HRM 340 EXAM 1

A labor movement is:

A form of social movement in which workers from multiple workplaces join together to pursue common interests in, say, political reform.

A union contract is:

A legally binding document that describes the terms of employment (e.g., wages hours, working conditions).

In the early 1900s, the richest 1 percent of households in America controlled the greatest concentration of wealth in U.S. history at:

45 percent

If a union gathers signed authorization cards from more than ____________________ percent of the employees, it can ask the employer to recognize the union as the bargaining agent of the employees.

50

A workplace that is open only to workers who belong to the union is known as:

A Closed Shop

To achieve gains for its members, the Knights of Labor focused primarily on

Education & reforming capitalism

Equity

a standard of fair treatment for employees

The way to demonstrate sufficient interest for a certification election is to provide signed authorization cards from at least ____________________ percent of the employees.

30

The open shop movement was:

A movement by employers to use the concept of individual liberty to discourage workers from acting collectively and preserve management's right to control its business.

When an employer prohibits outside organizations from entering the workplace and interacting with workers, it is called ____________________.

A no solicitation rule

A yellow dog contract is:

A promise by a worker not to join or support a union

In the 1920's, some companies like Ford and Rockefeller Steel used welfare capitalism as a way to keep unions from forming in their plants and mines. Welfare capitalism is a best described as:

A union substitution tactic

The American Federation of Labor believed that allowing skilled craftsmen to establish and enforce their own work rules and work standards would do all of the following EXCEPT:

Advance the cause of industrial workers.

Experimentation with shorter, less detailed union contracts in recent years has been intended to address employers' need for __________________ in the workplace?

Ambiguity

According to the industrial relations perspective, low wages, long hours, dangerous working conditions, and abusive supervisory practices is most likely attributed to:

An imbalance of bargaining power between employers and workers

The conditions associated with the "labor problem" of the early 1900s were made possible in part due to a prevailing management attitude that labor was:

An interchangeable and expendable factor of production.

For the Knights of Labor, the central conflict that needed to be won was between:

Anyone considered a "producer" (i.e., farmers, shopkeepers, and employers) and "parasites" those who controlled money (i.e., bankers, stockbrokers, lawyers).

The union wage premium is:

Approximately 15% such that union workers make, on average, 15% more than comparable nonunion workers.

Union democracy can be analyzed along three dimensions: procedural, ____________________, and substantive.

Behavioral

The crucial feature of collective bargaining is that management's traditional authority to unilaterally establish terms and conditions of employment is replaced by ____________________ negotiations

Bilateral

If a group of employees is represented by a union and another union that has a better track record also wants to represent those workers, the employees:

Can file for a decertification election if enough workers express interest in an election.

Union avoidance, a strategy of working toward remaining nonunion or becoming nonunion

Can include a host of tactics both legal and illegal.

In 2005, seven of the country's largest unions left the AFL-CIO to form a new federation of unions called:

Change to win

The major strategy of the unions of the American Federation of Labor focused on:

Collective bargaining and the threat of strikes.

Arguably, the most important determinant of a bargaining unit is:

Community of Interests

A union is attempting to organize clerical and factory workers at a local manufacturing plant in Oshkosh. The NLRB makes a determination to include the clerical and factory workers in the same bargaining unit because they have indicated that their demands are very similar. The NLRB is applying a principle of:

Community of interests

The Wagner Act of 1935 is grounded in which of the following principle beliefs regarding conflict?

Conflict between management and labor is inevitable and collective bargaining between equal partners is the preferred method for resolving disputes.

In the Knights of Labor's vision for the future businesses would be owned by:

Cooperatives made up of the producers of the goods and services they produced. These would include both workers and their employers.

An airline negotiates separate contracts for the pilots, mechanics, and flight attendants. Each group of employees is represented by its own union that organizes only that particular occupation. This model of unionism is best described as:

Craft Unionism

National and local unions are governed by:

Democratic methods in which union members elect union leaders whose actions are constrained by a constitution, by-laws, and elections.

The CIO formed as a result of:

Differences with the AFL over unionization by industry, rather than by craft.

In the early 1900s workers were often managed using fear and intimidation tactics designed to keep them from challenging management decisions. This system of management became known as the:

Drive System

An employer creates a safety team of 6 employees who are asked to recommend changes to the workplace that will reduce accident rates. The team recommends eliminating a job rotation program that allows the employer to move employees in and out of various jobs on an as-needed basis. They argue that job rotation both increases employee stress and reduces the amount of experience that employees have with the various safety procedures associated with a particular job. This scenario describes a conflict between which two objectives of the employment relationship?

