jessica lee writes.

Because We Still Need Unions Why Again?

here's a topic i haven't touched in a while... that good 'ole Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA). things in DC have simmered down a bit as more and more are believing the votes in the Senate don't exist to pass the bill. that's great. but there's still an issue that needs to be examined. are unions even relevant?

i was reading this article in the NY Times about the U.A.W. grappling with their fate as Chrysler hinges on bankruptcy. and then there was this bitty in the New Yorker about how unions have killed Detroit. fabulous. as if we needed any more illustrations of why maybe unions aren't the answer.

let's bring this back to the EFCA argument though. many EFCA supporters believe anti-EFCA folks - like me - are anti-union. the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) is an example of an organization that has come out strongly as being opposed to EFCA but not because they are anti-union, rather their major concern lies in taking away the secret ballot from employees. me? i could spin it and say that i'm concerned about secret ballots - but that's not the heart of the issue for me. i'm just not in favor of unions. i don't get why we still need them. think about it this way:

• if you had strong HR pros who balanced being a voice for employees and business strategists, would you still need a union?
• if you had leadership and managers who recognized that their employees are what makes their organization work, would you still need a union?
• if you created and managed employee programs that really worked for employees and supported them, their families, and their futures - so that they could focus on their work while at work - would you still need a union?
• if you had companies with HR pros who ensured basic employment laws - wage and hour stuff, EEO stuff, you know... fundamentals - were being adhered to, would you still need a union?
• if HR pros were really stepping up their game - and if we focused on improving the caliber of HR pros everywhere so that they could help, manage and influence all of the above, would you still need a union?

most union organizing efforts begin out of the desire to provide employees with a voice, to address systemic wrongdoings,  to ensure fair treatment - all that feel good stuff that you should hope isn't an issue. but are those things really still an issue today? and that's where i'm coming from. it's as simple as that. for me it's about HR pros being the best that they can be, and really delivering and influencing. if we were doing it right, i don't know if unions would really be the answer...

The First Labor Negotiation I Ever Participated In... Water in the Face.

yes, mainstream media and the blogosphere are both all abuzz about the Employee Free Choice Act. much of the conversation is centered around the card check/secret ballot provision - but what many would agree upon is that one of the most troubling pieces of the EFCA is related to the time limits that are imposed upon the negotiation of first time contracts.

so what exactly are we dealing with? the EFCA would only allow a company and union 90 days to negotiate a first-time collective bargaining agreement. if unsuccessful after 90 days, either party can demand mediation. and if after 30 days mediation doesn't work? a contract is essentially handed down by a federal arbitrator in a process called “interest arbitration.” read more here.

90 days doesn't seem to phase everyone - but what most don't realize is that first time contracts are rarely negotiated after one year - it takes longer if it happens at all. folks argue that the lengthy process is ever more reason to require contacts to be negotiated within 90 days - but if you've never participated in a contract negotiation then sure... it's easy to say get it done in 90 days but let me tell you a little story...

****

the first labor negotiation i participated in... eye opening, to say the least. it was a first time contract for a new bargaining unit that had been established, and the result of years and years of organizing. we already had a dozen or so contracts for other bargaining units with several different unions - but the one that had been certified was new to us. and we didn't have established relationships with them. this being my first time in a negotiation, i had no idea what i'd be in for with this process - and i fear that many HR pros and business people who have never operated in a unionized environment have no clue what this process looks like. let me try to break it down for you...

the contract itself - in the end - had 36 sections. definitions, job posting procedures, holidays, training, health and safety, workload, wages, vacation... the list goes on and on. all of this, pretty standard. think about your employee handbook and all the sections therein. you usually have dozens of pages of contract language with almost every single term and condition of employment as a mandatory bargaining topic.

as with any kind of negotiation - there's a lot of back and forth. think about what it's like to buy and car and haggle with a sales person on the price. there's a lot of back and forth before final decisions are ever made in the negotiation room. each side had its limits that they knew they could bargain towards - but each side also had those above them that they were accountable to + research that would need to be completed to determine the financial impact of the specific contract provisions being negotiated. take for example, vacation pay.

