Don't “just say no” to drug testing in the workplace: Some recommendations for developing and implementing policy

The widespread use of contraband substances by organizational members continues to present policy makers with a plethora of legal, moral, and economic issues to contend with when designing and implementing a comprehensive substance abuse policy. This article addresses methods of drug testing and their relative advantages and limitations, the legal ramifications of policy decisions, including union and nonunion concerns, and the costs and benefits associated with drug testing and screening. General guidelines for the design and implementation of a substance abuse policy are offered, and it is suggested that organizations should not summarily dismiss drug testing as a vehicle for the control and elimination of contraband substances and their use in the workplace.     

Employee representation and partnership in the non‐union sector: a paradox of intention?

Non‐union forms of employee representation have become increasingly prominent in UK workplaces in the last 15 years. In addition, partnership working has been encouraged by New Labour, the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development, the Confederation of British Industry and the TUC as a route to higher commitment and higher individual and organisational performance. These trends have been further encouraged by recent European Union legislation. This article seeks to examine the implied linkages between non‐union employee representative mechanisms and partnership working and their influence on the effectiveness of employee voice as a conduit of high performance. The article is based on a case study organisation from within the UK finance sector, and data are drawn from semi‐structured interviews with managers and staff and a survey of employee attitudes. The article concludes that employers’ attempts to utilise a non‐union partnership framework for organisational gain are severely constrained by structural limitations on effective employee voice.     

The Influence of Environmental Pressures, Diversification Strategy, and Union/Nonunion Setting on Employee Participation

This study tests the hypotheses that environment, diversification strategy, and union/nonunion setting affect the number and variety of employee participation programs. A survey of large U.S. manufacturing firms measured the implementation of employee participation programs. Regression results suggest that environmental pressures exert a direct effect on participation in union settings. However, in nonunion settings, environment and diversification strategy both correlated directly with participation. These results suggest that unions could potentially affect participation program implementation.     

The Changing Relations of Production: Union Derecognition in the UK Magazine Industry

This article examines the motives and strategies of employers in implementing derecognition, the union response to this, and effect on wages and conditions, union-management relations and union membership and organisation. In particular the author analyses the circumstances in which a large number of employers have chosen such a ‘radical’ method to re-order the employment relationship.     

Genetic testing: Your genes and your job

This article examines issues related to worker's exposure to substances in the workplace that may cause genetic damage and the use of genetic testing to assess and monitor such damage. The discussion includes the scientific principles of genetic testing and its accuracy and predictive value. The applicability of existing federal and state legislation to genetic testing is explored. Also analyzed are various legal and ethical issues, including union and nonunion employees' rights, workers' compensation, common law remedies, privacy and confidentiality, and an applicant's or employee's right to know test results.     

Arbitral standards in medical screening grievances

Recent media attention to employer's growing use of tests to detect the AIDS virus among employees has revived a longstanding public debate over the approriateness of workplace medical screening. Under current statutory and common law, employers are given considerable latitude to implement medical screening policies. Although Rothstein (1984) has speculated that collective bargaining may provide the strongest protection currently available against the misuse of medical screening by employers, there has been no comprehensive analysis of such protections. This article begins to address that gap in the literature by investigating the standards commonly applied by arbitrators in deciding grievances protesting adverse personnel allocation decisions that allegedly have been based, at least in part, on medical screening.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1989 Annual Conference of the Council on Employee Responsibilities and Rights, and was published in the Conference Proceedings.     

Employer responses to union organising: patterns and effects

This article presents original research on employer responses to trade union organising campaigns in the United Kingdom. The evidence indicates that there is no single response, with employers in some cases seeking to block and in others support union activity. These different patterns are strongly path dependent and reflect the prior degree of exposure to trade unionism of workplaces targeted for organising. Another finding is that employer responses co-vary with union approaches to organising, such that when the employer adopts adversarial tactics so does the union. The militancy of both parties, it seems, is mutually reinforcing. Finally, the evidence points to substantial influence of employer responses over the outcomes of organising. When employers are supportive then campaigns tend to be more successful, measured on a range of criteria. When the employer is hostile unions find it difficult to make progress and encounter particular difficulties in securing recognition.     

