How Managers Can Keep Unions on Their Side

When I was the president of Robroy, I worked very hard to keep the union on my side. In fact, having them on my side made managing the associates a whole lot easier. It also made them more likely to agree with my decisions when other managers might have faced a lot of pushback and arguing from their unions.

To start, I always had a rule that I would never take union leadership by surprise. In other words, I wouldn’t ask permission to do something, but I would always brief them before I would execute anything.

By doing that, I caused them to be part of my management team because they would manage the griping on the shop floor on my behalf. What helped even more is that they would give me feedback before I executed a decision, even though I tried to think it through before I suggested it. I also made it clear that this was an act of informing, not an act of bargaining.

Photo of union workers on strike. A relationship between management and the union doesn't have to be adversarial.A relationship between the union and management is not necessarily supposed to be an adversarial relationship. That’s not the way it has traditionally been in the past with other organizations and unions. In fact, management has always distanced itself from the union and expected that the union would discipline their people on the shop floor.

Except that cannot and should not ever happen. Otherwise, the union will force management to keep the slackers and poor performers around.

One way I got around that was that I measured everything and set minimum performance standards. That way, if I needed to get rid of someone over poor performance, I had all the objective evidence that was required to do it.

And when I could show that a particular worker was not meeting the performance standards that the union had already agreed to, they never objected to getting rid of them. After all, they had agreed to the standards in the first place, so how could they argue?

Getting the Union to Agree to Safety

Safety is often a point of contention between the union and management, but I wanted to make sure that we didn’t have that problem. I’ve already talked about how I let the associates devise our safety policies and procedures, and not management.

I had formulated a safety advisory council, and I asked that it be made up of both union and non-union members because I brought in some people from other plants that weren’t unionized. I also brought in a moderator and said their task was to design a safety program that was theirs. I said I would not interfere or be in any of the meetings, but that I would commit to supporting and funding it, providing it met our objectives.

That’s exactly what happened: they created the safety program and the rules. They even created the requirement that anyone who was being onboarded, whether hourly or salaried, met with a rep of the safety council, and that person went over the safety program with them.

Once they had developed the entire program and sold it to me, I then shut down all the facilities for a day so they could roll it out. That way, everyone got the same message on the same day by the same people. This even became the backbone of #1 of my non-negotiables.

And how did we get the union leaders to buy into it? I decided to sell it and not tell it. I got them together and said, “It doesn’t make any sense for me to figure out what rules to follow; no one knows your jobs better than you do. So why don’t you come up with the program?

“The objective is to have zero incidents, so I don’t want to think of everything. I’ll provide the time and pay you for it, and I’ll commit to implementing it once you’ve built it.”

The union leaders could participate in the design, development, and execution. They could influence whatever the council came up with. But the rules had to be unanimous and developed over a 90-day period.

The union leaders could participate in the design development and execution. They could influence whatever the council came up with. But it had to be unanimous, and I think this developed over a 90-day period.

One of the policies they came up with was how they dealt with someone who violated the policy.

Since safety was a non-negotiable and the union leadership had written the rules, they were obliged to support their own decisions because one person who did something stupid can negatively impact a lot of other people.

One of the safety issues they created was creating a drug-free workplace. Whether that was cocaine or recreational weed, having someone getting high and doing something a little squirrely could hurt or kill someone. So, the safety council (complete with union representatives) came up with the policy for random drug testing and creating a zero-tolerance environment.

When you look at the demographics of any workforce, you’ll find a certain percentage of maturity in there. So some guy who used weed over the weekend was probably not on the council, but the mature guys managed that process.

That also meant that whenever we had to fire someone, the union had to back it. We also had a security camera system that would show any violations that I never brought out until the bigger end and the union was pushing back too hard. Then, I had to bring out the video evidence and ask, “What do you think now?”

Whenever that happened, and I had to show the video evidence, they always agreed, “Well, clearly the guy’s an idiot,” and they would back our decision.

All because I had the union on my side in management’s decisions.

I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now, I help companies turn around their own business, including pivoting within their industry. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn.

Photo credit: Ryan O’Hara (Flickr, Creative Commons 2.0)



Author: David Marshall
I’ve been a manufacturing executive, as well as a sales and marketing professional, for a few decades. Now I help companies turn around their own business. If you would like more information, please visit my website and connect with me on Twitter or LinkedIn.