Fabulous Panels
I am always amazed by the talent in the Sweet 16 cohort! The knowledge and background that everyone brings is truly a gift.
I listened to the Union Bosses and Harassment and Discrimination panels. While I personally do not work with unions, ever since taking the class about unions, I've been fascinated. I was not looking forward to taking that class, but I ended up learning a great deal, and found the material to be interesting. Renee has always been so great sharing her experiences with unions since she deals with them on a daily basis. I liked hearing about the history of unions, and that the first strike occurred in 1768! The information Renee learned from her interviews were interesting too about the strength of CBAs and their being above the law. I did not remember about Reagan ordering the air traffic controllers to go back to work, as I was a young child at the time. I would love to hear more about Tara's paper regarding how you go back to "business as usual" after a labor union event. I wonder what research has been done on this. I have been following the Starbucks unionization some, but I did not know they were unionized back in the 1980s for a short time. I also didn't know that most of the Starbucks stores that are wanting to unionize were still negotiating contracts. Sharita mentioned the number of ULPs Starbucks has against them right now, and I'm wondering if Starbucks feels like the risks and liabilities of being found guilty of these ULPs are not enough to curb their tactics to fight the unions.
I really enjoyed the Harassment and Discrimination panel as all four panelists brought great statistics and research. Amanda's paper about absenteeism in California was relevant for my own position, as we deal with this in my company regularly. I would love to read her paper to find out more! I loved the flow of the panel and the questions each panelist answered after introducing their paper topics. It was clear they were each passionate about their topics and had spent a great deal of time researching.
Fabulous Panels © 2023 by Teryl Booth is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0