The Rules of the Game: Union Solicitation in the Twenty-First Century Workplace

Even though union membership has declined steadily over the last 20 years, unions are dramatically increasing their efforts to organize the workplace. As a consequence, union solicitation drives are on the rise. While the case law in this area is relatively settled, many managers in nonunion environments are generally unfamiliar with the federal case governing union solicitations. This article examines the federal case law surrounding union solicitation and provides some practical guidelines for managerial conduct for dealing with union solicitation drives. It also discusses future directions in an interconnect world.     

British employer resistance to trade union recognition

Following the introduction of a statutory mechanism by which trade unions can gain recognition from employers, this article examines employers' attempts in Britain to resist campaigns for union recognition and to undermine newly granted recognition agreements. Using an array of primary and secondary sources, the extent and nature of these employer activities are documented. The article develops a revised schema, following Roy (1980), to help understand and interpret these anti‐union activities. While of significance in deterring and undermining new recognition agreements, these activities are found to represent a minority current in the overall response of employers to campaigns for union recognition.     

Paying to queue: a theory of locational differences in nonunion wages

Traditional theories of the effect unions have on nonunion wages are difficult to reconcile with firm and worker mobility. We show how differences in nonunion wages can persist in a two-city search model. Nonunion wage differences across cities are driven by transition rates into the union sector. Should union queues form in the nonunion sector, union power decreases nonunion wages as workers are willing to take lower wages to line up for union jobs. However, if queues are formed in the unemployed sector, union power increases nonunion wages as nonunion firms pay premiums to induce workers to leave the queue.     

Union substitution effects of human resource management practices in South Korean workplaces, 2005–2013

Abstract

This article explores the association between various workplace-level HRM practices and a decline in union strength using a unique longitudinal survey data-set gathered in South Korea from 2005 to 2013. It addresses the underlying theoretical mechanisms by which HRM programs substitute for the roles labor unions have traditionally played. Suggesting more nuanced theoretical implications about HRM practices and union decline, statistical analyses reveal that workplaces that have implemented HRM practices have unions with a weaker organizational base than those without such practices, but that certain HRM programs correlate with unions with a strong collective voice in management decision-making. This article identifies the new roles for unions in South Korea in the era of HRM.     

Industrial relations and society: the Hong Kong case

The transient character of Hong Kong has prevented a stable class structure from crystallising locally. This article examines the industrial relations implications of the structural and normative features, focusing on the future and how its political uncertainties have constrained both the labour administration and the union movement in their choice of policy.     

Law commentary: discrimination in union influenced employment recruitment

This article examines union influenced employers’ recruitment practices in the light of a recent Court of Appeal case. It argues that unions need to acknowledge traditional practices can, even unintentionally, be racist and sexist and that in order to defend union influence, those practices must change.     

Union Rules Intrude Upon the Nonunion Domain: Workplace Investigations and the NLRB

This paper examines the new legal landscape for nonunion employers who contemplate conducting investigations of alleged wrongdoing by their employees. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) has ruled that a certain right (the Weingarten right) previously guaranteed only to union members applies equally to at-will employees in nonunionized firms. As a result, all employees now possess the right to ask that a coworker be present during an investigatory interview. While the Weingarten right is sensible in a union environment, significant public policy and practical problems arise when this right is extended to the nonunion environment. This paper offers advice on managing the investigative process, given this new right, and it discusses the propriety of imposing union rules on the nonunion workplace.     

Achieving a new equilibrium? The stability of cooperative employer–union relationships

The current popularity of ‘partnership’ in workplace industrial relations raises the question of the durability of such arrangements. This article investigates the stability of cooperative employer–union relationships by means of case studies. It analyses perceptions of the experience of negotiation and consultation. Continuing net benefits are reported both by managers and by union representatives in workplaces where cooperative relationships are robust. The benefits come primarily from the informal consultative processes and levels of trust that are engendered. Nonetheless, parties to the relationship, however robust they were, faced substantial challenges to their efforts to diffuse and sustain cooperative working. It is concluded that cooperative relationships are likely to be stable where employers wish to maintain an independent employee voice, especially where workplace union density remains relatively high.     

