Question

You are the union representative in a mid size T-shirt company, which has recently signed 5 new clients, requiring staff to work excessive additional hours, and do additional duties, to continue to meet demand. You are making a claim for an increase in pay, what preparations do you make for your negotiations. Cover your opening, bargaining and closure stages.

REQUIRED TO DO#2

BELOW Explain your demands, determine what you think the other party will propose, determine your concessions, assess whether you think they would yield easily.

Answer 1

I would present Employee concerns with regard to temporary assignments which they may have to handle to the management-

The workers may not be comfortable with the temporary job assignments and may become apprehensive regarding the reasons for the assignment being their inefficiency at the current job or their ability to manage the new job efficiently, weather the assignment will be a regular affair or one time, the impact of the unpredictability of the job profile on them, whether the work is considerable more difficult or easy leading to resentment and dissatisfaction either way, feeling it unjustifiable to be asked to perform a job which is beyond the job profile under contract without being compensated for it through overtime or change in pay scale.

As the Union representative this would be my presentation:

The temporary job assignments would be acceptable provided the assignment is with the acceptance of the worker to be assigned to the particular job, the level of work should not be in excess of what is performed on the current job, the workers should not be expected to perform both jobs concurrently and be excused from performance on original assignment while assigned to the temporary job, the worker should find the work equal and not feel the requirement for additional compensation, if the workers at the temporary assignment having compensated at a rate which is higher than the original assignment of the worker they will need to be paid at the rate which is applicable on the assigned job the number of hours the work at the job and not at the rate for the original assignment, any required training and support should be adequately provided to the workers on the temporary assignment, the environment and facilities should be given to the original assignment. Any extra work beyond the normal time should be provided with overtime irrespective of whether it is on original or temporary assignment.

The management viewpoint considered for the above is:

There is an implicit responsibility and loyalty towards an organisation within employees which requires them to consider the Welfare and best interest of the organisation which employs them at all times. Workload within our organisation is designed in a manner that employees can optimise output to meet required standards and targets without feeling stressed. This also results in employees having more than adequate idle time during work hours in certain processes. At certain times, due to changes in production schedules increase in demand labour requirements within the department can undergo a sudden increase which has not been planned for or foreseen. Hiring of additional workers to manage workflow which is irregular and sporadic would be cost intensive and not in the best interest of the organisation, with hiring staff for such minimal requirements also being highly impractical. Hence we would like to match available idle or available workers in suitable departments for managing this work, my temporarily transferring them to this department. This would benefit the workers by enhancing the skills through exposure to a different job requiring utilisation of skill sets in a different manner on a different job. It would also help analyse the abilities another jobs to be able to provide alternate employment in case the need arises. The temporary job assignments will in the way the disadvantages to the Employees as they will not be required to do any overtime or be over worked beyond what they would be in the original assignment. It is a Win-Win situation for all involved.