Special Smashwords Edition
For the Betterment of the People
by
Tim Garrett
Diversified Performance Solutions LLC
For
the Betterment of the People
Special
Smashwords Edition
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Copyright © 2011 by Tim Garrett. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical without the express written permission of the author. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.
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78-1-937698-24-9 (eBook)
ISBN 978-1-937698-25-6 (paperback)
Version 2011.12.18
For the Betterment of the People
Many executives either misunderstand or fear unions. In the world of work, unions are just one more issue to be dealt with, and fearing them is not the answer. Tim Garrett helps executives better understand the playing field, the rules and the opportunities associated with unions. Read it today and be a better labor relations manager tomorrow.
Arte Nathan
Former CHRO for Wynn Resorts
This back-to-basics book couldn't have come at a better time. Tim makes a compelling argument that focused programs need to be in place to ensure a strong, respectful relationship with employees. This book provides practical suggestions and ideas from time-tested experience to improve the value of those relationships and to create a non-union environment with truly exceptional results.
David C. Thorbahn
President & Chief Executive Officer
Select
Sires Inc.
Tim Garrett’s message is powerful, plain spoken and experienced-based, with incredibly compact guidance for busy executives. He makes the business case for proactively engaging employees—the side benefit of which is ultimate protection from the business interference unions can bring.
J.
Hamilton Stewart, III
Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak &
Stewart, P.C.
Tim Garrett’s book For the Betterment of the People is a riveting read. It is a brilliant economic counter-insurgency manual for any size organization in the private sector and a blueprint for national survival of the free enterprise system!
Colonel
(Ret) Terry Fobbs, PhD
Gailforce Human Resources Solutions
Tim is a treasure trove of knowledge and experience that shines through in this book. I found this book to be enlightening and helpful.
Tresha
Moreland, MS, MBA, SPHR
Chief Human Resources Officer
Fremont
Rideout Health Group
An absolute must read for every HR professional and anyone charged with keeping your organization union free. An easy read packed with knowledge, experience and practical advice from an author who has been there.
Robyn Miller, HR senior leader
For The Betterment of the People equips the readers with the necessary knowledge, perspective and awareness to ensure that their workplaces do not become a target for labor organizing efforts. This book will maintain a very prominent place in my reading list and will be something that I refer to again in my professional life.
Don Herrmann, MBA, SPHR, CPC
President
Herrmann Advantage
Consulting, LLC.
For the Betterment of the People is a must-read for CEOs and anyone else focused on running the best business possible. Tim Garrett’s experiences with Honda teach us all that having a strong relationship with your employees, and openly communicating with them, will be the most proactive step in union avoidance. This book is a great resource to help prevent a problem, rather than reacting to one.
Chip
Hubbs, President/CEO
Memorial Hospital of Union County
For the Betterment of the People is a superb collection of Tim Garret’s insights and tips from his many years of experience. This is a must-read for all members of every management team of every company. Tim’s winning success strategy in avoiding several union take-overs gives us continued hope of keeping our own companies union free. This teaches and reminds us to do the right things before the union comes knocking at our doors!
Viola
Spurgeon
President and Chief HR Consultant
OC Human Resources
Consulting
A straight-forward discussion on the basic premises of labor relations, this book is a quick and useful read for HR practitioners and line supervisors alike. Tim Garrett does a great job of sharing his 30 years of practical labor experience in a concise and useful manner. If you are concerned about maintaining a healthy culture in your business, this is a must-read.
Michael
Vandervort
Labor relations and social media strategist, Fortune
100 company
There are two paths you can take. Fight a union campaign or create an environment where people do not believe a union is necessary. One is reactive where the other is pro-active. One will lead to ultimate failure, while the other ultimate success. The choice is yours.
Table of Contents
Chapter 1: Like Oil and Water: Why Unions Are Bad For Business
Chapter 2: Why People Join Unions
Chapter 3: How Unions Attack
Chapter 4: How the Unions Will Use Your Fear Against You
Chapter 5: How You Can Make The Difference
Introduction
Creating a workforce that is inherently union resistant not only makes good business sense, but also over the past 30 years it has never been more critical. A workforce that is soundly behind its company is a workforce that is also highly competitive. The stronger the relationship between a company and the people who work for it, the stronger the company. The stronger the company, the more resistant it is to outside influences that would weaken and destroy the enterprise. A company cannot stop a union from attempting to organize the employees, but a union resistant workforce can send a chilling message quickly and decisively that they consider a union as unnecessary.
The economic and business challenges of the last few years have strained and, in some cases, wreaked havoc on organizational relationships. Virtually no business sector has been spared the need to make difficult yet necessary decisions that have had painful consequences to their workforce. Yet despite the current environment there has never been a better, and now a more important, time to begin mending and rebuilding the employer/workforce relationship than the present. In fact, it’s urgent.
The current Democratic Party’s power in promoting union interests on a national level cannot be overstated. President Obama has said to the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), “Your agenda is my agenda.” AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka has White House meetings several times a week.
Because of the philosophies of the current presidential administration, organized labor stands to gain enormous benefits from regulatory changes that will significantly help them in organizing drives. Politically appointed members of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) have clearly stated positions that are favorable to organized labor’s ambitions to organize more members. Prior rulings that reasonably constrained union action are due to be overturned and new, pro-union regulations are forthcoming.
