Posts Tagged ‘Labor’

Today I am launching my new web site under the new company name of Greve Consulting, formerly known as Metreks.  The focus of my practice is to help companies develop their returns management, aka reverse logistics capabilities.  Viewers will find a lot of useful information on returns including the Reverse Logistics Podcast, which will feature industry leaders from the world of reverse logistics, and my blog which is packed with articles and information to help service providers, manufacturers, retailers, and liquidators make more money.

Register to get the blogs sent to your desktop automatically or save www.GreveConsulting.com as a favorite on your browser.  Your comments, questions, suggestions and feedback are encouraged.  I will use your feedback to improve the value delivered from the site.

Check in from time to time to see what is new.  For example, you might want to check out The Cost of Doing Nothing.  This is a form you can fill out to find out how much opportunity you and your company have in developing your reverse logistics capabilities.

Whether you call it returns management or reverse logistics, it’s all about improving returns and maximizing profits.  I hope you enjoy the new site and get a lot of value out of GreveConsulting.com.

Click on the image or the link below to download the March 2010 issue of Warehousing Forum, published by The Ackerman Company.  Warehousing Forum is a leading supply chain newsletter that is recognized around the world as a great resource for supply chain executives.  This award winning publication is dedicated to helping warehouse managers and their bosses improve productivity and manage more profitably with tips, comments and articles written by practicing professionals.  If you are in supply chain management at any level, you will want to subscribe to this publication.

The featured article in the March 2010 issue discusses critical components to keeping warehouses and distribution facilities union free, and was written by Curtis Greve.  Enjoy your free download of this thought leading publication.

Warehouse Forum March2010

With REPUBLICAN Scott Brown winning the Senate seat formerly held by Ted Kennedy, will the person filling the seat kill EFCA, the pro-labor bill authored by his predecessor?  Business people across America hope so.  One thing is for sure; Senator Brown killed the filibuster-proof Democratic majority.  How ironic!

Senator Brown’s election will have a huge impact on Washington and raises a lot of questions.  Is this the final nail in Big Labor’s coffin?  Is EFCA dead, this time for good?  Is health care dead?  Does this mean that Obama will have to learn to deal with Republicans this year and grid lock next year?  The Democrats had a “full house”.  They seem to have blown the opportunity they had.  Obama and the Democrats seemed unstoppable but it is clear the tide is turning.

EFCA is not dead.  There are a number regulations the Democrats could pass, without going to the floor, to pay labor back for their work in the campaign and with health care.  These regulations would provide most of the benefits that labor is looking for.  That is probably the safest route for the Democrats to take.  It would pay their debt to Big Labor and it would keep them out of the headlines as supporting labor’s big payoff.  The head of the AFL-CIO threatened the Democrats last week that they had better deliver in the first quarter if they want any help in November. 

Today’s results clearly proves, they gonna need it!

How does Wall Street react when the word gets out that a publicly traded company lost a union election?

The National Bureau of Economic Research found an estimated abnormal post-election returns of about negative 10% in companies where unions won certification elections, measured over the two-year period following the union’s victory.

The study analyzed all publicly traded firms that had NLRB union elections between 1961 and 1999. The data-set includes 6,114 elections gleaned from a database of nearly 200,000 certification elections.

The study’s authors analyzed stock market returns for each company for the 24 months prior to the certification election event, and for another 24 months following the election. The pre-election data were used to develop a predictive model for post-election returns for two panels of companies: those in which the union won; and those where the union lost the certification election. The predictive model accurately tracked actual returns in both panels in the 24 months before the election, and is viewed as an excellent predictor of what returns would have been during the next 24 months had an election not occurred.

The study firms’ average returns are quite close to the predicted returns every month leading up to the election, for both the panel of firms where unions were victorious, as well as those where unions ultimately lost.

But at precisely the time of the election, the actual and predicted returns diverge for companies that lost elections. The pace of the value adjustment is slow, but steady and significant over the 24 months following the election.

In contrast, companies that beat the union continued to exhibit positive returns that track closely with the predicted values.
The amount of decline in union victory firms is correlated with the union margin of victory. The largest negative returns were experienced in companies in which unions won their elections by large margins. When unions win with greater than 60% of the vote, the cumulative return is -20 to -30%.

