Answer
Case study analysis
Employee Engagement in Protected Concerted Activities
Labor relations is quite a sensitive issue in the human resources industry today. Employees express their dissatisfaction in some ways which among them is the formation of unions. While in unions employees are protected by several bodies which fight for the rights of employees. Other employees form groups within themselves to express their issues. One of the most common ways to create groups is using social media whereby one of the employees could post, and the others react to that (James and Marian, 304). Their reaction on social media will be a clear indication of what they want.
In this case, Moore is an employee at ACE and so is Cole. Moore complains a lot to Cole about how other employees are doing their work. She thinks they are substandard. She writes a message to Cole claiming that she will report the matter to the executive director. After Moore posting a message on her Facebook wall about how Moore thinks she and other employees don’t help their clients well, Moore says that those are lies. Four employees objected to Moore assertation. All the four employees plus employees are in a protected concerted activity. The fact that they take this action without fear of employer retaliation shows that the activity is a protected concerted one. In a nutshell, all the employees contributing to the social media post decided to bargain for their rights (Holley, 298) collectively. They are claimed to be underperforming whereas they see it otherwise.
If Moore were terminated as an employee, a protected concerted activity would not be involved. This is because there is proof of her accusing her employees of not serving the clients right but instead, she says that those lies. She had texted Cole about how she would discuss the matter with the executive director. She, however, claims that this is not true when Cole posts on Facebook. She accuses her fellow workmates of harassment and bullying. In her case, Moore would not be protected by the National Labor Relations Act (Herod, 76).
It doesn’t matter much that a union was not used. If Cole and her colleagues were in a union, they would have had more rights protecting them as the employees of ACE therefore there wouldn’t be threatened by Moore’s message. Since they all replied and posted while they were not on duty, they are protected by the protected concerted activity. Their actions towards collective bargain are regarded legal, and therefore they should be judged as a group seeking justice (Dorothy, 76).
In this kind of situation, NLRA would rule that Cole’s and here colleagues are protected by the concerted activity (Andrew, 110). Theirs’s is an attempt to bargain through the social media about the accused problem collectively. According to the national labor relations board, protects against retaliation of employee conversations about their places of work through social media such as Facebook and Twitter (Rabban, 98). Cole used Facebook while she was not working and all the four colleagues posted their reaction while they were not working too. This gives them more rights to be protected by NLRA.
In conclusion, protected concerted activities are protected against employer’s retaliation. Social media posting while off duty is an example of a concerted activity when backed up by other employees. NLRA protects the employees from retaliation based on conversations about their workplaces.
The Funeral Leave Proposal Policy
The union requests to bargain the terms of a funeral leave in the organization. The following proposal contains the significant changes that the union anticipates that the company would formulate and put into consideration when granting a funeral leave to employees. The employees are dissatisfied with the previous informal policies hence the request of the creation of formal leave policy. Within the past 12 months, 20 funeral leave policies have been applied, and only 16 of them were granted with 2.8 days leave. The denied leaves consisted of there part-time workers and one full time. There were no reasons given for the three part-time employees leave denials. This necessitates that the proposal of the formal leave policy. The following are some of the proposal elements towards the formation of an official leave policy.
The leave application period to be at least 2 to 8 days depending on the person's relationship to the deceased. Funeral leaves will only be granted for loss of an immediate family member, that is, a member of the nuclear family, life partners, personal friends, and other closely related relatives. Immediate family members are employee's parents, spouse, sons, daughter, stepchildren, parents-in-law, grandparents, bother in laws, sister in law, grandchild, daughter in law and son in law. For the immediate family member, eight days will be granted. For the loss of another relative two days of leave will be awarded. According to Knights, David, and Hugh (24), The difference in the leave days is because of the mourning period of an immediate family member could take much longer than that of any other family member.
For the leave period, full-time employees will be paid while the part-time employees will not be paid. The full-time employees will be paid according to their regular rates of payment. The part-time employees will not receive benefits for their funeral leave period, that is they will not be paid.
If paid leave is granted for a specified period, the employee could extend the leave period by other paid-leave times, for example, vacation days, holidays or sick-leave days.
To obtain a funeral leave, it is not a must for employees to attend the funeral. As long as the leave application is valid, the company should not bother finding out whether the person granted the leave will attend the funeral or not (Howard, 50).
However, the employee must offer proof that the loss happened. The type of evidence to be given is a confirmation of death through which the employer will be sure that the employee is applying for the leave and not just an excuse to have off days.
Employees must fill the official funeral leave policy which will be available at the department. The form will be submitted to the human resources office to grant permission of leave. All the necessary details must be filled out. Some of the features include the relationship of the employee to the deceased, the date of the funeral and the proof that the death has occurred.
The employee must request the leave at least five days before the day of the funeral. This will necessitate the organization to make adjustments for the days the employee will be on vacation. The human resource department will also have time to analyze the validity of the leave and grant or deny it accordingly.
The human resources department on behalf of the employer can grant or envy the leave. The leave application process started off from the employee's department and submitted to the human resources. The hr. manager has the authority to deny or grant the leave on behalf of the employer.
Works cited
Andrew B. Dawson, “Collective Bargaining Agreements in Corporate Reorganizations,” American Bankruptcy Law Journal, 84(1), 2010, pp. 103–121
Dorothy Sue Cobble, “Union Strategies for Organizing and Representing the New Service Workforce,” Proceedings of the 43rd Annual Meeting of the Industrial Relations Research Association (Madison, WI: IRRA, 1991), p. 76.
James A. Craft and Marian M. Extejt, “New Strategies in Union Organizing,” Working Paper Series (Pittsburgh, PA: University of Pittsburgh, 1982), p. 304.
Howard Raiffa, The Art & Science of negotiation (Cambridge, Mass: Belknap Press/Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 44–51.
Herod, Andrew. "The production of scale in United States labor relations." Area (1991): 82-88.
Rabban, David M. "Is unionization compatible with professionalism?." ILR Review 45.1 (1991): 97-112..
Knights, David, and Hugh Willmott, eds. Labor process theory. Springer, 2016.
Holley, William H. The Labor Relations Process. 11th ed., Cengage Learning,
