How Unions Are Helping Save Time, Money and Jobs

A new report released by the Jobs With Justice Education Fund, Improving Government Through Labor-Management Collaboration and Employee Ingenuity, profiles how public employees and their unions are working collaboratively with management to improve the way government runs. 

The partnership between CWA Local 4501 and Ohio State University is just one of the many successful case studies included the study.

Together they were able to tackle rising health care costs:

An increasingly common way for employers to control rising health-care costs is to implement wellness programs, with the notion that encouraging employees to improve their health and reduce chronic ailments related to obesity, high blood pressure or diabetes leads to reduced health-care costs for employers and reduced premiums for participating employees. Ohio State University (OSU) initiated a voluntary wellness program several years ago and decided to approach its longstanding labor-management committee with the Communications Workers of America (CWA) to think through implementation. David Simpson, manager of labor relations at OSU, asserts by collaborating with CWA, “union employees identifi ed barriers to participation” in the wellness program. 28 In the past four years, he notes that union participation in the wellness program quadrupled, while the rest of the university population saw increases that were not as dramatic.

CWA Local 4501 President Rich Murray recalls that he and other union members had some initial concerns with the program, but after the labor-management committee initiated a series of information sessions with nurses and benefi ts departments, “[CWA members] became the biggest champions across campus. I think some of our leaders were known to be against it, but they converted quite organically.”

Labor-management collaboration also helped improve a training program: 

Like many employers, Ohio State University (OSU) is capturing more of its employees’ human resources information online, such as leave reporting, timekeeping and benefits data. Yet as CWA representatives raised through labor-management committees, many of their members have neither access to a computer at work, nor are they computer literate. As Rich Murray of CWA noted, “The university is going more and more paperless, so we thought there was a need for membership who didn’t work in front of a computer to have a portal where they’d familiarize themselves with everyday computer skills.” In 2012 contract negotiations, OSU agreed to set aside funding to improve computer literacy and computer access for CWA members. The labor-management committee is now advising OSU on how to spend the funds— whether on kiosks or training, based on the needs of the membership. Murray hopes that through this program, OSU will have the immediate benefit of being able to widely implement the move to HR technology, and their members will gain the long-term benefits of acquiring computer literacy.

Read the full report here.