IRL 401 - Collective Bargaining

Definitions - BARGAINING AND CONFLICT RESOLUTION
Agency Shop - An arrangement in which all employees must either join the union or pay the union a fee for its bargaining services.

Aspiration Zone - The settlements bounded by a party's target and resistance points.

Attitudinal Structuring - Negotiating activities designed to influence the attitudes of the parties toward each other.

Bargaining Power - The ability to induce the other party to move its bargaining position closer to one's own.

Base Cost - The total cost of the existing wage and benefit package.

Check-off - The automatic deduction of union dues from wages by the employer who turns them over to the union.

Cost-of-Living Escalator - A collective bargaining agreement provision which adjusts wages automatically during the term of the agreement in response to changes in the Consumer Price Index.  Also called a "COLA" clause.

Deferral - The act of an administrative agency or court in determining that the arbitration of a grievance has also disposed of any legal issues involved which the agency or court would otherwise have dealt with itself.

Discounted Present Value - A measure of the current value of a stream of incomes and/or costs that extends into the future.

Distributive Bargaining - Negotiating activities designed to resolve pure conflicts of interest.

Grievance Arbitration - Frequently, the ultimate step in a procedure by which disagreements over the interpretation of a collective bargaining agreement are resolved.  An impartial third party is asked to make a binding ruling.

Integrative Bargaining - Negotiating activities designed to find common interests and to resolve problems.

Intraorganizational Bargaining - Negotiating activities designed to achieve consensus within each group.

Lockout - An employer initiated form of collective bargaining pressure.  Employees are denied the right to work until an agreement on some disputed issue or issues is reached.

Maintenance of Membership - An arrangement in which existing union members must maintain their membership for the duration of the collective bargaining agreement.

Mediation - The intervention of an impartial third party, without the power to impose a settlement, into a dispute.

Modified Union Shop - An arrangement in which existing union members must maintain their membership and all new employees must join the union.

Resistance Point - The poorest bargaining outcome a party intends to accept.

"Roll-up" items - Those which automatically increase in cost proportionately when wages are increased.

Secondary Strike or Boycott - An industrial action aimed at bringing pressure on one employer by interfering with the business of other employers who do business with the primary employer.

Settlement Range - The settlements bounded by the resistance points of the two parties.

Superseniority - The automatic placement of union officers at the top of seniority lists for purposes of layoff and recall.

Target Point - The bargaining outcome a party would find completely satisfactory.

Union Shop - An arrangement in which all employees must join the union which is the bargaining agent.