The NLRB is poised to return to many of the positions taken under the Clinton era—the last time a Democrat was president. And new NLRB innovations will certainly occur in short order. For instance, union election timing from petition to vote will likely be dramatically shortened. Interpretation of definitions such as “grievous unfair labor practices” will be radically broadened to allow for increased board mandated bargaining units. Neutrality (or forced impartiality) and the right of access will be liberalized to the point of not only providing organized labor with direct access to employees but also effectively neutralizing management’s ability to educate and inform their workforce.
The list of real and significant changes continues to expand, and will continue to do so until a new president is elected. So what is an employer to do in the face of radical change driven by national policy aimed directly at helping organized labor?
The starting point is to recognize the importance of striking a balance between the needs and expectations of your business with the needs and expectations of the people who work for you. Optimal performance can only be achieved when organizational balance exists. This balance also sends a strong message that the company values and respects the workforce—the essential foundation of strong organizational relationships. In contrast, a primary leveraging tool of unions is to force the perception of organizational imbalance, based on their interpretation, of course. So if employees already experience real organizational balance, one very key role of unions has effectively been taken away rendering a union as irrelevant.
Employers have several powerful tools of their own to help them achieve that balance that will keep their people on their side: The foundational tools being workforce issues management, communication and trust. Let’s look at workforce issues management first.
Yes, you have issues. Everyone does. Regardless of organization there will always be issues, both at the micro and macro level. If you don’t think you have issues, that’s your first problem, right there. To have a comprehensive understanding of your company’s strengths and weaknesses as an employer, you must be willing to do an honest internal assessment and be well connected to the workforce. Yet frequently leadership becomes insulated and unaware of the issues important to its people (or even worse has discounted the issues). Identifying, understanding and either managing or resolving issues are critically important to creating a culture in which employees are confident that they don’t need outside representation to meet their needs. Left unattended, issues grow to become problems conducive to an organizer’s promises. (Remember, it’s essential to get this information from the employees directly, not filtered through even one layer of managers or supervisors.)
Next is communication, which requires that you keep your people as completely informed about the business and their roles in it as possible. Keep them in the dark and you create an opportunity for unions to fill in the blanks with information, lies and spin of their own. The more your people understand the realities that your business is facing, the more likely they will be to accept difficult decisions. And the more prepared they will be to challenge the rhetoric of a union organizer with facts of their own.
This is where communication moves from tactical to strategic. Communications to a workforce should always be thoughtful, with a clearly understood purpose and desired outcome. Creating communication, embedded with critical business related themes, that is open, honest and forthright sends an additional message that the workforce is respected and capable of understanding complex business and market-related matters.
Achieving optimum performance with a union-resistant workforce requires you to have a workforce that is engaged, involved, informed and empowered. It requires an environment where employees can use their mind and not just their body. It requires an environment where employees are encouraged to seek out ways to make improvements and where their ideas and opinions are valued and openly and regularly welcomed. It requires an environment where people are valued more than the end result of what they do every day.
In the end, however, a culture based on trust will be your strongest defense against union attempts to organize. Difficult to gain and easy to lose, trust and honesty have too often taken a back seat to bottom line performance, stock market activity, and corporate ladder climbing by managers who choose the expedient way to deal with their people rather than the trustworthy way. This breach of confidence has created cultures throughout the country that are now imminent victims of union organizing campaigns. Backed by Washington and being handed a disenfranchised workforce, unions today are poised to swoop into the American free enterprise system.
But the power is still yours to keep it from happening to your company. Even if you work in an industry that has already been saturated by unionization. It happened for my company—a car manufacturer.
When Honda of America, Mfg., Inc. (HAM) was founded in 1979 in central Ohio, it was a foregone conclusion from “experts to the boardroom” that the Honda plants would soon be organized by the UAW. Being the only non-union vehicle manufacturer in the United States, the experts considered unionization to be simply a matter of time. Proving virtually everyone wrong, HAM went on to dramatically change the vehicle manufacturing industry despite repeated efforts by organized labor coupled with unfriendly rulings from the NLRB. Today HAM remains the oldest non-union automobile manufacturer in North America. And we helped our OEM suppliers, with perfect success, also remain union-free despite multiple union campaigns.
However, more importantly was the creation of an environment that not only was union resistant and rendered organized labor as irrelevant, but it was also considered as one of highest performing in the industry. Through this book I will bring you my key learnings and strategies from 33 years of practical experience, including 25 years with Honda.
Doing what is right and taking immediate steps to create a union resistant workforce will ultimately protect an organization from any regulations the NLRB can throw at it. It will protect an organization from anything a union organizer can say or promise. It will provide a protective barrier from union organizing because all of the potential reasons why an employee would join a union have been identified and resolved or managed.
As an employer, you have two paths to take. You can deny or resist the challenges that a strengthening union movement will be threatening you with. Or you can embrace them as an opportunity to refresh your relationship with your people and fix what needs fixing.
The future is yours. If you want it, take it. Or the unions will take it from you.
Chapter 1
Like Oil and Water
Why Unions Are Bad For Business
If you have been keeping up with the news in recent years, you will have seen a resurgence of unions. While their U.S. membership rolls remain pretty anemic (especially as compared with previous decades), they have been building in strength politically, organizationally and globally—especially since 2008. As with almost everything else in modern life, unions have been discovering how to do more—much more—with less. Depending on the industry you’re in, you might have fallen out of the habit of worrying about union encroachment. Or you just have this vague idea that unions should be avoided, but maybe you’re unclear as to specifically why or how. After all, don’t we have unions to thank for our modern working conditions?