Big labor is finally pushing organizers to use the web to develop issues, recruit sympathetic employees and conduct organizing campaigns. Recently, the Teamsters conducted a workshop to….

“….introduce you (the organizer) to ways you can use your own web site and other free web applications to organize workers or mobilize supporters for both online and offline action”

In addition to teaching organizers about how to leverage social media and email, unions like the Teamsters have taken it one step further and set up a www.teamsteractive.com that they defined as:

“the ultimate tool for Teamster organizations to maintain a professional web presence with up-to-the minute information and powerful membership communication tools.”

Along with the web building tools, the Teamsters provide instructions and down loadable presentations that instruct organizers on how to use the web to identify targets, issues, and sympathetic employees. This is Big Labor’s version of Web 2.0 for union organizers. It challenges organizers to consider:

• What are your goals?
• Who are you trying to reach?
• What actions do you want them to take?
• Who are the “influentials?”
• How will you spread word about the resources on your site?

Who are “influentials?” The Teamsters define them as:

• Water cooler experts
• Read and write Blogs
• Politically active – online or off
• Regularly participate in email actions
• Active online social networkers MySpace, FaceBook, Listservs

Big labor is clearly looking to introduce unions to the younger, more internet savvy generation. Businesses should take note and ensure they are ready to take their campaign tactics to the next level to meet the new threats.

The Department of Labor announced it will hire an additional 250 people to help police employers and ensure they follow labor laws. This was in response to a recent study that showed rampant violations of virtually every labor law imaginable.

While on the surface the study is troubling, it should be noted that, a number of labor organizations and unions including the Teamsters and the SEIU were named advisers to the team of academics who conducted the study. This begs the question “Is this one more way for the Obama Administration to pay back big labor?

The study included surveying over 4,000 hourly workers in LA, Chicago, and New York to determine if their employers followed wage and hour laws. The study found, among other things that:

“Many employment and labor laws are regularly and systematically violated, impacting a significant part of the low-wage labor force in the nation’s largest cities….

…Fully 26 percent of workers in our sample were paid less than the legally required minimum wage ƒƒin the previous work week….

…Over a quarter of our respondents worked more than 40 hours during the previous week. Of ƒƒthose, 76 percent were not paid the legally required overtime rate by their employers….

…ƒƒNearly a quarter of the workers in our sample came in early and/or stayed late after their shift during the previous work week. Of these workers, 70 percent did not receive any pay at all for the work they performed outside of their regular shift….

…The large majority of our respondents (86 percent) worked enough consecutive hours to be ƒƒlegally entitled to at least one meal break during the previous week. Of these workers, more than two-thirds (69 percent) received no break at all, had their break shortened, were interrupted by their employer, or worked during the break—all of which constitute a violation of meal break law….

ƒƒ…We found that when workers complained about their working conditions or tried to organize a union, employers often responded by retaliating against them. Just as important, many workers never made complaints in the first place, often because they feared retaliation by their employer….

…One in five workers in our sample reported that they had made a complaint to their employer or ƒƒattempted to form a union in the last year. Of those, 43 percent experienced one or more forms of illegal retaliation from their employer or supervisor….”

This study will clearly be ammo for unions trying to organize low wage earners. Employers must ensure they obey all the laws and keep in mind that the penalty for not following these regulations could be very costly.

Over the recent weeks, as the debate over health care has raged on, you may have noticed that big labor has come out strongly supporting the new health care legislation. The question is why.

Why is are the country’s biggest unions coming out so strongly for health care reform? If you’ve ever dealt with a union you know that health benefits are a big part of what they go after and they are pretty successful at getting it in the labor agreements. Many trade unions have very good benefits.

So if unions have such good benefits, why are they supporting health care reform? For the good of the common man? To punish the greedy insurance industry? To support the Democratic agenda?

No, that isn’t why.  Big unions are supporting health care reform because buried deep within the 1,000+ page health care bill is a provision giving retirement health funds, many of which are union-run, $10 billion to bailout their ailing funds.

The Detroit News reports:

They’re both talking about a $10-billion provision tucked deep inside thousands of pages of health care overhaul bills that could help the UAW’s retiree health-care plan and other union-backed plans.