Efficiency and voice

Which of the following characterizes the current business environment as compared to that at the time the National Labor Relations Act was passed?

Emphasis on the importance and need for knowledgeable workers

Which of the following is likely to be considered a "supervisor" by definition of the NLRA and subsequent interpretations by the NLRB and Supreme Court?

Employees who are accountable for the performance of other employees.

If one's perspective is that business' sole purpose is to make a profit, which of the following statements are they likely to agree with?

Employers have an obligation to place the needs of shareholders before the needs of other stakeholders such as consumers and employees

The hypocrisy of the open shop movement was that:

Employers painted collective action of workers as an infringement upon individual liberty while they themselves acted collectively to prevent unionization.

The "labor problem" was considered a problem for all of the following reasons except:

Employers were not gaining maximum efficiencies because they had difficulty firing employees who were not productive

The official policy of the United States with respect to the employment relationship is to:

Encourage employee voice in the employment relationship through unions and collective bargaining

The Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 (Labor-Management Reporting and Disclosing Act) was passed primarily to:

Ensure democratic standards for unions and increase transparency of union financial activities.

When an employer allows supervisors to arbitrarily discipline employees without cause, it is most directly violating which objective of the employment relationship?

Equity

Local unions are governed by a president and:

Executive committee elected by the workers.

What legislation created a national minimum wage, mandatory overtime premium for qualified workers, and restrictions on child labor?

Fair Labor Standards Act

A collective bargaining agreement negotiated between an employer and its workers is an informal agreement outlining the terms and conditions of employment.

False

At a local restaurant one evening, a supervisor from a large manufacturing plant is seated in a booth directly behind four employees of the plant she works at. She overhears these employees discussing the possibility of unionizing the plant and stays to learn more about their plans. The next day, she tells her box about what she has learned. The supervisor's actions are legal under the Wagner Act (NLRA).

False

In a union organizing campaign, employers are prohibited from holding "captive audience" meetings unless they also allow the union to hold a similar meeting.

False

In the mainstream economics school of thought, the best protection employees have against poor management practices is legislation guaranteeing some basic rights in the workplace.

False

It is illegal for an employer to voluntarily recognize a union just because it has a majority of union authorization cards signed; union representation can only be decided by secret ballot vote.

False

It is rarely the case that unionized companies are more productive than non-unionized companies.

False

Paternalistic/strategic organizations are likely to resist unionization using a union suppression strategy.

False

The Taft-Hartley Act makes it illegal for workers (or their unions) to engage in boycotts.

False

The concept of exclusive representation was introduced into the Wagner Act (NLRA) primarily to ensure that multiple unions did not fight over the right to represent the same group of employees.

False

The majority of workers in the U.S. are satisfied with the amount of voice they feel they have in the workplace.

False

Treating people only as a means to an end, rather than as an end in and of themselves, best describes an immoral act under the ethical framework of fairness.

False

When it comes to providing unions with access to employees at work, the burden lies on the employer to show that greater physical or electronic access would interfere with business. If they cannot show this, then unions must be granted access.

False

After 3 years of union representation, employees at Stellar Snowboard Manufacturing company decide that they wish to end their relationship with the union. The employees must:

File a petition for decertification election.

If an employer denies a request for voluntary recognition, what is the next employee step in the union organizing process?

Filing an election petition with the NLRB

Today most U.S. unions have a membership that consists of workers:

From diverse occupations or industries.

Today's labor movement can best be described as a movement dominated by:

General Unions

The Civil Service Reform Act of 1978:

Grants federal employees unionization rights.

Which of the following outcomes cannot generally be attributed to unions?

Greater economic prosperity through free-market competition.

Which school of thought regarding the employment relationship has predominated in the post WWII era:

Human Resource Management Model

When the employees of a large maintenance and building repair company tried to organize a union, the company fired several of the most active organizers, began holding one-on-one meetings to interrogate employees about their intentions, and sent each employee a letter with veiled threats about what would happen if they joined the union. This employer is utilizing:

Illegal union suppression tactics.

According to the critical industrial relations perspective, labor unions are:

Important but inadequate for addressing employer domination over workers

Which of the following is not likely to be considered illegal under the National Labor Relations Act?

Lies, misrepresentation, and distortion of facts.

Which of the following is true regarding union finances? Union funds are collected:

In the form of union dues or fees that are then subject to statutes and case law that govern how unions may spend the money.

According to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights issued by the United Nations, it is considered a basic human right for:

Individuals to have the right to form and join trade unions for their own protection and the protection of others.

