Individual-Level Determinants of the Propensity to Shirk

Employee shirking, where workers give less than full effort on the job, has typically been investigated as a construct subject to group and organization-level influences. Neglected are individual differences that might explain why individuals in the same organization or work-group might shirk. The present study sought to address these limitations by investigating subjective well-being (a dispositional construct), job satisfaction, as well as other individual-level determinants of shirking behavior. Results identified several individual-level determinants of shirking. Implications of the results are discussed

Card Check Recognition: New House Rules for Union Organizing?

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Organizing Principles: The Significance of Card-Checks Laws

The use of “card checks” as a method of union organizing has recently garnered a lot of attention, much of it surrounding the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. If passed, this legislation would amend the National Labor Relations Act by requiring employers to recognize a union when the employer is presented with evidence of majority support for union recognition via union authorization cards. Although the proposed bill has had difficulty gaining traction in the U.S. Congress, several states have recently passed similar legislation covering state and local public employees. In this article, we compare card-check organizing by public sector employees in Illinois and Ohio. In both states, card-check organizing has been allowed since 1983

Card-Check Laws and Public-Sector Union Membership in the States

We examine the impact of state card-check legislation on public-sector union membership. Based on an empirical analysis of data from 2000 to 2009, a time during which eight states enacted card-check legislation for public employees, we find significantly higher levels of public-sector union membership for states that passed card-check legislation in years after the laws were enacted relative to states that did not pass such laws. Moreover, average public-sector union membership increased for the states that passed card-check legislation after the laws were passed relative to their precard-check law union-membership levels

Restricting Public Employees\u27 Political Activities: Good Government or Partisan Politics?

The article starts by reviewing, in Part II, the history of the regulation of political activities by public employees, and in Part III, the regulation of patronage. Part IV develops the argument that both sets of regulations, although justified on different grounds, are better understood as political control mechanisms. Part V provides some empirical evidence for this argument by examining voting patterns on federal legislation restricting public employees\u27 political activities. Part VI discusses the relationship of these laws to public sector unionization. Part VII concludes the article

Before Wisconsin and Ohio: The Quiet Success of Card-Check Organizing in the Public Sector

Card-check laws, which have been unsuccessfully pursued by private-sector unions, mandate that employers recognize the union as the representative of employees on the basis of signed authorization cards without reliance on a representation election. Card check authorization benefits unions because it short circuits the usual organizing process by eliminating the union\u27s need to further prove majority support in a secret ballot election.\u27 But by doing so, it imposes costs on employers by restricting their efforts to erode union support through aggressive campaign tactics. Our paper seeks to better understand the development of these laws and their effects, and in that way, identify lessons for future public-sector labor law and unionization

Card Check Recognition: New House Rules for Union Organizing?

A significant policy debate has been occurring regarding union organizing methods in the United States. This debate focuses on the appropriateness of granting union recognition based on majority support as demonstrated by union authorization card signatures, also known as “card checking.” Critics describe the practice as anathema to basic democratic principles and accuse unions of wanting to deal from the bottom of the deck to secure undeserved representation of employees. Proponents of card check recognition argue that reliance on National Labor Relations Board (“NLRB”) organizing procedures fails to protect employees\u27 rights to organize, and forces unions to compete against a stacked deck that unfairly favors employers. Indeed, the labor movement in the United States has long been dissatisfied with the legal framework under which unions operate. This frustration was illustrated by American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (“AFL-CIO”) President Lane Kirkland\u27s statement in the early 1980s suggesting that the National Labor Relations Act (“NLRA”) be repealed, thereby allowing unions and employers to operate within the “law of the jungle.” Perhaps owing to sustained union membership losses, unions have recently fought hard for legislation that will facilitate the organizing process

Maternity Leave Under the FMLA: An Analysis of the Litigation Experience

We begin with a brief description of trends in female labor force participation and the presence of dual-earner households in the U.S. labor market, conditions which likely led to the need for family and medical leave legislation. We then review various practices that business and government organizations have implemented to balance work and family conflicts, as well as related features of the FMLA, particularly those pertaining to childbirth and adoption. With this background in place, we introduce a framework for examining FMLA litigation. We then review cases litigated in federal court under the FMLA involving requests for family leave due to the birth or adoption of a child to determine the nature of conflicts occurring under the legislation and the resolution of those conflicts by the courts

