Organizational Behaviour Case Study

Hourly workerspeople who are paid a set dollar amount for each instant they work accommodate pine been the backbone of the U. S. economy. entirely times are changing, and with them so also is the lot of the hourly worker. As they can with most example preconditions, organizations are able to take a wider variety of approaches to managing compensation for hourly workers. And nowhere are these differences more than than apparent than in the contrasting conditions for hourly workers at General Motors and Wal-Mart. General Motors is an old, traditional industrial caller-up that until recently was the nations largest employer.And for decades, its hourly workers have been protected by strong labor marriage like the United Auto Workers (UAW). These unions, in turn, have forged contracts and established working conditions that almost look archaic in todays economy. Consider, for example, the employment conditions of Tim Philbrick, a forty- devil- course-old plant worker and union penis at the firms Fairfax plant near Kansas City who has worked for GM for twenty-three years. Mr. Philbrick makes almost $20 an hour in base pay. With a little overtime, his annual earnings top $60,000.But level off then, he is far from the highest-paid factory worker at GM. Skilled-trade workers like electricians and toolmakers make $2 to $2. 50 an hour more, and with greater overtime opportunities often make $100,000 or more per year. Mr. Philbrick also gets a no-deductible health redress policy that allows him to see any doctor he wants. He gets four weeks of vacation per year, plus cardinal week off at Christmas and at least a nonher week off in July. Mr. Philbrick gets two paid twenty-three-minute breaks and a paid thirty-minute lunch break per day.He also has the option of retiring subsequently thirty years with full benefits. GM estimates that, with benefits, its average worker makes more than $43 an hour. Perhaps not surprisingly, then, the firm is alship canal lookin g for opportunities to reduce its workforce through attrition and cutbacks, with the goal of replacing drudgery capacity with lower-cost labor abroad. The UAW, on the other hand, of course, is staunchly opposed to further workforce reductions and cutbacks. And long-standing work rules strictly dictate who gets overtime, who can be laid off and who cant, and myriad other employment condition for Mr.Philbrick and his peers. But the situation at GM is quite incompatiblein a lot of waysfrom conditions at Wal-Mart. Along many different dimensions Wal-Mart is slowly but surely supplanting General Motors as the quintessential U. S. corporation. For example, it is growing rapidly, is becoming more and more ingrained in the the Statesn lifestyle, and now employs more people than GM did in its heyday. But the hourly worker at Wal-Mart has a much different experience than the hourly worker at GM. For example, consider Ms.Nancy Handley, a twenty-seven-year-old Wal-Mart employee who oversees the men department at a big store in St. Louis. Jobs like Ms. Handleys pay between $9 and $11 an hour, or about $20,000 a year. About $100 a month is deducted from Ms. Handleys paycheck to help covering fire the cost of benefits. Her health insurance has a $250 deductible she then pays 20 percent of her health-care cots as long as she uses a set of approved physicians. During her typical workday, Ms. Handley gets tow fifteen-minute breaks and an hour for lunch, which are amateur. Some step that conditions are inadequate.Barbara Ehrenreich, author of Nickel and Dimed On (Not) Getting By in America, worked at a Wal-Mart age researching her book and now says, Why would anybody put up with the wages we were paid? But Ms. Handley doesnt encounter mistreated by Wal-Mart. Far from it, she says she is appropriately compensated for what she does. She has received three merit raises in the give out seven years and has ample job security. Moreover, if she decides to try for advancement, Wal-Mart seems to offer considerable potential, promoting thousands of hourly workers a year to the ranks of management.And Ms. Handley is clearly not unique in her viewsWal-Mart employees routinely reject any and all overtures from labor unions. In the twenty-first century, the gap between Old Economy and New Economy workers, between unionized manufacturing workers and nonunion or service workers, may be shrinking. Unions are losing their power in the auto industry, for example, as foreign-owned plants indoors the United States give makers such as Toyota and BMW, which are nonunion, a cost advantage over the loose Three U. S. automakers. U. S. irms are telling the UAW and other unions, Were becoming noncompetitive, and unless you organize the foreign-owned firms, were going to have to modify the proposals we make you. At the same time, Wal-Mart is facing lawsuits from employees who clam the retailer forced them to work unpaid overtime, among other charges. At Las Vegas store, t he firm faces its first union election. In a world where Wal-Mart employs three times as many workers as GM, it may be inevitable that the retailers labor will organize. On the other hand, will labor unions continue to lose their power to determine working conditions for Americas workforce?ReferencesJoann Muller, can The UAW Stay in the Game? Business Week, June 10, 2002. HYPERLINK http//www.businessweek.com www.businessweek.com on June 3, 2002 Mark Gimein, surface-to-air missile Walton Made Us a Promise, Fortune, March 18, 2002. HYPERLINKhttp//www.fortune.com www.fortune.com on June 3, 2002.