Job Performace Case Study - Essay Example

Job performance Q As argued by the company management at the hearing, lack of skills is not responsible for the poor performance of the oven testers. Poor performance of the testers is not as result of ‘competency deficiencies’. It largely related to behavioural problems of the testers. Behaviour of the testers, or of employees, is influenced by different factors. One factor is labour politics. This case highlights tendencies of the inherent antagonistic relationship between labour unions and managements.

The labour union reluctantly accepted the management’s proposal of placing oven testing under the bargaining unit. Yet, the labour objected taking the same job classification out of the bargaining unit. This indicates the inherent suspicion that characterizes labour union-management relations and is partly responsible for the fall in job performance of the job testers. The labour union clearly showed this at the hearing. It blamed the management for not only disciplining the defaulting employees but also offering the same job classification to the same defaulting employees when the job classification was removed from the bargaining unit.

This suggest the unions ‘I don’t care’ attitude because the testers handled only a job classification in the production process. Their poor performance would not have been undetected by other salaried employees. But the feeling that the management should be responsible for its ‘experimental’ decision might have informed the ‘I don’t care’ attitude. The testers were not considered part of the labours or other employees’ purview. In addition, one of the differences between salaried job under the non-bargaining unit and hourly job under the bargaining unit is the lack of supervision of non-salaried employees.

The company management expressed its inability to discipline the testers despite having knowledge of testers’ poor performance. It means that ‘casualized’ employment focuses on cost minimization measured in terms of output of employees at the expense of employees’ conduct. Q.2.Negotiating the issue of the failure of experimental program would have been the normal (or moral) thing to do. The management informed the union in the first place, when it intended to experiment the program. This gave rise to the side bar agreement.

Under this agreement, the movement of the tester job classification to the bargaining unit was based on the condition of program success (quality of product). Given this and the subsequent failure of experimental program, the management ought to have included this issue in the new collective bargaining agreement (CBA) entered with the union when the sidebar agreement was effective. This would have given credence to the management for honouring an agreement it voluntarily entered and vitiated the same agreement with the signing of the new SBA.

It would further dowse the suspicion of the labour union with regards to the contentious issue. This is was even more necessary given the fact that the management was aware of the failure of the experimented arrangement before the new CBA was negotiated. Q.3.The company’s attempt to remove the job classification from the union is not justifiable. It was informed by no cogent reason or fears. There was apparently no sign of failure of the existing arrangement. The removal of the tester position was therefore not necessary.

The experimented arrangement might have worked in other companies or settings and the company thought it may work in the prevailing situation, but the company would have experimented it without necessarily removing it from the union. The company would have created and used an ‘experimental tester position’ operating side by side other salaried employees handling the same job classification to test the effectiveness of the program. The union would have taken it as it is, an experiment, without creating or aggravating employees’ suspicion.

The company would have as well have basis for informed comparative analysis.