Focus should be on managing contract even when negotiations are done: Labour expert
It’s common for managers to view the day a collective agreement is ratified as a time to turn the page — especially if getting to an agreement had been difficult. If it involved work stoppage, the prevailing mindset upon ratification is quite often, “Let’s just get back to business.”
That might be a wise approach in many cases. But, sometimes, managers need to pay attention to the discontent that may still be simmering after an agreement is reached. The consequence of not paying attention, and not taking actions to address the unhappiness, could be increased grievances and plummeting morale.
One of the first indications there may be trouble ahead is the number of employees who voted for the agreement.
“If it’s barely ratified, like with a 52 per cent vote or something, I’d say to management, ‘We’ve got a problem,’” says Lorne Trevors, a Halifax-based national representative with the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE). “Ratification is a good indication of the labour relations you have going into the next four years.”
Unions are generally willing to share the results of the ratification votes with management, he says. But when there’s reluctance to share results, especially those that reveal how specific locals voted, that may be due to the mistrust that managers would use the information to seed discord between workers and the union, he adds.
“If they see a split in the membership, often managers would start to play both sides against the middle,” says Trevors. “There are supervisors who would go to workers and say, ‘The union didn’t work hard enough for you.’ ”
Ratification vote numbers are a good indication to start out with, says Bruno Cadieux, general manager of labour relations at Canada Post. But sometimes the vote turnout is so low that “we’re not too sure what conclusion we can draw out of it,” he adds.
“The best individual to be able to sense the mood on the floor is the team leader. That’s the person who can tell you they’re facing a bunch of discouraged, disgruntled, unmotivated employees or only a small portion of them are in that zone.”
At Canada Post, the recent contract ratification followed negotiations over the future direction the organization wanted to take. A sense of resentment among workers grew during this turbulent period, which included rotating strikes, a lockout and back-to-work legislation. In the end, both sides arrived at a contract through negotiation, which was taking place even as a government-imposed arbitration process faced one legal obstacle after another.
Because this last round of bargaining set the ground for important changes to come, it’s important to spend time post-ratification to address employee concerns and communicate the need for those changes, says Cadieux.
During this phase, it’s part of the job of the company’s 3,000-plus team leaders to spend time communicating not only the details of the change but also the rationale for the change, he adds.
“We’ll provide additional support in locations where issues are bumpier or where the message is not coming,” he says, adding those resources include people in communications, labour relations and health and safety, depending on what the issues are.
“We used to be a very stable, comfortable company but Canadians have stopped mailing. So we need to adapt to the new reality and adapt to the new demands,” says Cadieux. “If you don’t take the time to bring the employees along, to help them understand why the current state doesn’t work and why we need to change, then you have resistance to change big time.”
Communicating with employees is important, says Hugh Secord, chief strategist at Oakbridges Labour Relations Strategists in Uxbridge, Ont. But communication has to begin well prior to the start of bargaining to make a difference. “If you’re seeing a decline in the market shares, or pressures on costs, you should make employees aware of those things,” says Secord.
“What people forget is the most important part of the collective agreement is not negotiating it once every three years, but managing it during those three-year periods.”
In the post-ratification period, a best practice would be for the manager to debrief employees about what’s in the new collective agreement. “Even a better practice is to do it jointly with the union,” he says. Most employees would otherwise only have learned of what’s in the contract just prior to the ratification vote, through union information sessions. That’s not enough, says Secord.
If there’s little trust in the relationship, a good idea would be to bring in a third party, someone who wasn’t party to the negotiation, to explain what the collective agreement spells out.
A more serious issue is when you are faced with a contract ratified after a work stoppage. “That’s going to require sustained, long effort to bring back morale,” says Secord. “It’s not a matter of, ‘Here’s a couple of ideas that will fit.’ You need to think of the context of that organization. ‘What do I need to do to re-engage people?’ ”
The tools managers might explore could range from setting more joint forums, to engaging employees in problem-solving teams, to changing the way they manage.
“Most organizations don’t do anything, and that’s exactly the time you need to start re-building that relationship,” he adds.
