Working with trade unions

[_rubinho_]

Bit of advice required here. A friend of mine works in HR for a medium size engineering and manufacturing firm. One of her roles is to liase with the trade union representatives at the firm and work with them on developing company policies and procedures; things like sickness and absence, disciplinary, working time etc. She has had extensive experience of this at another firm and was very successful managing to form a close working relationship with the reps and generally reach agreements which suited both the company and employees.

This new firm is different; it is male dominated with an aggressive blame culture which reaches to the top level of management e.g. it is commonplace to have directors shouting managers down in meetings or on the shop floor. The trade unions reps here have a "us versus them" attitude and actively work against any procedure or policy put in place. On a number of occasions in formal meetings and informal encounters they have been obstructive, threatening and aggressive to the point where she feels there is no longer a functional relationship and is unable to perform her duties. Regularly now she has been left in tears at work.

She has spoken to her management and they have said they would support her but nothing seems to change. She also spoke to one of the reps informally to try and clear the air and try to make them understand that she wants to work with them not against them and that ultimately she is just an employee just like them trying to do her job.

She's not an antagonist and is a good "people person" normally but she is out of ideas on how to tackle this. I've made a few suggestions but this isn't my area of expertise so I'm not sure how helpful they are. With the way things are she feels her only way out is to leave her job and she feels that unsupported she'll be forced to quit. Ultimately though she doesn't want to do this and would love to find a way of working together for everybody's benefit in the role that she has.

Has anybody had any experience of this from either side of the coin and have any suggestions on how she could proceed?

[mike9009]

A tricky one, so I will share our experiences. Might help, might not. We are a medium sized manufacturing plant. The management/ shop relationship is strained but working. The union membership is not that strong though.

We set-up an employee forum which is led by the General Manager and voted representatives from each shift, office staff and managerial staff. HR facilitate the monthly meetings with the aim of constructive criticism and dealing with current issues. It is definitely two way, has got some buy-in and opened communication channels. It can get frustrating by getting dragged into almost personal (rather than personnel) issues rather than looking at the big picture, hence a strong chair (HR) to the meeting is essential.

Anyone not following procedures (especially knowingly and deliberately) would be straight down the disciplinary route in our facility. Strong operations managers are needed to coordinate this. It sounds a little like the management team are slightly dysfunctional - if rules are made, communicated and trained to, then operators (union members or not) should really follow these operating procedures. Tail wagging dog? It needs to be clearly stated the reasons why. We had a PPE adherence issue by certain individuals. Disciplinary procedures were followed, eventually with one individual being dismissed for non adherence. The union refused to support the individual through appeal. It sent a strong message out to others.......

Your friend should really get support from her colleagues to get things changed. It depends if others see this as an issue or not? Maybe it is not a priority for the business? Maybe she should not worry about it?

Threatening or aggressive behaviour towards your friend is simply unacceptable. What grievance procedures are in place? It could be used tactically by the management team?


Sorry for the general rambling......


Mike

[_rubinho_]

Good advice there. The employee forum especially as she has said that the TU reps seem to have their own agenda rather than that of the workforce as a whole and that might help ensure they stick to issues which affect everybody.

I have suggested the grievance route but she's afraid that it may make matters worse.

Unfortunately it seems that maybe the TU's relationship isn't a priority of the company but that doesn't really help her when they are barging into her office and shouting.

One positive is that she's now said that another manager is going to sit in on her regular meetings with the reps which might help temper their behaviour towards her.

When she did talk to one of them (as mentioned above) he basically said that it didn't matter and that she was HR so they would be against her in principle. That sounds like a difficult place to start negotiating from.

[951TSE]

Silly idea but could she join the union herself? Then she can use the unions grievance procedure rather than the management one and the reps would see her as one of them, rather than an opponent.

That way she may be able to nurture a more "WE can do this" attitude in the union rather than a "Management told us to do this".

[_rubinho_]

She could become a member of the union but thinks this could be a conflict of interest.

Apparently on the shop floor has very high union membership, something like 90% so support is high.

Some progress has been made this week so fingers crossed things are looking up!

Thanks for all your valuable input.