PHOENIX, Arizona—As the presidential election looms near, U.S. industry experts tackled various aspects of the card-check neutrality issue during a concurrent think tank at The Lodging Conference 2008.
Moderator David Sherwyn, associate professor of law and academic director for The Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, began by explaining the issue for attendees.
He said under the current agreement, a certain percentage of employees have to sign authorization cards in favor of unionization, at which point management and the union would have a month to campaign for or against the issue. At the end of that month period, a vote would be held, and the union would need 50 percent plus one vote to unionize.
Management, which has gained experience dealing with this issue over time, has won more than half such campaigns.
“Under neutrality agreements,” Sherwyn continued, “what happens is once the employees sign (authorization) cards, the union is in. Winning is going to be difficult, and you’re gong to have to change your plans because you don’t get that month (to campaign).”
Sherwyn said that if Barack Obama gets elected president and Congress passes the measure, there is a 100-percent chance that the proposed chard-check neutrality legislation will be enacted. If John McCain gets elected, he said the odds are around 50/50.
Prepare for the inevitable
Given this statistical likelihood that the issue will be passed, Sherwyn asked Andie Hayman, regional senior director of human resources at Marriott International, what steps hotel HR directors can take now to prepare.
“When we’re talking with ownership groups or development groups, one of the things that’s important for us to talk about is the whole issue of engagement with our associates,” Hayman said.
“Talking about what you do is very important because unions will come in and talk about what you don’t do,” said Sherwyn.
First, Hayman suggested publicizing your efforts to improve offerings for employees.
At Marriott, for example, they publicized efforts to renovate associate common areas, educated employees on successful investment strategies, and offered language skills classes for personal development. All of these efforts coincided with an easy-to-navigate Web site that allows employees to clearly understand every HR service that is offered.
Hayman also said it’s important to publicize instances when employees are promoted to higher management positions from within.
“That’s something unions can’t do,” added Sherwyn. “If you care about promotions into management, unions are not part of that at all. If you have your employees thinking about management, then their loyalty will be to you (as opposed to) the union.”
Hayman’s second piece of advice was to make efforts to improve the quality of the work environment. Part of that regards pay. If your wages compare favorable against your competitors, publicize it.
Another aspect deals with management training.
“We had managers attend positive-relationship-with-associates classes,” she said, adding that half of the class is dedicated to teaching managers how to deal with talk of unionization. “You’ve got to know how to address it. If you go to training on that year after year, you get better and better at it and more comfortable.”
Third, Hayman said to stress and publicize leadership excellence within your organization.
“We are nothing if our supervisors and managers aren’t doing a good job as supervisors and managers.”
Added Sherwyn: “‘It comes down to whether they like their general manager. If they do, they’ll vote no (to unionization). If they don’t, they’ll vote yes. Leadership is so important.”
Learn to get along
No matter how proactive you are, there may be times when unionization is inevitable.
The key during such scenarios, said Jerome F. Cataldo, executive VP of development for Hostmark Hospitality Group, is to establish a good working relationship with union representation.
“The key to that is understanding the union leadership and having a good relationship with the business agent,” he said.
Said Sherwyn: “When you’ve got this adversary relationship, the natural outgrowth of it is that the employees think they work for the union and not for you. When you hear that, you’ve lost.”
The best way to maintain a good relationship is to keep the channels of communication open. Sherwyn suggested calling a union representative every time a disciplinary problem comes up. Additionally, ask the union representative to call you every time they hear of a problem on their side.
“Even when it’s going to be contentious, it doesn’t have to be contentious between the two leaders,” he said. “At the end of the day, everyone wants the problem resolved.”
Think long-term when hiring
Given that termination can be an arduous process when unions are involved, Sherwyn asked how to make sure you hire the right people from the onset.
The answer lies in integrity testing and behavioral psychological assessments, according to Peter D. Bullard, founder and director of American Tescor, a company that specializes in pre-employment testing.
“If you’re going to have people work for you for a long time, you want to have the right people,” he said.
By asking certain questions in a survey—such as a potential employee’s likelihood to steal or use drugs—hoteliers can weed out at-risk applicants during the hiring process.
While many hoteliers might be skeptical that applicants would reveal such sensitive information in a survey, Bullard said they almost certainly do.
“When someone uses drugs or steals for the first time, they know a couple of things,” he said. “They know it’s wrong, and they know they can be caught. That’s anxiety provoking (because they want to do it, but they know there’s consequences).”
To cope with such anxiety, Bullard said such individuals change their behavior or values. Thus, when an hotelier asks whether or not an applicant has taken drugs in the past six months, that applicant will answer yes because he thinks taking drugs is acceptable or because he thinks that if he doesn’t answer yes, the hotelier will assume he’s lying.
Reasoning notwithstanding, a number of attendees at the think tank confirmed that pre-employment screening has reduced theft, abuse of worker’s compensation, and any termination-related problems.