The Transformation Needed once becoming Unionized.
When negotiating a first agreement following the initial certification of a union bargaining agent, the tendency is to treat bargaining as a transaction rather than as an element of a transformative process that began when the employees first began considering and then chosing to be represented.
Supreme Court justice Bora Laskin put it this way:
“The change from individual to Collective Bargaining is a change in kind and not merely a difference in degree. The introduction of a Collective Bargaining regime involved the acceptance by the parties of assumptions which are entirely alien to an era of individual bargaining. Hence, any attempt to measure rights and duties in employer-employee relationships by reference to pre-collective bargaining standards is an attempt to re-enter a world which has ceased to exist.”
The essential nature of the employment relationship has changed with that event, and a process of cultural transformation has begun. The resulting organizational culture wholly depends now on how management reacts to the events and the degree of control it can achieve in order to adjust and massage the transformation in directions that are consistent with the mission, vision and values of the organization. Therefore, the organization must establish a long-term process of how it is going to manage in the new context and not merely approach labour relations and especially the initial round of bargaining as a transactional event.
If the organization ignores the broader consequences of how the introduction of a new stakeholder (the union) impacts its business, it will miss an opportunity to make changes that will ensure its culture does not devolve in a direction that is not compatible with the objectives of the organization. However, the usual response is too often to assume a transactional approach. Consider this… the organization was vulnerable to unionization and ultimately experienced a successful union organizing drive precisely because the existing culture was not strong enough to give employees faith in their direct relationship with the organization. Therefore, the organization should look at becoming unionized as an opportunity to create a new culture albeit in a different context with different rules.
Often when we talk to managers, in organizations that have recently become unionized, about the reasons why their employees chose to become represented, those managers relate to some event which triggered the employees. The event may have been a lay-off, the introduction of new shifts, or changes in the benefit plans. These however are merely triggers and not the actual root cause that drove employee desire to be represented. Underlying every successful union drive is the reality that the employees are not happy with their relationship with management. Over a period of time the trust that ought to be inherent in the employment relationship has been eroded by systemic failures. This leads to giving up the direct relationship in favour of acting as a collective through experienced union representatives. When management realizes and acknowledges the real underlying reasons, it will understand the need for a strategy that takes control of the transformational process that has been initiated and directs it on a path that helps facilitate its business success.
Becoming organized under a union is a signal that there were systemic issues with one of the following core elements that drive organizational culture: Strategy, Structure, Systems and Staff and that one or many of these areas require attention. The organization’s inability to recognize the root problems in a timely way resulted in employees choosing their own path forward and abandoning the direct relationship. One of the changes taking place in the culture is increased affinity between the employees and the union which correlates to decreased identification with the organization itself and its vision, mission and values.
Defects in structure as an example impair the organization’s ability to recognize the true nature of employee discontent. Under stratified systems theory we can deduce that one of the factors leading to unionization is having people in roles, responsible for managing the employees, who are operating at a level below what is required by the complexity of the role. These structure defects reflect a failure to fully understand the value generated by employees and a failure to put decision making authority regarding Industrial and Employee Relations at the right level. This is further reflected in the adoption of transactional responses to the introduction of the union.
In order to correct the real problems that companies have once unionized, the organization ought to review the complete set of Strategy, Structure, Systems and Staff and develop a comprehensive plan that essentially embraces the new labour model and directs it in ways that are consistent with where the organization wants to head. Resisting and fighting the change or approaching it simply as a transactional relationship, can lead to unintended consequences with respect to the organization’s culture and performance.
When organizations first become aware of a potential threat of unionization their first instinct should be a comprehensive review of the Strategy, Structure, Systems and Staff to identify defects which may have led employees to seek representation from a third party. In some cases, fixing the systemic issues may be too late in terms of convincing employees that the direct relationship (non union) is sound, however identifying those defects will help the organization fashion the right Strategy, Structure, Systems and Staff to move forward and revitalize the enterprise.
Unions by nature operate with long-term goals. They are also strategic by nature. Unions are focused on organizing, collective bargaining and representing their members. As a focused organization specializing in the labour-management relations, unions have innate advantages over management. They have the Strategy, Structure, Systems and Staff to manage the relationship in ways that are consistent with the union’s long-term objectives. For the management team, the labour–management relationship is but one aspect of what they do, and so it is likely that management will be disadvantaged. Notwithstanding, management can overcome this disadvantage by establishing the right strategy, structure, systems and staffing that is consistent with the new levels of complexity that have been introduced even with the insertion of a significant new stakeholder (the union).
Becoming unionized is to leave one world behind and enter a new reality. Management must fashion a response that embraces this new reality and creates a response that ensures the transformation is an improvement. The union’s success ought to be a wake-up call that things need to be transformed.