Labor Laws and Unions Essay

Kaiser Permanente has been a well-known health care provider in the United States for over 65 years. Kaiser Permanente started with a simple 12 bed hospital in the middle of the Mojave Desert with a single surgeon. Kaiser Permanente has now grown to partnership as two organizations known today as Kaiser Foundation Health Plan and Hospitals and the Permanente Medical Groups. Kaiser Permanente upholds their mission to provide quality care for members and families, and to contribute to the well-being of their many communities.
Legal issues and obstacles that Kaiser Permanente could encounter would be areas such as lawsuits, malpractice and tort reform, discrimination, workers compensation, false claims, compliance requirements, and labor and employment issues. As a result of these legal issues come federal, state, and or local laws that could very well be broken. Laws such as Title VII of the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 as well as the Fair Employment and Housing Act are the laws that could be broken. The description of these laws provide the necessary reasons as to why they would be considered broken if any of the above listed legal issues were to occur.
There are many recommendations to minimize possible litigation; however, the recommendation that would be most fitting in this situation would be to continuously send the Kaiser Permanente employees through mandatory trainings and refresher courses. The purpose of these trainings and courses would be to keep the employees informed of any new law changes as well as to remind them of the current laws.
Kaiser Permanente is a unionized organization that feels they benefit from joining a union for several reasons. Benefits such as the advantage of working under a collective bargaining agreement that provides larger paychecks, better health and retirement benefits, more secure jobs, and safe working conditions. However, the collective bargaining agreement of the union is what can make or break these earnings (BC3, 2011).
The unionization process generally starts with a union organizer who contacts a number of employees of a specific organization. The process can also be initiated by an employee who contacts a union representative on their own accord. The step to unionization would be for signatures of the employees to be collected. These signatures are an authorization that the employees want the union to represent them. In order to ask the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to hold an election, the union representative must have collected at least 30 percent of the employees’ signatures.
The union bargaining process begins with the employees electing a bargaining committee. The employees then

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