Your supervisor at the agency where you work has become increasingly insistent that you work many hours over and above your required working hours. She has indicated that there is no discussion to be had—you must work the required extra hours in order for your agency to survive. All staff must work overtime, no exceptions. You have family and school obligations that you must meet, and working the additional hours has become very burdensome to you. You value and need your job, and want to be as helpful as possible. Although your supervisor indicated when these demands first began that they would be temporary, it is now six months since you began having to work many additional overtime hours and see many extra clients. Your work, family, and schoolwork have all begun to suffer, and you are increasingly frustrated with your supervisor for her approach to managing this organizational need.

As you continue to develop in your career, you will find that your responsibilities as a leader will increase. You will be tasked with many different jobs, such as managing conflict, handling communication challenges among your team members, or addressing organizational communication needs. As you know, no employee likes to speak up only to have his or her ideas not taken seriously, or to confront others about their working styles, or to face uncomfortable gossip among coworkers.

Discuss communication styles and barriers and the conflict and negotiation process involved in handling the situation. describe the strategy or strategies you would apply in thIS situation

.What is the best way to handle gossip before it spreads?

 

Case 11 A Laid-off Glass Worker

THE ISSUE

Did the Company violate the Labor Agreement when Ronald Petrie was on layoff by working the remaining Glass Department employees on overtime and temporarily transferring other employees into the department without recalling Mr. Petrie?

BACKGROUND

Following completion of his work on March 20, 1997, Glass Department employee Ronald Petrie was laid off and from then through April 3, 1997, when Jeff Smith retired, there were just four people in the glass room, as contrasted with five, counting Petrie, for the 2 weeks preceding March 20. Prior to this 2-week period, at least since the beginning of January 1997, there had been four people there, again including Petrie. Following April 3, and for the rest of April, just three people (not including Petrie) worked in the glass room.

Beginning in May, the Company started having these three people work overtime, and whereas only 2 overtime hours had been worked by the entire glass room work force until then in 1997, the weekly totals thenceforth registered 10 such hours on May 2; 22 overtime hours for the week ending May 9; 26 overtime hours for the week ending May 16; 9 for the week ending May 23; 21.5 for that ending May 30; 30 for that ending June 6; and 16 for the June 8–June 11 period. In addition, temporary transfer hours in the room, nonexistent there in 1997 until May 14, then started to become frequent. They totaled 8 on May 14; 31.2 hours for the week ending May 23; 24 for that ending May 30; 56 for the one ending June 6; and 56 for the June 8–June 11 period.

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On June 11, contending that these overtime (OT) and temporary transfer (TT) hours had gone too far and that there should instead have been Company acknowledgment that there was an opening and therefore, under Article 12, Section 9, the need for a recall (of Petrie, as the senior person on layoff), the Union effected a first step meeting. It reduced its grievance to writing on June 18.

The OT and TT hours continued to be conspicuous, however. They added up, for the weeks ending as noted, to the following:

OT

TT

Week Ending

33

2

June 20

23

—

June 27

10

43.3

July 4

24

24

July 11

23

19.5

July 18

13

—

July 25

(vacation shutdown July 27–August 8)

36

15.3

August 15

14

24

August 22

35

—

August 29

15

69.6

September 5

11

33

September 12

13.5

69.2

September 19

—

34

September 26

—

40

October 3

—

24

October 10

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In addition, 3.8 hours of temporary transfer overtime were worked during the week ending September 19.

The Union concedes that a layoff would have been justified beginning on the week of October 12. It consequently asks that employee Petrie be made whole for the period from June 11 to this latter date.

RELEVANT CONTRACTUAL LANGUAGE

At least one of the parties has deemed the following to be a relevant provision of the Labor Agreement.

