Abstract

Are unions being given enlarged management roles because arbitrators are accepting as arbitrable grievances concerned with supervisory activity? To answer this question, a content analysis was made of all the pertinent arbitration awards published from 1942 to early 1962 in Labor Arbitration Reports, Bureau of National Affairs; analysis included the issue, position of the parties, arbitrator's reasoning and the decision. Thirty-one union grievance cases involved the arbitrability of supervisory actions. Management's response was that the union--hence the arbitrator--had no purview because supervisors were part of management. Twelve of the thirty-one cases concerned a union demand that a foreman be disciplined for alleged abuse of bargaining-unit employees, including profanity, annoying females, harshness, physical threats, accusations of disloyalty, unreasonableness and insults. In five of these twelve cases, arbitrators decided that abusive behavior constituted a just basis for arbitration, basing their ruling primarily on the concept that the "conditions of employment" portion of the contract was invoked, i.e., that an harmonious relation- ship between employee and supervisor was a condition of the job in which the union's interest was legitimate.