Which of the following is not considered to be fundamental to the role of unions?

Influencing employees to work toward maximizing company profits

In the human resources school of thought, workers express their voice through:

Informal dispute resolution processes such as an open door policy

Job control unionism, which has dominated U.S. unions since WWII, is characterized by all of the following except:

Informal grievance procedures.

To restrict the ability of a union to solicit union members during work hours, the employer should:

Institute a no solicitation policy that is applied to all organizations, including charitable organizations.

The main significance of the PATCO strike in 1981 was that:

It marked a turn in U.S. labor relations toward much more adversarial relations between management and labor.

Which of the following statements is not true regarding the Knights of Labor?

It was not concerned with material issues such as better wages.

The National Labor Union is significant largely because:

It was the first to unite diverse unions into a single federation.

In order to establish exclusive representation, a union needs to win:

Majority support of a group of employees.

Under the Wagner Act of 1935, an employer has a legal obligation to do all of the following EXCEPT:

Make concessions in response to union demands during a bargaining session.

Under the Wagner Act of 1935, an employer has a legal obligation to do all of the following except:

Make concessions in response to union demands during a bargaining session.

The American Federation of Labor was successful in building and sustaining membership due primarily to its focus on:

Making immediate gains in wages, hours and working conditions through collective bargaining.

Union substitution refers to:

Management policies and practices adopted to keep unions out by making them unnecessary.

The PATCO strike in the 1980's is significant because:

Many believe it created a new environment in which management could once again use aggressive tactics such as hiring permanent strike replacements to fight unionization.

If a union worker does not want her union dues to be spent on political activity, she

May resign her membership in the union or pay only that portion of dues that is used for representation activities (i.e., pay a reduced fee).

If a union worker does not want her union dues to be spent on political activity, she:

May resign her membership in the union or pay only that portion of dues that is used for representation activities (i.e., pay a reduced fee).

Employees who do not have the protection of the NLRA:

May strike or picket but could be terminated for doing so.

Within a typical union structure, the greatest power and authority lies with:

National Unions

European social partnership arrangements are characterized by:

National union leadership to achieve broad social and economic goals.

In response to illegal or unethical behaviors of local union officials, the Landrum-Griffin Act of 1959 allows:

National unions to take over and replace elected local officials with an appointed trustee.

Circulating a flyer among coworkers to build support for a plan for employees to buy the company.

Not Protected

Destroying company property while striking for improved benefits.

Not Protected

Distributing obscene or malicious cartoons to protest a supervisor's actions.

Not Protected

Insisting that a coworker be present when you think you will be disciplined.

Not Protected

Sending an e-mail message to coworkers pointing out the disadvantages of your employer's new vacation plan.

Not Protected

A typical newspaper company in the early part of the 20th century might employ both printers and "newsies" (young men and boys who sold the papers). Which of the following best illustrates the AFL's concept of exclusive jurisdiction?

One union should represent the printers and only the printers while another union should represent the newsies (and only the newsies).

The AFL-CIO serves a number of purposes for local and national unions including all of the following EXCEPT:

Organizing, negotiating and grievance handling.

The AFL-CIO serves a number of purposes for local and national unions including all of the following except:

Organizing, negotiating and grievance handling.

Efficiency

Productive, profit maximizing use of labor to promote economic prosperity

When it comes to strikes, most State collective bargaining laws:

Prohibit the use of strikes regardless of the purpose.

The Taft-Hartley Act (Labor Management Relations Act) of 1947 did all of the following except:

Prohibited employers from expressing their views and opinions on unionization.

Conflicts between employers and employees can best be described as conflicts between:

Property rights and individual rights.

Discussing wages with coworkers.

Protected

From a home computer after work, posting comments on Facebook about a coworker's job performance and asking other coworkers to add their comments.

Protected

Going on strike and peacefully picketing for improved benefits.

Protected

In a nonunion workplace, joining with several coworkers and refusing to work until the company provides a paid lunch break.

Protected

Individually meeting with your supervisor to request improved lighting for you and two coworkers.

Protected

Refusing to work under conditions that you and others reasonably believe pose a high risk of death or serious injury.

Protected

Trying to form a union to negotiate wages and working conditions.

Protected

Aside from their role in workplace governance, unions are important to the effective functioning of a democratic society because they:

Provide a counter to excessive political power of employers and employer associations.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service:

Provides voluntary mediation to parties involved in a labor dispute

Which of the following is a union substitution tactic?

Providing above-market compensation.

