Week 11 · Chapter

Chapter 11 — Hiring and the Law: Human Resources & Labor Relations

Introduction to Business Free sample edition

The module's primary reading · ~40–50 minutes · Objective 6 (explain how organizations recruit, select, develop, pay, and motivate people — including labor relations, the major federal employment statutes, and the classic and contemporary motivation theories in their order of publication — and diagnose a workplace situation with them), Objective 3 (evaluate business conduct with ethical reasoning and the corporate-social-responsibility frameworks, presenting the shareholder and stakeholder positions with their reasons and without a verdict, and distinguishing what is ethical from what is legal) · Read it first this week; the lecture, the slides, the tutorial, and the quiz all build on it.

In plain language

A business is only as good as the people who do its work. Human resource management (the work of planning for, finding, hiring, training, evaluating, and paying those people) is how a business gets them and keeps them. This week you will plan a job, tell finding applicants apart from choosing among them, and price a new hire. You will also meet labor relations (how managers and workers deal with each other when the workers act as a group) and the federal laws every employer works within. The laws are taught as general education, and nothing here is legal advice for a real situation.

Why you already care about this

Think about the last job you applied for, or the one you hope to land. Someone wrote the posting you read. Someone decided who got an interview, what the pay would be, and what you would learn in your first week. Every one of those choices was a human resource decision, and some of them had to follow federal law.

The coffee cart is about to make the same choices. Back in Week 8, the cart's organization chart at one cart showed the owner over one part-time helper. Now the owner has to write that helper's job, find people who might fit it, pick one, and set the pay. The plan is 20 hours a week for 50 weeks at 16 dollars an hour. What does that cost in a year, and how does 16 dollars compare with what the law requires? By the end of this chapter you will be able to answer both.

By the end of this chapter you will be able to:

describe human resource management and write a job description and a job specification from a job analysis;
tell recruitment apart from selection on a real hiring process;
explain training and development, performance evaluation, and compensation;
compute a hiring plan's yearly wage cost and compare its wage with the federal minimum wage;
separate what the law requires on pay from what ethics asks, using three ethical-reasoning questions;
explain why workers organize, what collective bargaining and a grievance are, and the tactics each side may use;
read the BLS union membership rates for 1983 and 2025 and write the change in percentage points;
name the federal employment statutes in order by name and year;
present unions, right-to-work laws, and the minimum wage as positions with their reasons and no verdict.

Carry this line with you: recruit to fill the pool; select to choose from it.

Where we are

Already covered: Week 5, What the Business Owes: Ethics & Social Responsibility, separated ethics from legality; Week 7, Who Buys and at What Price: Marketing, Products & Pricing, found the cart's 12,000-drink break-even; Week 8, Midterm Review & the Growth Question, drew the cart's organization chart at one cart and at two; Week 10, Leading the Work: Management & Leadership, set out the four functions of management and the idea of a standard.
This week: human resource management, from planning a job to recruitment, selection, training, evaluation, and pay; the cart's hiring plan and the minimum wage; labor relations and union membership; the federal employment statutes; and the contested questions about unions, right-to-work laws, and the minimum wage.
How they connect: Week 10 organized the work into positions; this week fills those positions with people, within the law.
Where we're going next: Week 12, Keeping People Engaged: Motivation, asks what keeps the people you hired doing their best work.

Four earlier weeks matter most here. In Week 7 you met the cart's fixed costs of 36,000 dollars a year: 35,000 dollars of operating expenses plus 1,000 dollars of interest, divided by a per-unit margin of 5 − 2 = 3 dollars to give a break-even of 12,000 drinks a year. In Week 8 the one-cart chart had 2 people on 2 levels: the owner and one part-time helper. In Week 10 you met a standard, the target a result is measured against. In Week 5 you learned three ethical-reasoning questions: is it legal, is it fair to everyone it touches, and would I be comfortable if it were public? All four return this week.

1. Plan the job: human resource planning and job analysis

Picture the cart's owner at a folding table after the morning rush, with a notebook open. The owner cannot keep working every shift alone. Before posting anything, the owner has to answer a plain question: what, exactly, will this person do?

That question opens a whole area of business.

Human resource management is the work of planning for, finding, hiring, training, evaluating, and paying the people a business needs.

Human resource planning is working out which people a business will need, with which skills, and when, so it can hire and train them before the work arrives.

Planning one job starts with studying it.

Job analysis is studying what a job involves, its tasks, its duties, and what it takes to do them well, so the business can describe the job and the person it needs.
A job description is a written list of the tasks and duties of a job, drawn from a job analysis.
A job specification is a written list of the skills, qualities, and qualifications a person needs to do a job, drawn from a job analysis.

