Case Study:
The Union Drive at Apollo Corporation: ULPs and Organizing Tactics
Introduction:
A union is the workers joining together to pursue policies and goals beneficial to one and all. A union is you and your fellow employees, acting in concert to better your everyday working conditions. A union allows employees a say in the changing workplace conditions and ways of solving workplace problems. With a union contract or a grievance procedure to back them up, employees don’t have to suffer in silence or feel that their only option to unacceptable conditions is to quit their jobs. (IUOP, 2008)
Bob Thomas was fired from Apollo Corporation after nineteen years as a maintenance engineer. Before his firing Bob called a union organizer and asked that a union drive began at Apollo. He was told by Apollo that he was being let go for poor work and poor attendance.
Case Summary:
Jean Lipski, HR director held a series of meetings with managers in which she instructed them to tighten up their supervisory relationships with the employees. They were told to enforce the HR policies strictly and to begin disciplinary actions against employees not conform the company policy. Within the past years, the policies haven’t really been enforced. Bob Thomas a plant maintenance engineer who had nineteen years of service was fired do to what the company said was bad work and attendance. In the weeks before his firing he tried getting a union started.
Jean Lipski had little experience with unions in general and little experience with union organizing. Unfortunately, with the firing of Bob Thomas, the Brotherhood of Machines Engineers Union and the employees pushed even h ...