ARTICLE 3

Management Rights

Section 3.2 The Company hereby retains the sole and exclusive control over … the direction, instruction and control of employees including, but not limited to, the determination of the number and qualifications of employees to perform work, the determination of quality and quantity standards and the required employee performance in all job classifications to such standards, the assignment of work or overtime, the right to select, hire, lay off, reclassify, upgrade, downgrade, promote, transfer, discipline, suspend, or retire; the right to determine job content and to create new job classifications; the right to combine and/or eliminate job classifications and to establish new rates of pay therefore; the right to determine the hours of work, the starting and quitting times, the processes, methods and procedures to be employed, and the right to make and enforce rules and to perform all other functions inherent in the administration, management control and/or direction of business except as expressly and specifically limited by the terms of this Agreement.

ARTICLE 12

Seniority

SECTION 12.9 Employees shall be recalled from layoff in seniority order in the job family, or families, from which they were displaced as a result of a reduction in force. As openings occur in the classification from which an employee was removed due to a reduction in force, he or she will be returned to that classification in seniority order. Recalled employees must be physically able to return to work and perform in a satisfactory manner….

SECTION 12.15 Transfers for a period not to exceed thirty (30) working days in a contract year will be known as temporary transfers. This 30 working-day period may be extended by additional 30 working-day periods by using the following mutual-consent formula: 1st 30 working-day extensions, by the written consent of the transferee and the Company, subsequent 30 working-day extensions with the written consent of the transferee, the Company, and the Unit Chairman. At the time an employee is notified of a temporary transfer, the employee will be advised whether the transfer is due to lack of work in his or her regular job classification, to accomplish work of a higher priority, or to fill a vacancy which has resulted from another employee being absent due to illness or injury.

Where there is not sufficient work for an employee(s) in their regular job classification or if it is necessary for the Company to accomplish work of a higher priority, the Company may temporarily transfer such employee(s) to other job classifications for a period not to exceed thirty (30) working days, unless extended as above.

An employee temporarily transferred to work of higher priority shall receive his or her current rate plus twenty-five cents (25¢) per hour for each hour worked in the temporary assignment.

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Employees temporarily transferred to fill a vacancy which has resulted from another employee being absent due to illness or injury shall receive their current rate of pay plus twenty-five cents (25¢) per hour, if higher.

If transferred due to insufficient work, the affected employee may decline the transfer and elect to go home. If the employee declines the transfer and elects to go home, he or she shall only be paid for time worked.

Time intervals between wage steps shall not be affected by temporary transfers.

Upon transfer of an employee from one classification to another for a period in excess of six (6) hours, the employee’s supervisor shall inform the employee’s steward, in writing, of the transfer. Upon the return of a temporarily transferred employee, the employee’s supervisor shall inform the employee’s steward. The steward is to be informed as to whether the temporary transfer is for work of a higher priority or due to lack of work.

ARTICLE: 19

Hours of Work and Overtime

SECTION 19.6 The Company will attempt to assign overtime to the employee who has been performing the work during the regularly scheduled work hours, insofar as it is practical and does not interfere with production efficiency. In the event that the overtime is not assigned to such employee, the Company will attempt to assign the overtime equally among the other employees in the classification who are qualified to perform the work.

Production needs determine the amount of overtime required to be worked by individual employees, departments or shifts. While the Company will attempt to fill overtime requirements by assigning overtime to qualified employees who wish to work overtime, if no are volunteers, the least senior person qualified in the classification would be required to work.

If the overtime work is of such a nature to prohibit the placing of certain employees on it because of physical limitations, skill and ability, or because the work must be done by specialized machines, skills or operations, the Company shall use its discretion in assigning such overtime.

POSITION OF THE UNION

In the eyes of the Union, the applicable language of the Labor Agreement could not be clearer. Article 12, Section 9 specifically commands that as openings occur in a classification from which an employee has been removed due to a reduction in force, the latter “will be returned to that classification in seniority order.” Given the preponderance of glass room hours, the Union contends, a fair and reasonable person would have to conclude that an opening had indeed occurred. Therefore, the senior glass room worker Petrie, who as a skilled glass room employee could have satisfactorily performed even the bell jar or anode bomber work, assigned the glass room in the spring and summer months of 1997, as well as any other work handled there in this period, should have been returned to this opening.