Legal protections guaranteeing workers the right to support a union serve to equalize bargaining power between employers and employees for many reasons including:

Providing democracy in the workplace

Today the strongest segment of unionization is:

Public Sector Workers

An employer fires an employee who attempted to organize a union. The NLRB finds the employer guilty of violating the NLRA. The most likely penalties include all of the following EXCEPT:

Punitive Damages

An employer fires an employee who attempted to organize a union. The NLRB finds the employer guilty of violating the NLRA. The most likely penalties include all of the following except:

Punitive Damages

Which of the following is NOT an allowable penalty for NLRB violations?

Punitive damages and fines.

News and other media portrayals of unions and union workers tend to:

Reinforce stereotypes of unions made up of greedy and lazy workers that engage in frequent and violent strikes.

Due to problems in the certification process outlined by the NLRA, more and more unions are pursuing union organizing campaigns that:

Rely on neutrality and card-check agreements with employers.

Collective Bargaining

Representatives of the employer and the employees negotiate the terms and conditions of employment that will apply to employees

In situations where employer gross misconduct calls the results of a representation election into question, a Gissel bargaining order may be issued to:

Require an employer to negotiate with a union even though the election results do not support representation.

The Landrum-Griffin Act explicitly tries to prevent union corruption by doing all of the following except:

Requiring unions to adopt standard constitution and by-laws of the Dept. of Labor

The National War Labor Board, created during WWI and WWII, was intended to:

Resolve labor disputes that arose during the wars.

Most U.S. unions are formed through:

Secret ballot elections.

A business unionism model emphasizes:

Securing a fair share of profits made through capitalism.

When workers protest wages, hours and/or working conditions by refusing to work or to leave the shop/plant floor it is known as a:

Sit down strike

It has been argued that demand for services traditionally provided for by unions has declined over time due to:

Substitution of union services by enlightened employer practices and protective legislation

Unlike the AFL, the CIO's attitude toward women in the union was:

That they should be encouraged to join but relegated to a minor role in leading the union.

A key difference between the AFL and the CIO in their early years was:

The CIO relied more heavily on aggressive tactics such as sit-down strikes.

A significant change in American societal beliefs regarding the role of big business in ensuring prosperity for all occurred following:

The Great Depression

In 1886, a Chicago rally to protest police repression of strikers turned violent when a bomb was thrown into the police ranks and police fired into the departing crowd. This incident is known as:

The Haymarket Tragedy.

Which of the following unions is most accurately described as a revolutionary union?

The Industrial Workers of the World

Which of the following unions is most accurately described as a revolutionary union?

The Industrial Workers of the World.

The American Federation of Labor arose out of frustration with:

The Knights of Labor's failure to address everyday working issues.

In a union organizing campaign and election, the appropriate bargaining unit is defined by:

The NLRB

Labor unions are considered the quintessential form of independent employee representation because:

They are independent of managerial authority.

If you compare the power structure of the U.S. labor movement to that of different levels of government, the AFL-CIO is analogous to:

The United Nations

A group of Walmart employees in Raleigh, NC staged a 5-minute flash mob protest over low wages and working conditions at their store. At the end of the demonstration, they handed the manager a signed petition. Which of the following is true?

The employees' actions are legal because they are acting together to influence their working conditions.

A group of employees decide to walk off the job together to protest unsafe working conditions. Which of the following is true?

The employees' actions are legal because they are acting together to influence their working conditions.

Before the early 1900s, the prevailing opinion regarding the employment relationship was that:

The government should never interfere with the ability of an individual to freely enter into an economic relationship with another individual

The evening before a union election, an employer held a company picnic for its employees. Attendance at the picnic was required and the company president gave a passionate speech urging employees not to vote for the union. The most likely reason the NLRB would consider this a violation of the NLRA is:

The picnic amounts to a captive audience meeting held within 24 hours of the election.

Which of the following is NOT a protected activity of employees under Section 8 of the NLRA?

The right to refuse to bargain with an employer over wages, hours, and working conditions.

Which of the following is not protected activity of employees under Section 8 of the NLRA?

The right to refuse to bargain with an employer over wages, hours, and working conditions.

The AFL and the CIO merged in 1955 because:

The two unions were expending considerable resources raiding each other for members.

In a representation election, the union is not held to the same standard as an employer when it comes to making promises during a campaign because:

The union has little to offer except promises while the employer's promises carry significantly more weight with the employees.

Jon is a manager of a call center unit. He is generally pretty optimistic about his employees and characterizes them as hard-working, conscientious people who just want to be treated with respect while doing their work. We could characterize Jon's view of his employees as being consistent with:

Theory Y

In today's labor relations environment:

There is an increasing number of employers violating labor standards.