let's say the employer is willing to offer 15 days of vacation per year - standard and consistent with other contracts in effect or for other employees not covered by a contract. and maybe the union wants to offer 20 vacation days per year to its bargaining unit. the issue is hashed out, back and forth, back and forth. the employer says they'll consider 16 days - but they need to do research so the issue is tabled. the employer might take it back to their labor relations team who also has their finance department evaluate the impact. this goes on and on and on.

contract negotiations are a dance. and there's a lot of showmanship that takes place. everyone has tactics, people try to stall and cause delays. there is grandstanding. and it can become tense. (which of course is why all good labor relations pros would tell you their job is all about relationships. it makes a helluva difference.) and negotiations can go for hours and hours and days and weeks and months - because you can become deadlocked on an issue, easily. frequently, actually. and when you add in the back and forth of having to take the issue upward + the need for additional research - it's no wonder that on average, a first time contract takes about a year to actually get negotiated.

in my situation, we had a head of HR who was fierce and didn't want to be average taking a year or longer to negotiate this first time contract. for her, she felt the optics were better to crank out a contract that both sides could agree with and just move on with our lives. so to keep us engaged and fully immersed in the negotiation process, we'd sit at the negotiating table some days for 16 hours - but that's not completely realistic to do every day. people get tired. people have families to go home to. people aren't meant to sit for 16 hours straight behind a table. and to keep us awake at the negotiating table? i kid you not - our head of HR had a squirt bottle that she always was equipped with and at the first sign of anyone at the table beginning to look the least bit tired, she'd squirt you in the face with water. absurd, i know. maybe it was more for show. who knows?! but it was her thing. and i think it worked.

with that particular contract, it took us 6 months to negotiate it - and that's with our head of HR squirting water in our faces to keep us on the ball and keep the negotiations moving. 6 months, and the water bottle trick, aren't normal - it was an above average situation but had it happened in an environment where the EFCA ruled supreme? we would have been in mediation and arbitration - after 90 days. our awesomeness of negotiating this first time contact in about six months would have meant nothing and the contract we worked so hard to agree on, would have gone down the tubes. you can take out some of the grandstanding, you can be less showy - but when you're negotiating a contract that outlines terms of employment, you don't do it quickly and with haste. you use diligence.

90 days doesn't work for me... just another reason for you on why EFCA needs to fail.

Twitter Lesson: Hashtags. #EFCAfail.

i have a love hate relationship with twitter. some days, i honestly want to stop following half of the folks i follow... but i can't bring myself to be that cut throat. you follow me, and you reply to me... so i can't ignore you even if half of what you tweet out isn't quite worthwhile let alone entertaining to me. sorry to be so brutal. other days, i love you, twitter. i get a lot of great news and information via twitter - and for the sake of building a brand and brand loyalty - i think there's so much potential. but twitter is still young. 

for now, let's all agree that it still is an elite group of people who are active in the twitterverse - and there's much to still teach and show the twitter neophytes. so let's start with a lesson on twitter hash tags. the basics, says hashtags.org:

Hashtags was designed to accommodate the real-time news community. We provide analytic reports and indexing features to allow users to track what's happening now.

Hashtags are a community-driven convention for adding additional context and metadata to your tweets. They're like tags on Flickr, only added inline to your post. You create a hashtag simply by prefixing a word with a hash symbol: #hashtag.

now, more importantly, let's talk about how to use them. starting the usage of a specific hashtag is easy. anyone can create one for a variety of reasons. my friend The Recruiter Guy, Chris Hoyt, created a hashtag recently for his week of travel in DC: #rgdc (Recruiter Guy DC!). and at first, i thought it was silly, honestly i did, Chris - but upon doing a search of his #rgdc tweets, i saw all the messages he and others have sent out related to this trip. and that's kinda cool. i mean, if you were to look at all of his tweets, he's tweeted 3000+ times on a variety of topics or issues... but to distill all of them related to this trip, you could easily do a search of those that included the hashtag #rgdc to construct a story.

