Collective Bargaining for Improved Working Conditions in Healthcare - Essay Sample

Introduction

Legal terms and collaborative negotiation are essential strategies aimed at improving the working conditions in a healthcare organization because the employees form part of the major stakeholders in the organization. Collective bargaining brings together people from both sides; employers and workers. They negotiate in pursuit of an agreement leading to a mutual benefit between them. The strategies set by these people, therefore, aims at setting standards that satisfy the interests of both parties, without either party feeling left out or disadvantaged by the set standards.

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Use of Collaborative Bargaining to Develop Organizational Policies

Collaborative bargaining may be a tool for effectively setting up policies that concern health organizations. The improvement of conditions of work in a health organization set up through procedures, therefore, helps in preventing the workers from getting subjected to unacceptable work conditions. Legal mandates include coming up with laws that ensure labor worker's protection and the identification of worker's rights and responsibilities. Therefore, the organizations that represent these workers consider the worker's dignity, freedom, health, and security during the negotiation process. They then come up with the most effective schedules, wage plans and tasks assigned to these employees in consideration of the inter-organization bond between the health organization and its environment.

Obstacles Inherent in the Collective Bargaining Process

The bargaining process requires the proper representation of the workers in the bargaining table and may get faced by several challenges. Negotiation may thus get limited due to a generalized audience of workers, and hence, some working conditions that are specific to a marginalized group of workers may fail to get addressed. This limitation is due to the uniqueness of worker issues to the particular employer associated with it. Therefore, this issue shows that despite the negotiations taking place, they may fail to be effective in fulfilling their purpose of addressing the worker's issues

Another challenge that faces the bargaining process when coming up with policies and practices is the conflict that exists in the employee panel. During the negotiation, employers of households may fail to get considered as being employers because they lack consideration as being commercial actors. The employers usually have an informal style of settling issues such as domestic disputes and wages. Therefore, a lack of a unified convention of employers results in lack of proper coverage of the problems that face these employers that are supposed to get tabled for negotiation. Hence, this reveals a weakness on the side of the employers because they may lack the necessary support that an employer's union has.

National Labor Relations Act Provisions Use for Improvement in Working Conditions

The Act has various subsections that aim at protecting the activities conducted by employees of the health organization. The health organization should, therefore, adequately provide protective equipment and clothing to their workers. The protective gear thus helps in improving the working conditions of workers because the protective gear guards the workers against bodily harm. Research by (Hagedorn, 2016) reveals that other sections of the Act protect the wellbeing of the worker by specifying that an employee should not work under conditions that threaten their health and safety. For instance, in the hospital, in case a demolition is supposed to take place, then the crew should know how to handle matter under their direct influence. This procedure is to avoid damaging the workers' health or other people back home in case they accidentally come back with some of the dangerous material. Different sections of the Act provide safety to the injured workers by which some contracts allow workers who recently returned from injury leave get assigned with light duties. The protection safeguards the workplace conditions of workers in labor-intensive environments.

Civil Rights Act Provisions Related to Discrimination Based on Gender

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 got formulated in pursuit of solutions to civil rights movements that identified discrimination in various sectors. According to (Title Vii of the Civil Rights Act, 2015), the Act seeks to protect the interests of gender-related issues in a working environment. The Act specifies that employment decisions should not be discriminatory of gender. Therefore, without discrimination on employment on both wage allocation and actual job, gender balance can be realized, and hence, this fosters better work collaboration and success. The Act also protects workers from sexual harassment, and this, therefore, protects the gender that faces such issues. Therefore, this protects them from harm as they work, and thus, the working environment is secure and is likely to be successful.

Employee-Centered Plan of Action Relating to Discriminatory Practices

A plan of action that I recommend is senior management should come up with an accountability department. The discrimination can be based on factors such as gender disparities and therefore sexual harassment is avoided and better collaborations can be made in the working environment. The senior management should also create communication strategies, and hence, with a good communication, problems that arise in the organization can be effectively managed. Such a strategy used by management is the creation of a centralized entity that investigates and reviews the existing system and I feel that this is effective in handling employee issues that are expressed anonymously. Senior management should also create an advocate system that supports their employees through investigation of reported issues and resolution of the problems.

External Stakeholder Considerations

The external stakeholders of the health organization are also part of the action plan because the plan addresses issues that are also of concern and of direct influence from the action plan. The leadership recommendation is assessing the human risks and then considering them during the internal and external collaboration of processes. The leadership therefore takes keen consideration for the risks and makes appropriate decisions. The final stakeholders, community members I recommend support activities and projects that are in direct relationship to the action plan and hence the reformatting of the action plan to involve community members more.

Reflection on How to Reformat the Action Plan

A perception the reformatting of action plan as one that should be performed over a specified time frame that is agreed upon by personnel involved in setting up the action plan. Therefore, I believe the stakeholders such as the management and employees should remain vigilant over time and hence come up with suggestions that they should table. For instance, stakeholders such as union leaders require the employees' human rights to get respected and hence the action plan reformat has to consider the human rights of the employees.

I also see the action plan being successful because it considers the employees as an integral entity in the organization and hence the legal procedure of acquiring an advocate system addresses their issues effectively. Stakeholders such as regulatory boards therefore appreciate the requirement of a legal committee in overseeing the actions in the organization. This also takes care of their human rights and hence I also appreciate the fact that the action plan improves communication and hence a better bond can be created between the internal and external organization stakeholders.

Conclusion

Collective bargaining is an effective tool that is used for addressing the various factors that exist in a hospital that exist between the senior management and the employees of the organization. Therefore, the communication that exists between these entities helps in arriving at solutions that benefit the organization and one such solution is coming up with an action plan that addresses the internal and external stakeholder issues regarding the processes that take place in the hospital. Another solution is through compliance to the National Labor Relations Act and the Civil Rights act which help in improving safety of the workplace and hence foster harmony in the workplace.

References

Hagedorn, J., Paras, C. A., Greenwich, H., & Hagopian, A. (2016). The role of labor unions in creating working conditions that promote public health. American journal of public health, 106(6), 989-995.Available at https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2016.303138

Title Vii Of The Civil Rights Act(2015) - Civil: Laws.com. Retrieved from https://civil.laws.com/title-vii-of-the-civil-rights-act