3. Answer the questions:

Who is involved in a workplace conflict?

What parties are not involved in it?

Can a qualified employee avoid such conflicts? How?

In a broad sense it includes several other kinds of conflicts. What are they?

How are workplace conflicts handled today?

What is your personal understanding of laws and regulations?

Is there any difference between them?

What may help better understand how the workplace works?

4. Match the following words with the translation:

to involve– устанавливать

to expose– упрощать

to handle– в своей основе

to establish– предполагать, включать в себя

to streamline– подвергать

allegation– путаница

patchwork– посредничество, медиация

confusing– сложный

intricate– запутанный

inherently– управлять

mediation– заявление

5. Read and discuss the example

A successful new product is selling well, and its maker is running the factory an additional four hours a day Monday through Friday as required overtime for all employees. But for the fourth Saturday in a row, the same three employees are called in for yet more overtime. If one of them objects about the perceived unfairness of being singled out for unwanted overtime, and gets into a heated argument with a supervisor, while the other two have no objection, this would be described as a workplace conflict. But if the reason the employee gives for believing he was singled out is related to race, sex, national origin, age , or another protected category, this would be viewed as an employment conflict– whether or not the employee was ultimately found correct in that perception. And if all three employees together went to management to complain about being selected for the additional overtime, this would be a concerted activity, which is related to union activity, and which would make the event even more appropriately described as a form of labor– management conflict.

Unit 12

1.Read the tongue– twisters as fast as you can

a) Six sick hicks nick six slick bricks with picks and sticks.

b) Whether the weather be fine

or where the weather be not.

Whether the weather be cold

or whether the weather be not.

We’ll weather the weather

whether we like it or not.

2. Read and translate the text

Labor– Management Conflict

For reasons of political issues that go back more than a hundred years, this concept is used somewhat differently in different countries. In the U.S., the term “labor– management conflict” generally refers to disputes between an employer and a group of employees, while a conflict between an employer and a single employee acting alone is usually referred to as an “employment” dispute. An organized labor union is usually involved in labor– management conflicts, though these conflicts can be as basic as two employees approaching a supervisor with a shared complaint about overtime or some other working condition.

Initially, conflict may arise when an employer refuses to recognize a union as representative of its employees; in the U.S., these disputes are usually resolved by an employee election supervised by a government agency. More common are contract disputes and grievances. Contract disputes occur when a union contract covering a group of employees is about to expire and the parties disagree about the terms of a new one. Usually wages, health insurance, and other economic issues are at the center of these conflicts, but sometimes they are about other issues, such as seniority, hours, sick leave, overtime, etc.

Grievances are objections that employees make about the way an employer is handling an existing contract. A typical grievance accuses the employer of doing something that violates the union contract, such as firing an employee without “just cause”. The union and employer will often negotiate at successively higher levels until the grievance is resolved by the union dropping it, by management conceding it, or by a compromise. Grievances which cannot be resolved by negotiation are typically submitted to arbitration for a final decision; some contracts also use mediation.