Human resources plays a major role in the basic tenets of labor management relations, which have to do with employee rights, election activities, collective bargaining and settling disputes. Therefore, the most important things to know include how HR responds to employees' request for representation by a union, as well as what to do when represented employees complain about working conditions.

Employee vs. Labor Relations

HR practitioners generally make the distinction between employee relations and labor relations, based on whether the workforce is unionized. Employee relations refers to HR interaction with employees who aren't represented by a union and labor relations refers to the HR-to-union interaction for employees who are represented by a union.

National Labor Relations Act

Under the National Labor Relations Act, employees have the right to collective activity, which includes assembling their voices in favor of union representation. When a labor union wants to represent the employees of a non-union workplace, they gather signatures from employees who want labor union representation. When the union has at least 30 percent of employees' signatures, a labor union files a petition with the National Labor Relations Board. Once a petition is filed, HR receives notice of the petition and is officially on notice that nearly one-third of the employees want to becoming unionized.


Even before a labor union is elected to represent workers, HR must be aware of activities in which it can't engage during the period between the petition filing and a union election. HR, nor any of the employer's leadership, can promise employees better wages if they disavow their interest in the union. Also, HR can't threaten, interrogate or spy on employees' activities related to their support for a union. HR practitioners often refer to these prohibited activities as PITS or TIPS -- Promises, Interrogation, Threats or Surveillance or Spying.


The HR manager, director or company leader typically is responsible for bargaining with the labor union to reach a union contract. In the collective bargaining process, HR negotiates employee wages, benefits, work hours and a grievance process for settling workplace disputes. Both HR and the labor union have an obligation to bargain in good faith. Once the parties have a union contract, HR and the company representatives have to wait for the union members to approve the contract.


HR can't settle employee disputes just by talking to employees as it can with employees who aren't represented by a labor union. When employees are represented by a labor union, a union representative has to be present during discussions that HR has with the company's employees. Union contracts contain grievance processes to which HR staff must strictly adhere. Many grievance procedures consist of three steps before the employee or union has the option to ask for arbitration. In a three-step grievance process, HR receives an employee complaint, investigates the issues and renders a decision.

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