builds parts for one major car manufacturer. On the organization chart, management, and administrative tasks are represented by rectangles, the union is represented by the ovals.

You are preparing for negotiations for the next CBA. The current, 3-year CBA is set to expire in 12 months.

At present, there is a new union president that you have found very difficult to deal with; the union is considered antagonistic towards management ideas, proposals and policies. The grievance rate has increased significantly since the last round of negotiations; primarily around issues of safety, overtime requirements (due to not enough workers to cover all of the shifts), non-fulfillment of benefits, and inadequate training when a new product line is introduced.

On the other hand, management is sympathetic towards creating a better working environment around the areas of grievance. The key will be to find a mutual way to address the concerns. However, stakeholders have also drawn a hard line along areas of pay-raises, more benefits, retirement options and years of service increases (such as extra vacation days, salary grids, holidays for birthdays, etc.).

40% of our annual gross profit of $10 million dollars go to employees within the union (80 members) for salary, benefits, and retired employee benefits. 20% goes to administrative and management, 25% goes to inventory, taxes, equipment, and facilities, and other supporting costs. The remainder is stockholders equity.

Financially, BWA enterprises is in the black, but because of recent tariff and trades restrictions across the border, our main customers have already given notice that they will be looking to domestic sources for the parts we produce. Also, our research department has reported that several of the jobs currently being filled by humans has the potential to be automated by AI within a 2 – 5 year timeframe based on new inventions and research. The union is aware of this development.

1. Research – On the internet, search for a current CBA from a manufacturing closed shop. Use it as your guide to create high-level background chart for the current CBA. At a high level, you do not need to go over all of the sections and subsections, but do include material such as length of CBA, current vacation days, overview of benefits, salary grid, grievance procedures, and anything else appropriate to the background information on the previous page. This may be similar to:

• 2-year agreement
• 0.5% increase in each year (grid for at least 6 positions such as machinist, warehouseperson, tool and die maker, etc. – each of these positions can be found in most manufacturing company job descriptions.)
• No increases to vacation entitlement
• 2% increases to allocations for safety gear
• Creating conditions for contracting out work if necessary
• Benefit coverage to cease at age 65 for all new employees - existing employees will be grandfathered

Answer 1

This report sheds light on the process of preparing a collective bargaining agreement by demonstrating the knowledge of collective agreement. This report has focused on the process of making the employer prepare to negotiate collective bargaining agreement. The process of negotiating for making CBA between mangers and the union of BWA enterprise has been discussed in this report. Based on the objectives of both the parties and based on 3 fields for the approval of the management, this report has explained the factors of this agreement which can be beneficial for both union and mangers. The strategies for both the managers and the union have been discussed which can improve the quality of relationship between mangers and union. As a second option, a lock out plan has been designed in this report along with the description of dispute resolution. This report also has provided a draft plan regarding schedule and notifications to the union. Moreover, a section of reflection presented in this report has helped to analyze the impact of negotiation and CBA on both parties.

The process of negotiating a new NFL collective bargaining agreement, which began about 10 months ago, might be nearing an end. Or it might not be. And unfortunately, that's about as clear as we can be on this subject right now.Thursday and Friday were weighty days for the negotiations between the NFL's players and owners. On Thursday, the owners voted to approve the CBA proposal on the table, which has been negotiated between the two sides since last April.