The Conflict Tale of Air Canada - Essay Example

It required salary cuts, layoffs, and reduced pension plans. Flight attendants did not like the idea of the annual income of $18K and the replacement of a long-term pension plan with a fixed monthly amount. Union did not accept management ideas as they found workers on the receiving end and humiliated despite their sacrifices in 2004 for saving the company. Management and Union were not able to arrive at a settlement in 2011. New contract negotiations become intractable in such a situation in which the union had a conflicting interest and intent from management. Although union negotiators arrived at two deals, union members did not find it mutually beneficial as they felt deceived because of no concern for personal life and losses that occurred in the past (NewsLook, 2011). The Labor minister’s disapproval of the strike demoralized flight attendants, and they staged protests. Power abuse by the labor minister aggravated the contention that converted the possibility of constructive conflict into a relationship difference between the union and management.

Structural sources of conflict in this case are incompatible goals, resource scarcity, and tightly coupled tasks. Air Canada management has committed negotiation errors of distributive bargaining style to apply the approach of win-lose to resolve the current crisis. They should have applied a win-win method of accommodating past concerns of flight attendants in alignment with future goals of revenue generation. Union did not communicate effectively to raise the concerns of members. They have ignored management concerns and lost the confidence of both union members and management. If Union could have applied an integrative bargaining methodology to align the interests of flight attendants with the superordinate objective to solve problems constructively, the relationship between management and the union could have been better (CBC television, 2012). The involvement of third-party mediation could have avoided conflict from turning into a toxic relationship. Read More