Government's bargaining plan for multi-union shops...

Last Friday, the labor ministry announced it's plan on how multi-union shops will handle collective bargaining. I should emphasize once again, that if I am reading correctly, that this is mandatory for all shops.

The Labor Ministry on Friday unveiled a plan in a meeting with labor unions and management at local enterprises to force labor unions within a single enterprise to have a negotiation channel with the management after the country begins allowing multiple labor unions next year.

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The unification of the negotiation channel will come about in three steps. First, different labor unions within a company must agree upon a single negotiation channel seven to 20 days before they launch a negotiation. Second, if they fail to do so within the deadline, the union that has the largest membership will automatically be given the right to bargain. Third, should there be no union with a majority of members, the unions must form a collective negotiation delegation that will comprise members from different unions. In some cases, they could adopt a proportional representation system.

This is one of the most confusing and convoluted labor laws I have ever seen. First of all, how the heck do they expect trade unions to successfully negotiate on behalf for those in other skilled unions? Different areas of work have different issues and conditions to deal with that need to be brought up in these negotiations. Its not that big of a problem for industrial unions (in theory anyways) since hopefully the negotiators will be from different areas of the workforce to make sure their voice is on the table. I don't think even the best intentioned negotiator from a carpenter union can really represent the voice of someone from a truckers union.

Yes, I know technically these unions could come up with an arrangement to make sure this issue is worked out. Unfortunately this is a fairly big if as many unions have problems working together and its not unheard of for management to favor one over another in these dealings. I can see this easily happening if there is a union in a workplace whose membership greatly outweighs others.

The labor ministry has promoted a plan to prevent multiple labor unions from wielding excessive power in negotiations and to protect minority labor unions.

I don't know if this was the plan to protect them or the writer just got lazy here. Either way, this is going to be disastrous for small unions for the reasons I just stated.

Also, unionized workers will have to get the support of its entire union membership for any proposed industrial action, according to the ministry.

I have no clue what this means, but I am guessing they are going to try to push the legal threshold for collective actions to have an extremely high threshold to pass in union voting. I'll post more as soon as I find articles that explain this in detail more.