Assume that you are a management negotiator and the union presents the following
ID: 386006 • Letter: A
Question
Assume that you are a management negotiator and the union presents the following proposal: “Any overtime assignment will be guaranteed a minimum of two hours at time-and-a-half the base hourly rate for the classification.” Previously, employees working overtime received time and one-half pay for the hours they worked but no two-hour guarantee. Indicate in some detail how you would cost out this proposal. Also, discuss some arguments the union might use to make it easier for management to accept this proposal (i.e., to reduce management’s agreement costs).
Explanation / Answer
The new proposal will mean that everytime a worker is engaged for any length of time, he /she will be entitled to a minimum of three hours' wages. In this scenario, the work structure has to be designed in such a way that most of the tasks are of length of two hours and more. For this, the effects like training to the workers to multitask, reorganisation of work, change of work assignment will ensure that more tasks are of length 2 hours and more and more workers are capable to do multiple tasks so that when a worker is engaged for overtime, he /she is engaged for at least two hours. The manufacturing resource planning and other work planning needs to address this point.
The union may argue that
(a) Engagement of a worker on a non working day needs him / her to commute to the workplace and the wages of less than three hours is not good enough to justify the commute cost.
(b) The effective time elapsed by the worker is far more than two hours when it happens on a non working day, when it includes the total time from home to work and back.
(c) Sometimes, the worker has to postpone other engagements,even when the overtime is one hour or half and hour, after the work hours or on a non working day.
(d) It is a monetary loss of higher volume for the workers who engage in other business on weekends / after work.