and constructing stories are nice- but think about the possibilities even further. i started a twitter hashtag #EFCAfail a few months ago when i started noticing more chatter in the twitterverse about the Employee Free Choice Act. people would reference the entire name of the act, just the acronym, or they'd call it card-check... searching on those terms and all the variations people might have used in their tweet seemed ridiculous. and, people talk about it from many different angles which made it increasingly difficult to track who was talking about EFCA in favor of passing it, and those who opposed. and as i realized who fell along what lines, i @replied and/or direct messaged those who appeared to be against EFCA and asked them to begin using #EFCAfail. at first, there were probably 4-5 of us actively using it... but it takes very little time for a hashtag to catch on. check out the thousands of tweets that have gone out using the #EFCAfail. pretty cool huh? even the Huffington Post has used #EFCAfail a few times too. 

but what do i do with a hashtag once it's up and running? well, for a little grassroots project i'm working on to get more people to talk about the EFCA, i can now see who is talking about the EFCA from the same perspective as me. there is an #EFCA and #cardcheck hashtag too - but you'll notice clear trends of those using the general hashtags as merely sharing information or being in support of it. to know where the lines have been drawn, #EFCAfail gives me those who aren't in support of it and want to see it fail. people who use hashtags likely know the importance of trending and organizing (in a non-lobbying or grassroots sense, that is!) so #EFCAfail also gives me a wealth of information in that  many tweeters send out messages with links to articles which allows everyone to quickly scan for new information on that topic. 

and really... that's all there is to twitter hashtags. there is more info and a wealth of other information related to hashtags here. the thing to look out for in the future? better analytics related to hashtag usage. hashtag.org is doing some stuff - but i'm not certain the numbers are completely accurate.

and PS - wanna know more on how to get involved if you're worried about EFCA? drop a comment and we can talk about it offline.

I've Been Away...

i've been away. i know. and you may want to stay away for a bit as i ramp up to blog more because as much as i know it can seem incredibly dry and hum drum... and as far from sexy as HR could possibly ever be... i think in the next few weeks or so, i'm going to focus quite about on the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) and why i struggle with it... i'll try to teach more than i preach though.

coming up to bat... i think i'll tackle a Twitter topic - what "hashtags" are in the Twitter world, how to start one, and how to use one. prime example... i introduced #EFCAfail on Twitter months ago and i am amazed with how it's taken off... but as much as it is used, what does that even mean?

look for the posting... i'll try to bang it out tonight.

Woah! HR Pros Are Heading for the Hills, Er Capitol Hill!

today, i felt like i had a bit of an ass whooping. i ran a few miles and then 30 minutes on an elliptical machine but that work out was nothing. rather, i felt like i had dropped the ball on all this card-check business because i totally missed that last week, the Secret Ballot Protection Act was introduced by Senators DeMint and Enzi to combat Employee Free Choice Act efforts. oops. where was i on that one?

and then there were also rumors today that the EFCA could be introduced in the House on Monday. eek! i didn't think it would come this quickly. time for me to step up my game and do more outreach and education on the issue. it's interesting timing though if EFCA were to be introduced on monday as... monday also happens to kick off SHRM's 2009 legislative and employment law conference which includes an advocacy day on wednesday (with sessions for attendees on the how-to of lobbying - nice! i'm actually really happy to see this!)... and guess what? i'll be there to cover the conference. (thank you, Fistful of Talent. being editor has its perks. and yes! thanks SHRM for the pass in.) i'll be interested in seeing how much chatter there will be on EFCA and beyond that, if the advocacy day yields anything related to EFCA.

the agenda for the conference is packed with some interesting topics - even for me, the HR gal who doesn't like employment law, compliance and the regulatory junk - including these few:

• sexual orientation, domestic partnerships + gender identity issues in the workplace
• sex offenders, terrorists + video resumes (a facebook and social networking discussion! yay!!)
• how HR tech poses new risks for employers
• genetic nondiscrimination
• increased union activism + labor law developments (assuming this will have a heavy EFCA focus?)

but what do you want to hear about from the conference? i'll blog here and on Fistful of Talent about the juicy bits of employment law that i learn... but are there other things you want reported on? and yes, high on my list of things to do at the conference is that i plan to try to seek out SHRM's new CEO Lon O'Neil. i have a few suggestions for things i think could be done differently... or better. i hope he's ready!

also, be on the lookout for what shenanigans may happen when Punk Rock HR's Laurie Ruettimann, who will also be there, and i come face to face? GASP! can a SHRM conference handle the both of us?!

