A bargaining unit in labor relations is a group of employees with a clear and identifiable community of interests who are (under U.S. law) represented by a single labor union in collective bargaining and other dealings with management. Examples would be "non-management professors"; "law enforcement professionals"; "blue-collar workers"; "clerical and administrative employees"; etc. Geographic location as well as the number of facilities included in bargaining units can be at issue during representation cases.
The size of a company does not relate to the size of a bargaining unit. Bargaining units must consist of at least 3 employees, and must have the support of a majority of employees in the bargaining unit. However, the bargaining unit could be a small portion of a large company, where no other employees are members of a union.
Famous quotes containing the word unit:
“During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I ... [urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enacting that all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner’s jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)