The Union stresses also the fact that Glass Department supervisor Steven T. Battle by his own admission stated during the period of large OT and TT work that he “sure could use an extra person,” that is, the laid-off Petrie

And, argues the Union, in several situations since 1995, people were recalled to recognized openings for very short intervals (in the 1995 case of Scott Fuchs, for just 11 days, and in the three 1996 cases of Mike Carey, Candy Conover, and Pat Pease, for less than 4 weeks each) and then laid off again (Union Exhibit #5). The fact that Petrie’s opening did not exist for very long is, says the Union, therefore irrelevant. When openings occur, recalls must be made—period.

Finally, the Union asserts that in circumstances similar to those of the instant dispute, Assembler A Nancy Lamb was recalled in 1996 to her previously held job classification short of arbitration following the Union’s lodging of a grievance claiming Company violation of Article 12, Section 9 (Union Exhibits #6 and #7).

For these reasons, the Union—which contends that it showed considerable patience and reasonableness in letting the Company’s alleged OT and TT abuse “go on for about 6 weeks” before filing its grievance and argues that after the filing “the abuse not only continued but actually escalated”—asks the arbitrator to find that the Company has violated Article 12, Section 9 and to make Mr. Petrie whole for all monies lost in the June 11–early October period.

POSITION OF THE COMPANY

The Company, by way of contrast, asserts that it has acted reasonably, appropriately, and in complete accordance with the Labor Agreement. It has and has always had, it says, the unilateral right to decide when an opening exists under the tenets of Article 3, Section 2, and no 424425 other portion of the Agreement in any way qualifies this right. The Union did attempt to limit temporary transfers in both the 1994 and 1997 negotiations (Company Exhibits #2 and #3), but it was unsuccessful in doing so, the Company points out. Nor, declares the Company, were overtime curbs negotiated in these years, despite a clear desire of the Union to get these in at least 1994 (Company Exhibit #1).

Indeed, the Company argues, the instant grievance cites two other employees, Matt Roarke and Scott Fuchs, who in fact are no longer directly germane to this case because both were recalled when it (the Company) decided that an opening had occurred. No such determination was, of course, made by it in the case of Mr. Petrie.

In addition, says the Company, the increased workload starting in May and ending in October was geared primarily to giving the assemblers some emergency temporary work in an area (the glass room) which had ample facilities and space for this (anode bomber) work and where the Company’s additional desire to give the (few remaining) glass room people some work could be logically accommodated: The work was not traditional glass room work, in the Company’s eyes, and it would never have been assigned there if the Union’s grievance here could have been anticipated.

Nor do the hours, avers the Company, in any way demonstrate a full-time position or opening: The averages disguise some very vital week-to-week workload fluctuations. In fact, contends the Company, of the 33–34 weeks following Petrie’s layoff that are relevant here, in only 7 of these weeks were there 160 or more hours of glass room work performed (therefore allowing four and not three employees a full work week) (Company Exhibit #4). (Mr. Petrie worked the Company points out, some part of 5 of these weeks as a temporary transferee and could even have worked more except that he elected to take some vacation time.) And because at no time were there even three consecutive such weeks, to accommodate the Union the Company would “regularly” have had to recall and then lay off Petrie, a practice that certainly was anything but normal for it, it avers: Despite the several short interval recalls cited in Union Exhibit #5, argues the Company, these are only a small fraction of the total recalls since 1995 and many others have been of much longer duration.

The Company, possessing the sole right to decide when an opening exists, decided that one did not exist in the instant situation, it says, because the new glass room workload was only temporary in nature. It asks the arbitrator to find that what it did was right and reasonable under the circumstances

Homework

Case Study 11: A Laid-Off Glass Worker, page 422 (also review the information located under the Case Study page this week)

Your entire submission should be two to three pages, double spaced, with proper citation as applicable.

Grading Rubric
Here are the criteria for grading this assignment. Use these categories to provide structure within your paper.

1. Describe the issues in the case (15%).

2. Provide a clear explanation of the union’s position (20%).

3. Explain management’s position (20%).

4. Relate the two positions to the contract language (20%).

5. Provide your analysis of the remedy (25%).

What is your remedy in the case and why?

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