More on the Employee Free Choice Act.

my friends over at ERE were gracious enough to allow me to write an article for their site on the impending Employee Free Choice Act. take a hop on over to their site and check it out. the piece is targeted at the recruiting community who i suspect have been largely unexposed to the issue... it's mostly employment law and HR flacks talking about it. the goal with the piece was to help recruiting peeps understand the basics of the issue, and why it should matter to them. let me know your thoughts.



other recent, interesting bits on the EFCA:

• this week's EFCA update from the Ohio Labor Lawyers + why unions shouldn't bet on the EFCA being a sure thing from the Ohio's Employer's Law blog (what's up in Ohio with all the blogging about this, eh?)
  
• Punk Rock HR - although Laurie's personally in support of the EFCA, she raises the question of why HR folks are writing about it. is it a trend of HR pros feeling the need to overcompensate for our profession's poor rep by criticizing the US gov's involvement in the business world? interesting take... 
  
• ABC news speculates whether Obama is cooling on the EFCA - particularly interesting as the Atlantic reports that on the new whitehouse.gov site, the EFCA is missing from the economic agenda section. 
  
• i finally caught my first commercial in support of the EFCA brought to you by the not-for-profit, American Rights at Work. what do you think? pull at your heart strings at all? 
  
• is the EFCA inevitable? HR Executive Online ponders the issue. and interestingly, they quote SHRM's director of government affairs on the matter... haven't heard much from them on this, have we?  
• and lastly, jim stroud is presenting the pros and cons of the EFCA... i just wish he'd take a stand though. sure it's a political issue - but what do you think about it, Jim?  

did i miss anything? 

Lobbying Is Not a Dirty Word.

really - lobbying isn't a dirty word. congress gets lobbied about education, workers rights, healthcare reform, the environment, you name it! yet lobbying gets such a bad, bad rap. by definition, lobbying is simply the practice of influencing decisions made by government. 

i read a great article in the Washington Post a while back, Mickey Goes to Washington, that shed some little known light into what the world of lobbying in DC is really like. i think it's a good read. and while we're on the topic of lobbying, i guess the little grassroots effort i'm undertaking to get the word out about why the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) is bad news is essentially lobbying. the end goal of this project is not to educate HR pros, folks in the business community, your neighbor and your mom about the EFCA but rather to prompt people to take action after they've been educated by reaching out to their elected official(s) on how they sould vote on the EFCA. 

i had a great brainstorm this morning with some communications folks for the Chamber of Commerce's Workforce Freedom Initiatve. check out the interesting stuff they are doing here. they gave me some new direction and ideas for where to take this little effort of mine. we also brainstormed slogans and logos and messages... and i came up with this mock/draft logo or badge that i might incorporate into the campaign:

whaddya think? i'm going to play with slogans, messages and themes a bit more... but i like this because really, there is no choice involved in the organizing process if the EFCA were to pass and become law. it strips 49% of your workforce of the right the vote about whether to organize, and it also eliminates secret voting. make sense? it becomes easier for your workplace to become unionized - but it strips your employees of the choice! 

while i'm on this topic... i'm trying to figure out where SHRM is in all of this. their labor relations section has some decent stuff on there. their advocacy/government affairs pages have minimal info... but this blog cites that SHRM is against the EFCA. if that's the case though, why aren't they mobilizing their members and lobbying? it's been nothing but crickets, crickets, crickets from them... totally baffling. more on this all later...

Your Workplace Under the Obama Administration.

do you know how your workplace might change under the Obama administration? one of the big pieces of legislation that has the potential to pass into law that would have the greatest impact on the workplace is the Employee Free Choice Act. sounds like a nice piece of law, but watch below for some scoop.

some of my blogging colleagues have also written some good bitty's about the EFCA, so check out some of those pieces here, here, here, and really great stuff here. also, peep this presentation that was given in a webinar i dialed in to today given by some of the attorneys at Davis Wright Tremaine.

there's more to come on this topic so stay tuned - i'm not done talking about it!