Holiday Bells Ring in the Union Season

The holiday season is busy enough. Even nonpublic-facing American workplaces see spikes in stress levels and operational challenges around the holidays. For retail executives and managers, the holiday season sits in that space between welcome revenue surges and relentless headaches. Long hours, extended shifts, and amplified employee frustrations make December the most wonderful time of the year for chaos.

For many retail HR teams, the holiday season is an exercise in triage. Like water that seeks its own level, workers find each other over collective workplace irritants in the holiday season. The chaotic environment that fosters these irritants also breeds union activity, and it's critical to predict and prepare for the possibility so leadership can manage it better when it occurs. However, HR’s heightened awareness on employee complaints and frustrations also offers opportunity. It's a time to reinforce trust, sharpen communication, and proactively mitigate risk before it becomes conflict.

Any effective labor relations program must understand its vulnerabilities before it can begin to address them. Santa Claus has elves and magic to guide him around the world; for retailers, the path to a joyous holiday season requires a lot of hard work and a plan.

1. Understand why union activity rises during the holidays.

The retail industry’s experience with unions is often regional and sporadic. The unfamiliarity often causes an inconsistent and ineffective response. Every union leader in any industry looks for fertile environments and uses leverage points to generate momentum. Union activity intensifies when employers feel the most pressure.

In retail, no time generates more stress and pressure than the holiday rush. The calls for peace and joyfulness in the Christmas music on store sound systems never reach employees' ears. Instead, necessity requires them to do more — work longer hours, appease haggard customers, and meet higher expectations. Temporary hires don’t share the same loyalty or appreciate company culture, and full-time staff grow frustrated when they feel unheard or overextended. The environment is ripe for union messages, and unions know exactly how to exploit it.

2. Refresh frontline management training.

In any industry, front-line leadership is the key to both avoiding and defending organizing activity. In retail stores, the store manager is very often the only leader who truly knows the employee team. That limited access to leadership works well when the store manager is trusted and respected. It becomes a critical vulnerability when the store manager is the very problem that triggered the activity.

Just as the Elf on a Shelf is the impatient child’s conduit to Santa, a store manager may be the only leader who can respond to a frustrated employee. Therefore, the company must train them on positive labor relations and the legal parameters within which they can operate.

It's not enough to warn managers what they cannot say to avoid legal issues; managers must understand what the law permits them to say. Managers should:

• Recognize early signs (changes in communication patterns, outside meeting activity, talk of “representation”).
• Know their TIPS. They cannot:
  • Threaten;
  • Interrogate;
  • Promise; or
  • Spy.

• Remember their FOE. They can and should:
  • Deliver facts;
  • Give their opinions; and
  • Provide

In every instance, managers must know when to elevate concerns to HR before missteps occur.

3. Revisit your seasonal workforce practices.

Hiring is never easy. In the holiday season, it becomes a danger zone. Short-term workers often provide operational relief, but they also create flashpoints for fairness, favoritism, working conditions, and quality. The potential for inconsistency in training, scheduling and workplace cultures opens gaps for unions to exploit. When the union’s voice breaches the wall and purports to offer a solution to a concern, the issue often becomes a campaign talking point before the employer can plug the hole.

To reduce risk:

• Integrate seasonal workers quickly. Even small gestures (inclusion in team briefings, recognition programs, or safety meetings) signal respect and cohesion.
• Pay attention to long-tenured employee expectations and perceived rights. Disputes over schedule flexibility, overtime obligations, or pay rates lead to morale problems unions will claim they can solve.
• Apply policies uniformly. Inconsistent treatment, even if inadvertent, fuels perceptions of favoritism, which is a common trigger for union interest.

4. Prepare a calm, coordinated response plan.

If an organizing campaign surfaces, an immediate coordinated response is critical. It's far too late to wait until a union arrives to prepare a rapid response team and comprehensive plan. Messages and statements from leadership that are defensive, reactive and inconsistent play into organizers’ hands. Instead:

• Use the quiet time before a holiday season to prepare a Rapid Response Plan that predicts trigger issues and common irritants and creates template messages on multiple platforms.
• Engage legal counsel early to ensure every communication complies with the law.
• Center your message on choice, voice and personal relationships. Employees value the ability to resolve workplace concerns directly.
• Stay visible and accessible. Management silence leaves room for misinformation, and employees view leadership visibility only during a campaign as disingenuous and opportunistic. Make it a habit.

Companies that respond with empathy and solutions rather than panic are far more likely to maintain employee trust and operational stability.

5. Turn the season into a strength.

Santa Claus knows if you’ve been sleeping and whether you’ve been bad or good — your employees do, too. So be good for goodness’ sake. The busiest time of year is the best time to make cultural changes to improve the workplace for the better. Employees respond well to end-of-year commitments and the company’s promise to reset and refresh company policies and practices. Emphasize and reward teamwork, recognize successes, and offer transparency to decisions that affect day-to-day lives. Employers who take these steps at year-end often come out of the holidays stronger and see higher retention rates and fewer complaints.

Holiday pressures won’t disappear. However, how management prepares for and responds to those pressures can make the difference between a productive season and a labor dispute that ruins the new year.

Bryance Metheny is a partner and practice group leader of the Labor & Employment Practice Group at Burr & Forman LLP, where he advises employers across the country on labor relations, workforce strategy, and compliance.