Labor education as a method of enhancing employee rights and responsibilities

University-based labor education programs conduct classes designed to provide union members with the skills necessary to perform their organizational and civic responsibilities and to provide union members with opportunities for personal growth and development. In conducting these programs, university labor educators enhance the protection of employee rights and the fulfillment of employee responsibilities. This article describes the manner in which labor education enhances collective and individual rights and responsibilities within unions, vis-à-vis employers and within the larger society.     

A mutual gains perspective on workplace partnership: Employee outcomes and the mediating role of the employment relations climate

Recent years have witnessed increased research on the role of workplace partnership in promoting positive employment relations. However, there has been little quantitative analysis of the partnership experiences of employees. This article examines how the kinds of attributions employees make regarding indirect (union‐based) and direct (non‐union‐based) employee participation in workplace partnership might influence the process of mutual gains. It uses employee outcomes to reflect partnership gains for all stakeholders involved (i.e. employees, employers and trade unions). The article contributes to existing knowledge of workplace partnership by examining the potential role of the employment relations climate as an enabling mechanism for the process of mutual gains. The findings suggest mutual gains for all stakeholders are varied and mediated through the employment relations climate.     

Ethical Behavior and Regional Environments: The Effects of Culture, Values, and Trust

This article offers a theoretical framework and empirical analysis for explaining regional differences in the United States between culture, trust, and ethical behaviors in workplaces. Drawing on a branch of behavioral economics that uses “cultural cognition” to describe social factors influencing values and ethical decision making, we argue that an orientation toward a hierarchical or individualistic view of society erodes levels of generalized trust. A lack of generalized trust among citizens and workers is associated with employers’ illegal activity to impede union organizing activity, which we define as a violation of ethical standards. We tested our model at the US state level of analysis and found that trust mediates the relationship between social values of hierarchy and unfair labor practices. To conclude, we suggest connections between the theory and its implications for the impact of culture on a firm’s responses to workers’ exercise of their rights of collective action.     

Employee drug testing: A constitutional perspective

The proliferation of employee drug testing by federal and state governments and by private sector employers acting pursuant to governmental directives has led to a steadily growing number of lawsuits raising constitutional challenges to such testing. Most of these cases have been based on the Fourth Amendment's prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures. In 1989, the Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of employee drug tests for the first time in two cases,Skinner v. Railway Labor Executives' Ass'n andNational Treasury Employees Union v. Von Raab. Recognizing that urinalysis drug testing constitutes a search for Fourth Amendment purposes, the Court determined the constitutionality of the drug tests by balancing the governmental interest in the testing against the privacy interest of the employees and, in both cases, upheld the drug testing at issue. TheSkinner andVon Raab decisions provided guidelines for analyzing Fourth Amendment challenges to employee drug testing, and the lower courts are now in the process of applying and refining these guidelines. Constitutional challenges to employee drug testing programs have also been based on the due process clause and the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and on the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of religion. Unlike Fourth Amendment claims, however, these claims have rarely been successful.     

Drug testing litigation: Trends and outcomes

This article chronicles the trend in private sector drug testing litigation from 1984 to 1994, details the legal theories that employees have used to challenge employer drug testing policies, and reports the success of these challenges. A search of the Westlaw data base uncovered 140 private sector drug testing cases disposed by the federal and state courts over this period. An analysis of these cases indicates that drug testing litigation accelerated rapidly in the late 1980s and then plateaued in the 1990s, that grounds for lawsuits are numerous, and that the percentage of cases won by employees is currently as high as it has ever been. Accordingly, in recognition of the nature and scope of the risk involved in employee drug screening, the prudent human resource manager should continue to exercise caution in drug testing policy design, implementation, and administration.