Worked example — the helper's job, on paper. The cart and its helper are illustrative, and the example uses no figures.

Job analysis: the owner watches a full morning and notes every task that is not making the drinks.
Job description (the tasks): take orders and payment at the counter, keep the cart stocked with cups and lids, and clean up after the rush.
Job specification (the person): comfortable handling payments, reliable on weekday mornings, and friendly with customers.

In words: the description says what the job is, and the specification says who can do it; both come from the same morning of watching.

Misconception check. Students often think a job description and a job specification are the same list. That is tempting, because both are written from one job analysis and both go in one posting. But "keep the cart stocked" is a task, while "reliable on weekday mornings" is a quality of a person. The cure is to ask of each line: is this something the job does, or something the person brings?

Memory hook: the description is the job; the specification is the person.

2. Fill the pool, then choose: recruitment versus selection

Picture an illustrative hospital kitchen that needs two more cooks before the winter rush. The kitchen manager posts the opening on the hospital's job page and asks the current cooks whether they know anyone good. Within two weeks, a stack of applications sits on the desk. Nobody has been hired yet.

That gap, between having applicants and having a new cook, is the whole point of this section.

Recruitment is the work of drawing qualified people into a pool of applicants for an opening, such as by posting the job, asking for referrals, or attending a job fair.

Selection is the separate step of choosing whom to hire from the pool of applicants, using tools such as applications, interviews, skills tests, and reference checks.

Worked example — two hiring processes, sorted. The kitchen and the transit agency are illustrative, and the example uses no figures.

The hospital kitchen posts the opening and asks for referrals. Recruitment: it builds the pool.
The kitchen asks each finalist to cook one dish during a working shift. Selection: a skills test that helps choose.
An illustrative city transit agency sets up a booth at a job fair for bus drivers. Recruitment: it draws people in.
The agency gives each applicant a road test and checks references. Selection: it chooses from the pool.

In words: both employers first widen the pool and then narrow it, and every hiring tool belongs to one of those two steps.

Misconception check. Students often think recruiting means hiring. That is tempting, because people say "we're recruiting" when they mean "we're hiring." But recruitment only fills the pool. The transit agency's job fair booth hires no one; the road test is where a choice begins. The cure is to ask whether a step adds applicants or picks among them.

Pause and try this. Choose one: (a) think of a job you have applied for and list one step that was recruitment and one that was selection; or (b) explain in two sentences why a kitchen with a great recruitment process can still make a poor hire.

Memory hook: recruit to fill the pool; select to choose from it.

3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation

Picture the cart's new helper on the first morning. The helper has never used an espresso machine or this card reader. Six months later, the owner is thinking about a second cart and wonders whether this same helper could run it someday.

Those are two different kinds of learning.

Training is teaching a person the skills their current job needs, such as how to run the equipment or handle a payment.
Development is preparing a person for a future role with more responsibility, such as readying a worker to lead a team.

For the cart, training is the first morning with the espresso machine and the card reader. Development is readying the helper to become a cart lead when the second cart opens.

Next comes checking how the work is going.

Performance evaluation is comparing a person's work with standards set in advance and giving feedback on how to keep doing well or improve.

Worked example — a library desk evaluation. The library is illustrative, and the example uses no figures.

Standards, set on the first day: desk clerks at an illustrative public library check out items accurately, shelve returned items by the end of each shift, and greet each visitor who comes to the desk.
Measurement: the desk lead notes, over several weeks, how each clerk's work compares with those three standards.
Feedback: each clerk hears what is going well and which one standard needs work, with a plan to improve it.

In words: an evaluation is fair when the person knew the standards before the work began, which is the controlling function from Week 10 applied to one person's job.

Finally, people are paid.

Compensation is everything a person receives for their work, made up of pay and benefits.
Pay is the money a person earns for work, either wages by the hour or a salary by the year.
Benefits are rewards for work beyond pay, such as paid time off or health insurance.

Misconception check. Students often think a performance evaluation is a once-a-year surprise, a grade handed down at the end. That is tempting, because many people only notice the formal meeting. But a fair evaluation compares the work with standards the person knew from the start, like the library's three. The cure is to set the standards first and give feedback along the way.

Memory hook: train for the job you have, develop for the job ahead, evaluate against what was promised.

4. Price the hire: the cart's hiring plan and the minimum wage

Back at the folding table, the owner has a job on paper and now needs a number. How many hours, for how many weeks, at what wage? Those three choices make a hiring plan.

