Dan Clawson Naomi Gerstel University of Massachusetts, Amherst
This study asks why employees work the hours and schedules they do, and proposes to answer this question by analyzing labor union contracts and the negotiations producing them in occupations that vary by gender and class. Building on our prior research on four occupations, the research proposed here focuses on three of the same occupations -- nurses, nursing assistants, and EMTs (emergency medical technicians)-- with minor attention to the fourth, doctors, who are much less likely to be unionized. Union contracts and the negotiations surrounding them are a valuable but untapped data source. Not only are unions players in the process of shaping hours and schedules but more importantly their contracts and negotiations provide a site where we can examine the expression of employer and employee preferences, the arguments and power each deploys, the compromises each makes and the characteristics of each that shape their preferences, arguments, conflicts and compromises. We hypothesize, first, that these contracts, negotiations, and the conflict they address will often center on issues of time, and, second that both the specific concerns and the resolutions they develop will vary by gender and class. The proposed research will analyze 183 union contracts. We will first examine clauses on hours and schedules in the union contracts. Standard codes will be developed that apply across all occupations, and cover both broad categories (for example, time off) and detailed sub-categories (for example, holidays, vacations, sick leave, personal time, family leaves). Using descriptive statistics and multivariate techniques, the study will examine the extent to which these vary across occupations and from one union to another within each occupation. Next the investigators will conduct interviews with employers and employees about the negotiations surrounding the union contracts, selecting ten sites each for nurses, nursing assistants, and EMTs, and two sites for physicians, in order to understand the concerns and issues that each side identified as most important, which members participate, and the reasons for the compromises they make. At each site we will interview two union-side contract negotiators and one employer-side negotiator.
Broader Impacts
The research will have a broad impact both because it advances scientific knowledge and has practical implications for the daily lives of employees and employers. The research will contribute to social science understanding of organizations and families by rigorously and systematically examining the processes that underlie a set of much-debated outcomes; it does so by examining the points of stress that lead people to collective action. It makes innovative use of a data source -- union contracts and the negotiations over them -- rarely if ever used to systematically and rigorously examine points of stress. In practical terms, the proposed research addresses key concerns in employees' daily lives and key challenges faced by employers. Elucidating the aspects that employers and employees focus on, and finding ways to help reduce the strains they face, could reduce costs, improve organizational outcomes, and give employees more control over their lives at and away from the workplace.
: Work hours and schedules lead to both economic and political conflicts. Although a burgeoning sociological literature focuses on how many hours and what schedules people are working and how these vary by class, race, and gender, researchers rarely examine the processes that produce these hours and schedules. This study examines these processes by looking at labor unions of four health care occupations: nursing assistants, Emergency Medical Technicians, nurses, and doctors. Some of the best insights into a social system come from examining its points of stress or conflict. This project used union contracts and negotiations over them to provide insight into the areas of stress concerning hours and schedules, and how these vary by gender and class. These union contracts, as well as interviews with key participants and observation of negotiations, make it clear that time is a central issue for both workers and employers, and are often a point of contention incorporated into union contracts. We assembled and coded 132 union contracts (27 for doctors, 47 for nurses, 37 for nursing assistants, and 21 for Emergency Medical Technicians), conducted 31 intensive interviews, and observed at 24 union negotiation sessions, which varied in length from three hours to twenty hours. Four key findings emerge. First, in most union contracts a majority of the words in the contract concern issues of time (although the provisions may also include additional issues; overtime pay, for example, is about both time and money). Second, the character of these clauses and provisions differs by both gender and class: for the issue of overtime, for example, the contracts of nurses (professional women) limit mandatory overtime, the contracts of EMTs (working-class men) provide rules for the fair distribution of overtime and to assure substantial compensation for that time, while the contracts of nursing assistants (low-wage women) make clear their vulnerability by repeatedly noting employers’ right to avoid overtime. Third, "flexibility" or security and predictability of employment is often a central point of contention. Although many academic researchers see flexibility as an unequivocal benefit, many workers and union officials are opposed to the ways employers use the term and the practices associated with "flexibility," which in practice often means an unpredictable schedule. Fourth, negotiations over these issues often reveal underlying social processes and differences. For example, what are the limits of "family," that is, what relatives are close enough that they should be recognized in a union contract? In negotiations over a provision concerning bereavement leave, employers distinguished between nuclear family, entitled to more significant recognition, and extended family, entitled to reduced recognition or no recognition. Low-income nursing assistants of color vehemently disagreed.