Understanding Card-Check Organizing: The Public Sector Experience

The use of “card checks” as a method of union organizing has recently garnered considerable attention, much of it surrounding the proposed Employee Free Choice Act. The proposed legislation seeks to amend the National Labor Relations Act by requiring employers to recognize a union when the employer is presented with evidence of majority support for union recognition via card checks. Despite this recent interest in card checks, there is little empirical research on the topic due, in part, to the lack of available data. Although card-check organizing in the private sector is not rare, such organizing is voluntary, and does not require government approval. Thus, there is little data chronicling the frequency of such events. However, card-check legislation has become increasingly common among public employees at the state and local levels. In this article, we draw upon the public sector experience to help fill the gap in our understanding of card-check organizing. In particular, the article explores card-check organizing by public sector employees in Illinois which has allowed card-check organizing since 1983, but which in 2003 amended its statute to require employers to recognize unions on the basis of card checks, and Ohio which also has allowed card-check recognition to occur since 1983, but has not passed legislation requiring card-check recognition. An analysis of public sector organizing activity in Illinois before and after the law was changed, allows us to identify the effects of changes in the law and to explore the possible implications in other contexts. Moreover, by comparing the Illinois’ experience to that of Ohio, we can more fully understand the extent to which both the presence and absence of card check legislation may have affected organizing activity. The experience of these two states provides us with a natural experiment on the effects of public sector card check legislation on organizing activity.We use data collected from state labor relations agencies in Illinois and Ohio to examine the overall levels and patterns of organizing activity in both states during the period under study (1998-2008), as well as specific contextual conditions associated with organizing activity in the two states. Our data show that in Ohio, where card-check recognition is voluntary, elections run by the state labor agency have been the predominant means of organizing new members. That was also the case in Illinois until 2003, when mandatory card-check legislation was enacted. Since then, the overwhelming majority of organizing has occurred via the mandatory card-check provision. Moreover, cross-sectional (i.e., Illinois and Ohio) and time-series (i.e., pre and post card check legislation in Illinois) comparisons of various contextual characteristics associated with organizing activity provide a more complete picture of the effects of the Illinois’ legislation. For part of our analysis, we use a methodological technique known as Qualitative Comparative Analysis (“QCA”) to identify combinations of conditions that are distinctively associated with the use of either card-checks or elections. We find that the Illinois’ legislation not only facilitated the ability of unions to organize, but also that unions responded by shifting to card checks as their primary means of organizing under certain contextual conditions and by expanding their organizing activity into different contexts

Individual-Level Determinants of Employee Shirking

On s'est beaucoup intéressé récemment à la question de l'effort des employés au travail ou, plus exactement, au manque de tel effort (flânerie). Examinant ce problème de flanerie des employés, nos collègues ont eu tendance à se concentrer sur les différentes politiques que les organisations peuvent utilisées pour atteindre un niveau maximal d'effort au travail chez les employés. Une hypothèse de base sous-jacente à de telles recherches est à l'effet qu'en l'absence de surveillance efficace de l'employeur, les employés vont réduire leurs efforts au travail. Parce qu'en fait l'hypothèse que les employés vont flâner lorsque l'utilité marginale du fanage est plus grande que celle du travail, les politiques patronales tentent de réduire le fanage en augmentant le coût de celui-ci ou, inversement, en augmentant la valeur du travail. Malheureusement, toute cette documentation organisationnelle ignore les causes du flânage chez les individus. Cela est un oubli significatif vu que les caractéristiques personnelles des employés peuvent causer des différences dans le degré de flânage parmi ces employés qui connaissent des conditions de travail ou des plans de rémunération similaires. Nous présentons et vérifions ici un modèle des déterminants du flanage au niveau des individus. Ce modèle établit que le flanage est fonction de la satisfaction au travail de l'employé, de son bien-être subjectif, de ses alternatives sur le marché du travail et de l'étendue du contrôle de l'employeur. On définit le flanage comme un manque d'effort au travail de l'employé. La tendance d'un employé à donner moins que le plein effort représente le flanage. Le plein effort reflète 100%. Plus le niveau de flanage est grand, plus l'écart avec ce 100 % est grand. Nous avons utilisé de multiples mesures pour évaluer le flanage, la satisfaction au travail et le bien-être subjectif et de nombreuses variables pour illustrer les autres composantes du modèle de flanage.Utilisant les données d'une enquête de professionnels de la santé dans une grosse clinique non syndiquée du Midwest américain, nous avons trouvé que les employés qui ont le plus à perdre en flânant, comme les plus vieux, flânent moins. De plus, les facteurs propres au marché du travail ne déterminent pas le degré de flanage chez les employés.Les résultats suggèrent aussi que la satisfaction au travail et le bien- être subjectif sont des prédicteurs significatifs du flanage. Les effets négatifs de la satisfaction au travail sur le flanage proposent que l'identification des sources possibles d'insatisfaction au travail et l'implantation de programmes correctifs peuvent réduire le flanage. L'effet négatif du bien-être subjectif relie cette dernière variable au flanage. Les résultats suggèrent que le flanage n'est pas totalement déterminé par les politiques et pratiques organisationnelles.Finalement, nos résultats indiquent que les employés de race noire flanent moins que ceux des autres races, probablement parce qu'ils croient faire face à une plus grande possibilité de se faire prendre à flâner, i.e. plus de contróle de l'employeur. Cependant, des occasions accrues de surveiller le comportement des employés, doublées à un plus bas rapport employé/supérieur n'a pas réduit le flanage de façon significative. L'importance des déterminants individuels du flanage suggère plus de recherche au-delà de la concentration actuelle sur les facteurs organisationnels. La recherche à venir devrait tenter d'établir la mesure dans laquelle la possibilité des effets organisationnels sur le flanage peut dépendre des caractéristiques individuelles spécifiques. Elle devrait également examiner l'influence de variables du groupe sur le flanage.Employee shirking, where workers give less than full effort on the job, has typically been investigated as a construct subject to organization-level influences. Neglected are individual differences that could explain why employees in the same organization or work-group might shirk. Using a sample of workers from the health care profession in the United States, the present study sought to address these limitations by investigating subjective well-being (a dispositional construct), job satisfaction, as well as other indiuidual-level determinants of shirking. Results indicate that whites shirk significantly more than nonwhites, and that subjective well-being, job satisfaction, and age have significant, negative effects on shirking. The implications of these results are discussed