Obstacles to Sustaining a Labor-Management Partnership: A Management Perspective

Abstract

Through a labor-management partnership, Fort Lauderdale had addressed a wide variety of service and workplace issues. Presenting a perceptive list of typical barriers to a labor-management partnership, the author exposes us to our own myths and internal obstacles as well as other difficulties to changing a labor-management relationship. Without minimizing the difficulties, this article makes it clear that the change can be made, but the fundamentals must be put in place. There are no cutting corners, and the partnership must be nurtured. The author makes us face up to the fact that the union and management have inherently different values and ways of conducting business and notes that these differences have to be understood and actually honored. Because labor-management cooperation will be a revolutionary change in most organizations, leadership on both sides will feel threatened by this shift. As a result, the author cautions us, it is necessary to pay conscious attention, among other things, to managing relationships, actively building trust and deciding where to initiate a labor-management effort.

In a departure from the traditional view of a strict two-party relationship, the author points out the importance of alliances with others in the community who have a direct stake in the outcome of the partnership—or who have a stake in not having it go forward—and the importance of institutionalizing the partnership so that it is not just a function of a few individuals who have built trust. This article focuses serious HR professionals, managers and union leaders on what investment it will take to be successful in pursuing a cooperative labor-management relationship that produces real change in the service and cost results of a public agency. The presentation is simple and to the point. Parties seeking greater detail will find the Fort Lauderdale lessons echoed and elaborated in Chapter 4 of Working Together, the well-known Report of the Secretary of Labor's Task Force.