ARBITRATION AT A LARGE NONUNION HOSPITAL

Abstract

This study examines the experience of a large nonunion hospital that adopted arbitration as the final step of its grievance procedure. It focuses on the reasons for the adoption of the process despite the usual opposition of nonunion employers to arbitration and looks at the operation of the procedure, including the role of the employee advisor, who was hired and paid by the hospital to represent employees in arbitration. The study considers the reasons for the demise of arbitration after 25 years of apparently successful operation. It ends with a number of conclusions about nonunion arbitration procedures based on the experience at the hospital as well as reports regarding other nonunion arbitration systems. The arbitration of workplace disputes has been the rule for union-represented employees for many years. A significant reason for the adoption of the process was the National War Labor Board’s policy during World War II of encouraging employers and unions to include binding arbitration in their contracts. This practice is reflected by the fact that the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that in 1949 83% of the contracts in its files required the arbitration of unresolved grievances [1, p. 18]. At the same time a very limited number of nonunion employers adopted arbitration for employment-related matters. In 1950, Bambrick and Speed studied 57 nonunion companies that had grievance procedures and found only two that included arbitration [2]. Thirty-six years later, McCabe surveyed 78 nonunion members of the National Association of Manufacturers and found that six had arbitration [3].