The Grievance Procedure & Processes: Public Vs.Private Sector

Table of Contents

Executive Summary 3

Introduction 4

Reasons for Grievances 4

Benefits of the Grievance Process 6

Grievance Procedures of the Private Sector …………………………………………….7

Grievance Procedures of the Public Sector ……………………………………………..8

Differences between the Grievance Procedures

of the Public & Private Sectors ……………………………………………………9

Similarities between the Grievance Procedures

of the Public & Private Sectors …………………………………………………..11

Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………………..12

Executive Summary

The grievance process is a crucial part of the labor relations model for any and all organizations. It provides a crucial outlet for any organizations employees to communicate their concerns, thoughts, and opinions. The benefits that come with such grievance model and procedures are countless and invaluable. There are several reasons employees seek to file these grievances against their management and/or organization and the reasons seem to be similar throughout the public and private sectors alike.

The private sector has established and maintained a higher number of regulations, guidelines, and procedures for their firms and employees to abide by. As such, the private sector is more experienced and efficient at carrying out labor relations and grievance filing procedures than the public sector is currently. Though the public sector is still developing its grievance model and working towards a more established process, they are visibly making great strides with the popularization of collective bargaining and subsequent steps of the labor relations process and grievance process.

There are many similarities and differences between the public and private sector in how they have developed, established, and carried out their grievance proceedings within the labor relations agreements.

Introduction

It is one if the highest priorities of any company or organization to have a successfully run establishment with a happy and satisfied workforce who will deliver results and engineer profits in return. Unfortunately, it is inevitable that for employee satisfaction to be prevalent and continuous, employees must be able to voice their concerns and have some sort of recipient where these concerns and grievances may be filed, documented, researched, and resolved. As stated in our textbook, a grievance is ‘the core of contract administration and is defined as the employee’s (or employer’s) alleged violation of the labor agreement that is submitted to the grievance procedure for resolution by the union representative and employer representative’ (Holley, Jennings, & Wolters, 2012). Therefore, the grievance model and process is essential in addressing and resolving employee conflicts and concerns in order to maintain a successful and healthy organization. Besides the basic model and benefits of the grievance process, this paper will also attempt to discuss the many differences between the public and private sector’s grievance procedures and how they compare against one another.

Reasons for Grievances

Grievances are filed by employees in the workplace for numerous reasons including disciplinary actions, protesting a contract violation, and to draw attention to issues within the workplace. When an employee files a grievance in response to a disciplinary action it is mostly likely because they feel the action was unjust and there is some level of adverse impact on the employee because of such. The employee may feel they deserved a promotion that was otherwise given to another employee or received a demotion that was undeserved. First line managers are usually the face of the grievance and as the textbook explains, ‘analysis of grievance filings appears to reflect [their] performance…’ (Holley, Jennings, & Wolters, 2012). This should not be easily dismissed by the company though, as grievance filings for this reason could serve to illuminate a particular supervisor’s competency or lack thereof. Besides any sort of performance measurement system, grievance filings