Most countries base their industrial relations system on the perspective that:

There should be balance between worker and employer rights.

Unionization in the public sector did not take hold until the 1960's largely because:

There were no laws protecting public sector rights to unionize.

Compared to other countries, the system of labor relations in the U.S. is

Tightly Regulated

Arguably the most effective union organizing tactic is:

To develop personal relationships with existing workers and train them to take the lead in talking with their co-workers about unionizing.

During an interview, an applicant reveals that she has been active in supporting unions in the past. An appropriate response by you, the interviewing manager, is:

To inform her that the information is irrelevant and proceed with hiring as if the information had not been given.

A key role of unions is to negotiate work rules and practices that ensure fair treatment of employees by their managers and employers.

True

A union steward's most important responsibility is processing grievances that have been filed within their work groups.

True

Business unionism works within the capitalist system by focusing on securing labor's "fair share" of profits, rather than seeking broad scale social change.

True

Employers and unions violate the NLRA by agreeing to recognize a union as the certified bargaining representative of all the workers when the union lacks majority support.

True

Experts believe that the widening gap between the richest and poorest individuals in the U.S. is in part due to the weakened position of labor unions.

True

Four employees engage in a spirited Facebook exchange complaining about their company's poor pay, benefits, and safety record. Because the employees' actions are protected under the Wagner Act (NLRA), the company cannot punish them for the posts.

True

Groups of employees that emphasize political lobbying and social pressure over traditional collective bargaining processes are often referred to as "employee associations."

True

Industrial unionism seeks to organize all workers by industry or within a given workplace, regardless of their occupations or skill levels.

True

Labor relations systems around the world generally assume that corporations have significantly greater bargaining power than one individual worker.

True

National union officers are elected by the union membership or their delegates.

True

Relative to their peers in other countries, American managers are more hostile toward unions and have a stronger tradition of union avoidance tactics.

True

Structural changes in the distribution of industries, along with demographic changes, likely account for some of the decline in unionization rates in the U.S.

True

The AFL was considered a "business union" because it focused on achieving immediate improvements in the terms of employment such as a wages, hours of work, and working conditions.

True

The Landrum-Griffin Act prohibits unions from making direct contributions to a political candidate.

True

The employment-at-will doctrine states that employers have the right to fire employees and employees have the right to quit for any reason and at any time.

True

The key distinction between the industrial relations and critical industrial relations schools of thought is the belief that an imbalance of power between employers and employees is built into the very fabric of capitalism such that employers can exercise domination over laborers.

True

Which of the following is not considered a component of the legal environment of industrial relations?

Unemployment Rates

A union contract provision that requires employees to join the union after a certain amount of time on the job is known as a:

Union Shop Clause

Paying above-market wages, providing job security, and providing opportunities for training and development are all examples of:

Union Substitution

Plant closings, refusing to hire pro-union applicants, firing or harassing union supporters and using permanent strike replacements are all examples of:

Union Suppression

A strategy of working toward remaining nonunion is known as:

Union avoidance.

Which of the following statements is true about unionization in the U.S. since 1990?

Union membership has been stable while union density has been decreasing

A union contract provision that requires employees to join the union after a certain amount of time on the job is known as a(n):

Union shop clause.

A large national trucking company takes great care to remain nonunion by carefully selecting managers who display a participative leadership style, putting in place a nonunion grievance procedure, and paying wages and benefits at the top of the market range. This company is practicing:

Union substitution

The practice of shifting work from locations that are unionized to those that are not is considered a:

Union suppression strategy.

A national union is most likely to take the lead in collective bargaining:

When the company is large

The appropriate bargaining unit defines:

Which occupations and locations of a particular employer will be included in the representation election.

A local union may represent all of the following EXCEPT:

Workers in a single occupation already represented by an industry union.

The Railway Labor Act of 1926 applies to all of the following EXCEPT:

Workers in the trucking industry.

From a business perspective, the poor working conditions endured by workers in the early part of U.S. industrialization were most problematic because:

Workers lacked purchasing power which kept product demand artificially low.

The Supreme Court has ruled that union shop agreements:

can only be enforced as agency shop agreements.

A right-to-work law:

prohibits union or agency shop agreements.

Voice

standard of employee participation

Union Density

the percentage of workers who are union members

Exclusive Representation

the right of a union, chosen by a majority of the employees in a plant, craft, industry, or department of a shop or business, to represent all the employees in the unit, regardless of whether they are members of the union or not.