The Hidden Career Killer for HR Pros - The EFCA...
June 18, 2008
My new column up at Workforce is different. Read it here...
Instead of wondering if the PHR/SPHR is worth your time or why your employees post their résumés in broad daylight, this time I’m wondering if you’ll have a job in 2010.
Did that get your attention? Because in the new column at Workforce, I’m focusing on a stealth piece of legislation
that would cripple the competitiveness of American business, limit the rights of employees and eliminate the need for independent-thinking HR pros, all in one easy-to-sign law.
I’m talking about the Employee Free Choice Act .
The worst thing about the Employee Free Choice Act isn’t its effect on us as HR professionals. It's how stunningly anti-employee the act is. Ability for employees to keep their feelings about unionization private? Gone. Ability for employees to listen and carefully contemplate both sides of an argument regarding representation? Gone.
Ability for an employee to vote in an election via the democratic process we all take for granted? Priceless ... but gone if the Employee Free Choice Act is passed and signed into law.
Read the whole article at Workforce. Educate your teams about what's at stake. Hard to believe SHRM, who's pretty good at governmental affairs, hasn't organized marches on Capitol Hill over the EFCA.
Kris,
I'm with VP/HR types all the time and have never heard this mentioned. It is chilling for a lot of reasons.
Am going to give it a bump at the blog.
Posted by: Steve Roesler | June 18, 2008 at 06:53 AM
I have covered this many times in my blog and I tell students and clients. Response? "YAWN"
Just like everything else we will bitch about it when it is passed but won't do a thing about it before then.
Pisses me off! This is a labor initiative being driven by Democrat politicians who have never run a business. They have no idea of the impact other than they will get Labor votes and money.
Posted by: Michael Haberman, SPHR | June 18, 2008 at 11:18 AM
Kris,
As you know, I have a slightly different take on this. While agreeing with many of your points, I don't view thhis moment in time as the death of the HR field. This could actually be the greatest challenge the field has experienced and our finest hour. This is no ADA or FMLA "thing that goes bump in the night" This is the most radical redoing of rules we have ever seen.
Employee relations in a post-EFCA environment will require HR professionals who are acutely aware of how to do the very things Kris fears will be lost. Strategic work and people skills like conflict resolution, team building, leadership and negotiation will come to the forefront. The challenge we will face will be to maintain the status quo or even improve the landscape of our work places, in the face of radically different new rules.
In order to meet the threat of a simplified unionization process head on, HR professionals will be challenged to work with management on a daily basis to create stronger cultures, better practices, and betterhuman capital strategies. These strategies must be designed to continue that which most companies do today: create a work environment in which employees will recognize that there is no benefit in engaging a third party advocate because they are satisfied with their present employment conditions.
Great companies have done this for years. Great companies are doing this today.
We are facing a brave new world where the strategic Human Resources professional has a great opportunity to help their company manage the change successfully and lead the way in developing the strategies needed to be be successful in the future.
If EFCA passes, HR will not become endangered, we will just do what all good professions and companies do, adapt to the new environment and move forward successfully.
Posted by: Michael VanDervort | June 24, 2008 at 04:55 AM
Michael -
You raise a good point. It could be HR's finest hour. My article was written more from a "WAKE UP" standpoint since so few of our peers know that this is about to rock their world.
So your point is a good one and very valid. You know what the proposed change is and care. That means you have a chance of being one of the valued ones after this change. I'm going to be full of myself and say I've got a chance to be in the group as well.
Here's the counter to your valid point. If the majority of our profession doesn't know, and if half who don't know don't care when you tell them about it, what chance do they have of proactively stopping a drive in the post EFCA world?
Not much, I suspect. That's sad....
Posted by: KD | June 24, 2008 at 10:06 PM