Mgmt410-Week6

Collective Bargaining

MGMT410: Human Resource Management

1. The labor law encourages union formation. It has been stated in the following words, “Often described as the ‘heart’ of the act, Section 7 of the statute reflects the law’s basic purposes. It provides that ‘employees shall have the right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing, and to engage in other concerted activities for the purpose of collective bargaining or other mutual aid and protection.” (Kohler) This very clearly states that labor laws favor unionization. Employees can organize themselves into any convenient form or join an existing union if they so desire. Majority of the employees at West University are public employees and were already a member of registered unions and RA’s being a part of the public employees were automatically enrolled. The Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) was affiliated to the United Auto Workers (UAW) union. The non-union employees at Western University are not required to join any union because Arizona is a right to work state. Giving precedence to labor laws, employees can organize themselves. Though labor laws do provide employees protection from the very important wage inequalities and workplace safety, it is always in the interest of the employees that they are a part of any organized movement. Labor laws the ultimate authority on any employee related issue but unions can intervene in bringing in the very important mediation to issues.

2. Teaching assistants are skill based people whose responsibilities include support of instruction, tutoring students, leading discussion forums, developing academic materials among others. As per the guide to employee handbook of the Arizona state, teaching assistants are considered to be employees because they perform very important administrative functions. Furthermore, teachers assistants get an offer of...