Pros and Cons of Unionization

Robert Hickey, Ph.D.

School of Policy Studies

Objectives & agenda

• Balanced presentation and discussion of unionization
• Benefits and costs of different models of professional employee organization
• Spark critical analysis, reflection, and discussions
• Self disclosure (personal background)
• Historic role and contributions of professional associations
• Motivations and goals for unionization
• Advantages of associations and unions
• Shortcomings of associations and unions

Personal background

— Joined School of Policy Studies at Queen’s in 2006

— Ph.D. (Industrial relations) Cornell University

— Ten years as union organizer and staff representative

— 5 seconds of fame (what you find if you google me?)

— Hickey v. City of Seattle

— Teaching philosophy

— Areas of research

— My contribution to the discussion

Professional associations

— Widespread (dominant form of organization) in the public sector prior to collective bargaining laws

— Self-help organizations

— Professional certification and standards

— Consultation and proto-negotiations historically more recent development

— Attractive characteristics (professional employees)

— Independent voice

— Typically not adversarial

— Voluntary, self-governance

Motivations for unionization

— Personal job dissatisfaction combined with collective approach to mitigate workplace power imbalance

— Union instrumentality

— Unionization will lead to concrete improvements

— Management behaviour

— Poor managers are the best union organizers

— Ineffective (wrong) motivations

— A few dollars more

— Personal conflict with individual supervisor

Characteristic strengths

Professional associations	Labour unions
Non-adversarial foundation	Legally binding bargaining rights
Voluntary self-governance	Pooled resources
Flexibility of cooperative, informal problem solving abilities	Formal grievance procedure with third party arbitration
Opportunities to participate in decision-making through consultations	Protection against arbitrary, unilateral management decisions
Broader organizational boundaries	Stability and certainty of rules based systems

Characteristic weaknesses

Professional associations	Labour unions
Beholden to paternalism	Adversarial and conflict inducing
Social club orientation	Rigid and formal work relations
Limited ability to challenge management decisions	Risk of strikes and lockouts
Ineffective at dealing with conflict	‘Union’ losses touch with membership
Limited scope of bargaining issues	‘Minority’ voices lost
	Prof. Hickey where is Jimmy Hoffa?

Additional points for discussion

— Challenges of apathy, commitment, objectives, etc. common to both models

— Build on current association strengths

— Leadership development & membership participation

— Clarify organizational objectives to match model with appropriate strengths.

— Consideration of unions

— Alphabet soup (OSSTF, USW, CUPE, OPSEU, CAW...)

— Independent unionism