Supervisory Alienation

Lt Donohue

How do you deal with a situation in which a unionized supervisor has alienated his unionized subordinates to the point where no one (including other supervisors) wants to work with or for him and you cannot transfer any of them? Demotion is not possible due to Civil Service protections. "In House" counseling has not been effective.

Shadowfax

Welcome to the forum. If there were an emoticon with a salute, I'd salute, Sir! Sounds like a performance issue. Certainly this supervisor has a supervisor. How about some leadership training? Is he a knowleagble super who just ticks everyone else off because of his style? Attitude? Some things can be learned and fixed. Some can't (ie. he's simply a jerk). Figure out what it is about this guy that needs helping, and try to reshape him. If he can't be helped - then he is not an effective super and should be disciplined. Sounds more like 'uncivil service'.

Hunter1

Civil service or not, you have to deal with him. If there's no other way, perhaps your department is large enough to find him some 'meaningful' work where he won't deal with anyone else. Put him on a warrant detail or court duty, something where he doesn't supervise. You know, however, that this guy needs to be dealt with, and the sooner the better. Even employees with civil service protection have to perform.

LarryC

Are all these people in the same union? If so, I would get the union steward involved. Sometimes these stewards get by way too easily. Make him/her earn his/her keep and shoulder some responsibility for the situation here. Hopefully you have a decent working relationship with the steward. If you have a disciplinary process that leads to termination, start it. If this supervisor sees that he is "in the process" and it is in concert with the actions of his steward, he just might pay attention.

If your steward is an "old school" union jerk, then just forget everything I said.

Crout

I don't agree that demotion is impossible. What is impossible is simply lopping the guy's head off without going through a lengthy, tedious process that demands a lot of supervisory time, patience and of course documentation. I'm sure you have a process in your department. What you need to do is utilize it fully and give it time.

Don D

Based on your circumstances, I don't know the answer to your question. But, I thank you for posting it. It gives us one more opportunity to tell all of the non-unionized HR professionals out there that they must do all in their power to keep from being organized.

Not becoming organized has nothing to do with luck, or location or prayer. It's all about ISSUES. RTI is a system we employ. It stands simply for 'Remove The Issues'. It's as simple as recognizing issues that disatisfy workers and tend to lend themselves to organizing attempts and dealing with them in a positive and productive way. Recognize the issue, figure out a plan and put it in motion to remove the issue. Do not ignore an issue. Either WE remove the issues or eventually union organizers will get a toe-hold and bring you a present that will remove the issues and you will not like the result. The result will be like that reflected in the question above.

Union membership for years has been on the decline; but, organizers are active in every community, including yours, even when you do not know it. Either you have a union and you're stuck with it, or you don't have one and someone wants you to.

AnneHa

Hear, Hear!

This is our philosophy too. But we never had an acronym for it before. RTI - that's the ticket.

Anne in Ohio

Balloonman1

I have always felt that by practicing sound business practices, being consistent, and treating people right you will keep out the unions. Most unionized places I have worked for had lots of favoritism in the past, that resulted in good employees getting unhappy, and eventually voting in a union.
My $0.02 worth
The Balloonman

Don D

Anne: As simple as RTI sounds, we had full one-day seminars for our managers and supervisors on how to counter organizing campaigns and how to recognize and remove 'issues'. Each participant now carries a 3X5 notecard headed up RTI with bullets and reminders. It's sort of a daily cheat sheet we all carry. The seminar leader has carried his old beaten up card for 35 years he said and still has it. We have monthly meetings where each manager has to give a 3 minute presentation on an issue he discovered, what lead to the issue if known, how he dealt with it, and what the result of having dealt with it is expected to be. Remove The Issues is real. It amounts to a definitive proactive plan that works much better than saying you're going to be consistent and treat people right. It's a way to check yourself and your facility constantly.

AnneHa

You're very right - I didn't mean to sound flip. We continually discuss issues at our weekly supervisors meeting and have successfully avoided an organizing attempt previously. I hadn't thought of formalizing it into my training sessions, but I think it would be a valuable addition to supervisor training.


Anne in Ohio

Gillian3

Unfortunately, civil service protections do make it more difficult to deal with issues, however, to do nothing because of the difficulty is a copout. In this setting, one must understand the appeal process and document to the detail necessary to get through the process. If informal counseling hasn't worked, the process is the only thing that is left.

Responding to the other posts about union avoidance, a formal program which encourages fairness and objectivity is excellent. Many organizations say they do that, but most don't. For them the old saying applies - a company which deserves a union, gets the union it deserves.

Don D

G3: You're talking in platitudes again. In the past decades I have attended, sat through, endured countless seminars partly addressing fairness and consistency, etc. None of that worked nearly as well as the ones I attended last year on actually opening my eyes, identifying issues, adopting them as challenges, taking action and removing the issues. You can be the fairest and most consistent employer on the block and be totally blind to 15 'issues' affecting your workforce that you see every day, yet never see. This is perhaps a newly reinvented way of looking at the 'opportunities' management has. The note card I mentioned, as simplistic as it sounds, is a great tool.

Anne, I didn't think you were flip. I took your remark as a compliment and followed up on it. Thanks.

Gillian3

No, I'm not. It's just semantics. We are saying the same thing.

Miriam George

DonD -
Who did your one-day seminar on RTI? Can I have contact information?

We are in Oklahoma, but certainly need something like this. We are non-union, but have had "union-organizing" rumblings over the past few months due to some changes that were not received well by our employees.