It would see the government — at least temporarily — pay 80 cents on the dollar to corporate and union insurance plans for claims between $15,000 and $90,000 for retirees age 55 to 64. Big businesses with union workers are twice as likely to offer retiree benefits as nonunion ones.

According to the News, the UAW’s pension fund has only 30% of the funds necessary to pay the 850,000 members. Unions are working hard to pass health care reform so they can get bailed out, just like many banks and car companies have.

As Paul Harvey use to say “Now you know the rest of the story. Good day!”

In case you didn’t see it, the New York Times reported that Big Labor and Democrats have dropped the “Card Check” portion of EFCA. In place of the card check provision, Big Labor wants a shorter campaign time of five to ten days, instead of the typical 60 days today. In addition EFCA could include:

• Job site access to employees
• Barring requirement of employees to attend “captive meetings”
• Some form of binding arbitration to prevent foot dragging by companies during contract negotiations

To key to staying union free under a revised EFCA is to proactively train your leadership team and your employees.  One thing that will not change regardless of the form EFCA takes is that people don’t vote unions, they vote against management.  If you treat your people well, you will remain union free.

The nation’s most powerful employment attorneys for 2009, presented exclusively by HRE, tell you what they see on the horizon from the Obama administration, and what you need to do.

By GEORGE S. MCGOVERN
The recent news that Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter has become a member of the Democratic caucus has given new life to legislation that many thought had been put to rest for this Congress — the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA).

Last year, I wrote on these pages that I was opposed to this bill because it would eliminate secret ballots in union organizing elections. However, the bill has an additional feature that isn’t often mentioned but that is just as troublesome — compulsory arbitration.

This feature would give the government the power to step into labor disputes where employers and labor leaders cannot reach an agreement and compel both sides to accept a contract. Compulsory arbitration is bound to trigger the law of unintended consequences.

Currently, labor law maintains a careful balance between the rights of businesses, unions and individual employees. While bargaining power differs depending on individual circumstances, the rights of the parties are well balanced. When a union and a business enter negotiations, current law requires that both sides bargain “in good faith.”

In a contract negotiation, each party typically perceives the other as too demanding. But no one loses their right to contract willingly or suffers being forced to agree to anything. Employees can strike if they feel that they have been dealt with unfairly, but it is a costly option. Employers are free to reject labor demands they find to be too difficult to accept, but running a business without experienced employees is itself difficult. Both sides have an incentive to press their demands, but they also have compelling reasons not to press their demands too far. EFCA would disrupt that balance by enabling government-appointed lawyers to decide what they believe is fair or reasonable.

A federally appointed arbitrator cannot be expected to understand the nuances specific to each business dispute, the competitive market position of the business, or the plethora of other factors unique to each case. Yet fundamental decisions on wages and benefit costs, rules for promotions, or even rules for exiting an unprofitable line of business could fall to federal arbitrators under EFCA.

Many labor contracts can run over 100 pages with their requirements of each party. Compulsory arbitration is, in one sense, government dictating to employees what they will win or lose in the deal, with no opportunity to approve the “agreement.” Why should employees pay union dues to get such a contract?

My perspective on the so-called Employee Free Choice Act is informed by life experience. After leaving the Senate in 1981, I spent some time running a hotel. It was an eye-opening introduction to something most business operators are all-too familiar with — the difficulty of controlling costs and setting prices in a weak economy. Despite my trust in government, I would have been alarmed by an outsider taking control of basic management decisions that determine success or failure in a business where I had invested my life savings.

When it comes to labor disputes, both parties should be guaranteed a real chance for compromise under the joint economic threat of contract breakdowns. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO for nearly 30 years before retiring in 1979, had it right in condemning mandatory arbitration as “an abrogation of freedom.”

My party has well-deserved majorities in both houses of Congress, and I am thankful to have an exceptional president in Barack Obama. But while the Democratic majority in Washington confers the power to reward our loyal supporters, today’s problems require solutions that transcend party politics. Even when that means taking unpopular stands.

Mr. McGovern is a former senator from South Dakota and the 1972 Democratic presidential candidate.