IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v37y1984i4p541-556.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Legality of Employee-Participation Programs in Unionized Firms

Author

Listed:
  • Donna Sockell

Abstract

This paper focuses on the legal status of employee-participation programs, such as quality circles, that coexist with but are not controlled by unions — a situation occurring in U.S. industry with considerable frequency despite the objections of some union leaders. Although no cases have yet been heard on this precise question, the author relies upon an analysis of leading cases interpreting the scope of the exclusivity doctrine and the definition of labor organization, as well as the legislative histories of the National Labor Relations Act and the Labor Management Relations Act, to interpret the legal status of these programs. She concludes that if a union filed a 8(a)(5) charge against a unionized firm that is dealing with its employees in a nonunion forum, this charge would probably be upheld; moreover, as a remedy, the participation structure would probably be dissolved. She then suggests changes in public policy to protect participation programs that do not threaten the bargaining agent.

Suggested Citation

  • Donna Sockell, 1984. "The Legality of Employee-Participation Programs in Unionized Firms," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 37(4), pages 541-556, July.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:37:y:1984:i:4:p:541-556
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://ilr.sagepub.com/content/37/4/541.abstract
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Strauss, George & Hammer, Tove, 1987. "Worker's Participation in the United States," Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, Working Paper Series qt833256p7, Institute of Industrial Relations, UC Berkeley.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:37:y:1984:i:4:p:541-556. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.