Lorance v at&t technologies

Seniority

Discharge & Discipline

Health & Safety

Production Standards/Staffing

Administrative issues are the noneconomic parts of the contract, although they definitely affect the bottom line.

1

seniority

Provides rewards/preferences

Objective

Defensible

Helps retention

Limiting for management

Greater length of service gives greater rewards, or preferences in various areas such as promotion, job security, overtime, vacation, work conditions, layoffs, recall, shift preference.

Seniority is objective so easier to administer than merit or performance.

Seniority is easy to defend – to defend merit you must have a good system of performance evaluation and trained, capable managers to administer. Merit is easy for the union to challenge, seniority is not.

Benefits associated with seniority can act as a retention tool. Pension, vacation, sick leave, severance pay, etc. can keep employees.

Seniority can limit managements ability to promote the best worker.

2

Seniority

Employer wide v. Departmental

Bumping

Super Seniority

“Special Employees”

Temporary Layoffs

Employer-wide seniority – counts total service with company.

Departmental seniority – discourages transfers between departments, discourages cross-training. What happens if a department is eliminated?

Bumping – an employee scheduled for layoff can “bump” a less senior employee from his/her job. This often causes a chain reaction that can disrupt several departments. Usually there is a limit to the number of subsequent “bumps”.

Super seniority – union officers that are required to administer the grievance process (usually President, VP and Stewards) are the last to be laid off regardless of seniority. They lose this status when they leave office.

Special Employees – some contracts allow for designation of employees that are indispensable because they are exceptional or have special skills. They can be passed over for layoffs regardless of seniority.

A “temporary” layoff (amount of time that differentiates “temp” from “permanent” will be specified in the contract. Usually this only affects one department – often when no work or shortage of materials in part of a plant. In a temp layoff it is not required to use seniority.

3

Legislation

Seniority v. Affirmative Action

Reverse Discrimination Issues

The Supreme Court has consistently rules that under Title VII of the CRA is it ok to use “bona fide” seniority systems for layoffs, even if this causes those in protected classes to lose their jobs disproportionately.

Employers often try to “protect” certain individuals to compensate for past discrimination.

This often brings about charges of reverse discrimination. The Court has generally ruled that it is ok to give preference to minorities in hiring and promoting for “traditionally segregated” job categories - even if employer had not previously discriminated. Prior to this it was only ok if employer had history of discrimination.