Convenience

Chapter 8:
Managing Human Resources in Organizations
2 4 5
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function in a diverse and multicultural workplace.
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Some organizations even go so far as
to provide language training for their employees as a vehicle for managing diversity
and multiculturalism. Motorola, for example, provides English-language training for
its foreign employees on assignment in the United States. At Pace Foods in San Anto-
nio, with a total payroll of over 450 employees, staff meetings and employee handbooks
are translated into Spanish for the benefit of the company’s 200 or so Latino
employees.
MANAGING LABOR RELATIONS
Labor relations
is the process of dealing with employees who are represented by
a union.
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At one time, almost one-third of the entire U.S. labor force belonged to
a labor union. Unions enjoyed their largest membership between 1940 and 1955.
Membership began to steadily decline in the mid-1950s, though, for several reasons:
(1) increased standards of living made union membership seem less important,
(2) traditionally unionized industries in the manufacturing sector began to decline,
and (3) the globalization of business operations caused many unionized jobs to be
lost to foreign workers. This downward trend continued until 2008, when
union membership rose by the largest amount in over a quarter century, a gain of
428,000 members.
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However, union membership again declined the following two
years, dropping to 11.9 percent in 2010. Much of this fluctuation was attributable
to fears of job insecurity due to the recession that hit in 2008; but as the economy
bottomed out and started to rebound, membership again declined. Managing labor
relations is an important part of HRM. However, most large firms have separate
labor relations specialists to handle these activities apart from other human resource
functions.