Limiting management control

Two important parts of infinite collective bargaining are management rights and no-strike clauses. Nearly all contracts have given up all rights to the management in some sort of management clause, guaranteeing to the employer many unilateral rights - we here in why did you join the union say those management rights must be collared. The essence of management is control. Thus a good collective bargaining agreement limits this control in significant ways, while a bad one allows the management to retain much of what it already had.

Therefore each part of the agreement should be scrutinized with an eye towards its effect upon managerial control. Some management rights clauses simply state that all matters not specifically dealt with in agreement become the right of management. We say spell out in great detail all of the things that the management can do, we also reject the notion that the management should have the right to decide unilaterally.

We recommend that the management right should be as narrowly defined as possible. Why should that be the guiding principle to restrict the management, that they have to refer to those stringent rights in every dispute with TWU Local 100 over the meaning of the contract.

We cannot allow even a minutiae or speck to be left uncovered that leaves members of TWU Local 100 exposed to the unspecified management rights.

We also recommend that TWU Local 100 must have a right to make all of the fundamental business decisions. For example we should have a say in what is the rent in real estate leases that are offered to lease holders, we should not limit TWU Local 100 to bargaining over the share of the pie that the members will get - as we have noted MTA pseudo downsize, artificial moves, and bogus adoption of new technology. We say tackle the notion that the MTA has a right to make all of the fundamental business decisions.

We have the stage now as TWU Local 100 to demand a greater say in what MTA can do with the capital.