Reference no: EM133289052

Assignment:

You have just been hired as the Manager of Labour Relations for a private company that recently became certified. You are one of four managers that all report to the vice-president of employee services and one of the founders of the company. The owner of the company doesn't have any experience with unions and his perception of a unionized workforce is unfavourable. He is very concerned about workers' productivity, and has assumed it will go down significantly, and that the relationship between management and the union can only be adversarial.

In your first meeting with both the vice president and the president, they told you that they want you to let the union know "who is really in charge" and that you should look for every opportunity to interpret the collective agreement in favour of the employer. He also stated, "if you aren't getting grievances, then you aren't doing your job". You are starting to have second thoughts about accepting this position. Given your knowledge of both the history of unions, the collective bargaining process, and problems with adversarial communications do the following:

Demonstrate your viewpoint on the importance of a collaborative union- management relationship and how you would like to go about establishing this relationship (implementation plan).