Employment Relations Today articles from March 1993

Employment Relations Today archives from March 1993

From companies that have family leave: how costly and disruptive is it really?
March 22, 1993... Indications are that the newly enacted federal Family and Medical Leave Act of 1993 will be neither overly disruptive nor prohibitively expensive to those employers required to comply. The cost of replacing a worker who quits because family...

Going to work: what a waste of time and money. (New Ideas)
March 22, 1993... Hard as it is to believe, going to work is a recent social invention. With the coming of the industrial revolution and investments in equipment too big or too expensive to have in one's cottage, the need to go to work became a broadscale social...

NAFTA raises HR challenges for companies doing business in North America. (North American Free Trade Agreement, human resource) (New Ideas)
March 22, 1993... On August 12, 1991 negotiators from Canada, Mexico, and the United States finalized the first phase of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). The next step prior to official implementation is for the text of the agreement to be...

Are the OSHA ergonomic standards necessary? (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) (New Ideas)
March 22, 1993... On August 3, 1992, the U.S. Department of Labor announced that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) published an advance notice of proposed rulemaking (ANPR) that may lead to a safety and health standard addressing ergonomic...

In pursuit of quality human resources at AT&T universal card services. (American Telephone and Telegraph Co.)
March 22, 1993... What drives the people of AT&T Universal Card Services (UCS) is our commitment to continuous improvement--we're never satisfied with the status quo. This persistence led to our winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award, one category...

'New pay': compensation for people, not jobs.
March 22, 1993... The phrase "new pay" is fast becoming part of today's compensation lexicon. But what does it really mean? Is it merely a way of verbally repackaging traditional pay design? Or is there really something distinctly new and different about pay in...

Performance measurement and appraisal: Merck tries to motivate managers to do it right. (Merck & Co., Inc.)
March 22, 1993... The key to a successful incentive compensation program is the development of a system that defines performance and identifies high and low performers. Most often, however, performance measurement is based on subjective performance ratings...

Baptist Memorial Hospital meets comprehensive child-care needs of employees.
March 22, 1993... A growing interest in this country, and particularly within political and management circles, is the issue of child care. For many families, child care can be one of the primary concerns in choosing a home, community, or workplace. Because of...

A systematic approach to effective recruitment.
March 22, 1993... For every position in each company, there should be a recruiting strategy. That strategy should be based on the methods that have produced the best results in hiring new employees. Strategies that work well for one job classification often are...

Training for the '90s: how leading companies focus on quality improvement, technological change, and customer service. (Features)
March 22, 1993... Fewer skilled workers are expected to enter into the work force in the next ten years. Moreover, current employees and managers must be trained for U.S. businesses to regain a competitive edge. Approximately fifty million U.S. workers--42...

Legislative initiatives by the new administration. (Clinton administration) (Federal Regulations Update)
March 22, 1993... This column bridges the transition from the last congressional session to the present one, with its promise of significant action in the employment area. Just before the election, Congress passed the Rehabilitation Act Amendments. With the...

State limits on drug-testing programs after accidents. (State Regulations Update)
March 22, 1993... Illicit drug use by employees costs U.S. businesses as much as $100 billion dollars a year in the form of absenteeism, reduced productivity, workplace accidents, increased insurance costs, and other losses. Many employers have, therefore,...

NLRB rules on the legality of employee action teams. (National Labor Relations Act) (Key Developments)
March 22, 1993... Beginning in the late 1970s and continuing since, a number of foreign firms operating subsidiaries in the United States made significant inroads into our domestic markets, in part by sharply improving the quality levels of their products. One...

Pension and 401(K) plan investment in infrastructure. (proposed infrastructure support from retirement plans) (Employee Benefits Perspective)
March 22, 1993... The presidential campaign of 1992 and ensuing developments have focused national attention on the need to invest in infrastructure (i.e., roads, bridges, environmental cleanup projects, telecommunications systems) with retirement plans at the...

HR Forum. (sexual harassment in the workplace)
March 22, 1993... What is the definition of sexual harassment and what steps can a company take to maintain a work environment that is free from sexual harassment? Sexual harassment claims have been on the rise for the past few years. As a result, it is...

Questions - and answers. (intracompany communication in defamation lawsuits)
March 22, 1993... Can personnel evaluation information disseminated to management employees within the company be considered "published" for the purposes of a defamation claim? In an action for defamation, the plaintiff must demonstrate, as an element of his...