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Collective Bargaining and Technological Investment: The Case of Nurses’ Unions and the Transition from Paper-Based to Electronic Health Records
Get PDFDoes the presence of a unionized nursing workforce retard U.S. hospitals’ transition from paper-based to electronic health records (EHRs)? After tying archival data on hospitals’ structural features and health information technology (IT) investment patterns to self-gathered data on unionism, I find that hospitals that bargain collectively with their registered nurses (RNs) appear to delay or forego the transition away from paper, consistent with existing theory and research in industrial relations and institutional economics. However, this relationship is fully mediated by a hospital’s payer mix: those serving a larger share of less lucrative, elderly, disabled, and indigent patients are more likely to adopt EHRs if they are unionized than if they are not, a result that holds even at the median payer mix. Indeed, this accords with research on the interplay of labour and technology as the aforementioned dynamics are driven entirely by RN-exclusive bargaining units for whom the new IT serves as a complement rather than as a substitute in production. Given the outsized role that unions play in the U.S. healthcare sector, the overall sluggish performance of the sector, and the expectations that policymakers have for EHRs, evidence that these unions are welfare-enhancing should be welcome news
Integrating Conflict: A Proposed Framework for the Interdisciplinary Study of Workplace Conflict and its Management
Get PDF[Excerpt] Conflict and its management are perennial dimensions of organizational life--ever present with significant consequences for a host of employer and employee related outcomes. All organizations, regardless of industry, union status, workforce characteristics, managerial strategy, organizational culture, or performance levels are confronted with the need to address, deal with or manage the myriad manifestations of workplace conflict. As such, all organizations manage conflict in one way or another, whether they adopt a proactive stance or whether they are avoidant and reactive.
Recognized as a central workplace feature, scholars from a variety of different disciplines, including, but not limited to, industrial relations, organizational behavior, and law, have devoted a great deal of conceptual and empirical attention to the study of conflict and conflict management. Much of this, scholarship, however, has been conducted in isolation with limited cross-disciplinary engagement. The central argument set forth in this paper is that conflict scholarship has paid a hefty price for the disciplinary silos that have emerged across these domains. Each of these disciplines has provided a wealth of conflict related findings and insights that have advanced existing knowledge. At the same time, these insights have, for the most part, been incomplete due to the absence of integration across longstanding, well defined, and mostly impenetrable disciplinary boundaries. As a result, the scholarly and practical utility of the body of knowledge that has been amassed across these different disciplines has been, at times, limited
Do it Right or Not at All: A Longitudinal Evaluation of a Conflict Managment System Implementation
Get PDFWe analyzed an eight-year multi-source longitudinal data set that followed a healthcare system in the Eastern United States as it implemented a major conflict management initiative to encourage line managers to consistently perform Personal Management Interviews (or PMIs) with their employees. PMIs are interviews held between two individuals, designed to prevent or quickly resolve interpersonal problems before they escalate to formal grievances. This initiative provided us a unique opportunity to empirically test key predictions of Integrated Conflict Management System (or ICMS) theory. Analyzing survey and personnel file data from 5,449 individuals from 2003 to 2010, we found that employees whose managers provided high-quality interviews perceived significantly higher participative work climates and had lower turnover rates. However, retention was worse when managers provided poor-quality interviews than when they conducted no interviews at all. Together these findings highlight the critical role that line mangers play in the success of conflict management systems
Wawarsing, Town of and Town of Wawarsing Highway Department and Transfer Station Department Employees Unit, International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers (IBEW), AFL-CIO, Local 363 (2017)
Get PDFNiagara Frontier Transportation Authority and Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority Unit, CSEA Local 1000, AFSCME, AFL-CIO, Local 815 (2017)
Get PDFOceanside Union Free School District and Oceanside Union Free School Permanent Substitutes Chapter Unit, New York State United Teachers (NYSUT), American Federation of Teachers (AFT), AFL-CIO, Oceanside Federation of Teachers, Local 1631 (2017)
Get PDFRetirement Benefits for Members of Congress
Get PDFPrior to 1984, neither federal civil service employees nor Members of Congress paid Social Security taxes, nor were they eligible for Social Security benefits. Members of Congress and other federal employees were instead covered by a separate pension plan called the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS). The 1983 amendments to the Social Security Act (P.L. 98-21) required federal employees first hired after 1983 to participate in Social Security. These amendments also required all Members of Congress to participate in Social Security as of January 1, 1984, regardless of when they first entered Congress. Because CSRS was not designed to coordinate with Social Security, Congress directed the development of a new retirement plan for federal workers. The result was the Federal Employees’ Retirement System Act of 1986 (P.L. 99-335).
Members of Congress first elected in 1984 or later are covered automatically under the Federal Employees’ Retirement System (FERS). All Senators and those Representatives serving as Members prior to September 30, 2003, may decline this coverage. Representatives entering office on or after September 30, 2003, cannot elect to be excluded from such coverage. Members who were already in Congress when Social Security coverage went into effect could either remain in CSRS or change their coverage to FERS. Members are now covered under one of four different retirement arrangements: CSRS and Social Security; The “CSRS Offset” plan, which includes both CSRS and Social Security, but with CSRS contributions and benefits reduced by Social Security contributions and benefits; FERS; or Social Security alone
What Organizational Changes Have Companies Experienced upon Eliminating Ratings within their Performance Management System?
Get PDF[Excerpt] Over the past decade, organizations have begun to move away from traditional performance management processes (annual reviews, assigned performance ratings, a link to compensation) to remove “performance ratings” based on the perception that traditional PM is not working. As of 2015, more than 55 companies have removed performance ratings. Among those are some high-profile companies such as GE, Microsoft, Accenture, etc. (see Appendix A). According to a study of 244 companies in 2016, almost all companies in the study use ongoing feedback, 52% of companies have adopted ratingless reviews, and 34% of companies use ratingless reviews and ongoing feedback. 80% of participating organizations say that managers make decisions how to allocate rewards without ratings while staying within budget constraints.
The perceived impact of these new performance practices is high: 90% of companies that have redesigned performance management see direct improvements in engagement, 96% say processes are more simple, and 83% say they see the quality of conversations between employees and managers increasing. It is noteworthy that the positive impact may not all be attributed to the removal of performance ratings