A hiring plan is a plan for a new position that sets its hours, its weeks, and its wage, and works out what the position will cost the business in a year.

Before you set any wage, you need to know the law's floor.

The Fair Labor Standards Act is the federal law of 1938 that sets standards for the minimum wage, overtime, recordkeeping, and child labor; the Department of Labor administers it.
The minimum wage is the lowest hourly wage the law allows an employer to pay for covered work; the federal minimum has been 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009, and many states set higher ones.

The formula, on one line with its named inputs:

yearly wages = weekly hours × weeks worked × hourly wage

Worked example — the cart's hiring plan. The cart's figures are illustrative, constructed for this course and not real data; money is in dollars, and time is in hours and weeks.

Hours a year: 20 hours a week × 50 weeks = 1,000 hours.
Yearly wages: 1,000 hours × 16 dollars an hour = 16,000 dollars.
Above the federal floor: 16 − 7.25 = 8.75 dollars an hour above the 7.25-dollar federal minimum wage in effect since 2009.

In words: the cart's one part-time helper works 1,000 hours a year and costs 16,000 dollars, at a wage 8.75 dollars an hour above the federal floor.

Here is the part that connects to Week 7. The 16,000 dollars is not a new cost added on top of the break-even. It is the same 16,000 dollars of part-time wages that sits inside the 35,000 dollars of operating expenses behind the 12,000-drink break-even. The break-even already pays the helper.

Caveat: the 16-dollar wage is the case's choice, not a rule. The plan also assumes the helper works all 50 weeks; if the hours change, the cost changes with them.

In practice (your tools). You can build the plan in any free spreadsheet, such as Google Sheets. Type 20 in cell B2 for the weekly hours, 50 in cell B3 for the weeks worked, and 16 in cell B4 for the hourly wage. In cell B5 type =B2*B3 for the hours a year, and in cell B6 type =B5*B4 for the yearly wages. Type 7.25 in cell B7 for the federal minimum wage, and in cell B8 type =B4-B7 for the gap above the floor per hour.

Misconception check. Students often think the minimum wage is one number everywhere in the country. That is tempting, because "the minimum wage" sounds like a single figure. But 7.25 dollars an hour is the federal floor, and many states set higher minimums of their own. The cure is to say "the federal minimum" and to remember that a state's own law may require more; this course never tests a state's figure.

Memory hook: hours times weeks times wage; the federal floor is a floor.

5. Weigh the floor: what the law requires versus what is right

The owner could, under federal law alone, pay the helper less than 16 dollars an hour. Should the owner? Week 5 gave you the tools to separate two different questions hiding inside that one.

Legality asks only whether the law allows an act. Ethics asks what is right beyond the law. The law sets a minimum; it does not settle every question above it.

Worked example — the floor and the choice. The cart's figures are illustrative; money is in dollars a year.

The federal floor for the same hours: 1,000 × 7.25 = 7,250 dollars a year at the federal minimum alone.
The case's choice: 16,000 − 7,250 = 8,750 dollars a year above that floor.

In words: the cart's choice of 16 dollars versus 7.25 dollars an hour, more than twice the federal floor, costs it 8,750 dollars a year that federal law alone does not require; a state's own minimum could be higher, which would shrink that gap.

Now run the three ethical-reasoning questions on the wage.

Is it legal? A wage at or above the floor that applies is legal; which floor applies to a real business is a question for the Department of Labor or a state agency, not for this course.
Is it fair to everyone it touches? The helper, the owner, and the customers are all touched by the choice, in different ways.
Would I be comfortable if it were public? An owner could ask whether the wage would hold up if the helper's neighbors knew it.

Then label the reasons, because they are judgments, not facts. An owner might pay more to draw a stronger pool of applicants or to keep a reliable helper who stays. An owner might pay less to keep costs down while a young business finds its feet. The arithmetic shows what each choice costs; it cannot say which one is right.

Misconception check. Students often think that paying the legal minimum settles every question about pay, because "it's legal" sounds like the end of the conversation. That is the same trap as "ethical means legal" from Week 5. The law sets the floor; ethics asks what is fair above it. The cure is to answer the legal question first and then ask the two ethical questions separately.

Pause and try this. Choose one: (a) give one reason an owner might pay above the federal floor and one reason an owner might not, labelling each as a judgment; or (b) explain in two sentences why "it's legal" does not answer "is it fair?"

Memory hook: legal is the floor, not the ceiling.

6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions

Picture an illustrative hotel. Its housekeepers and kitchen workers each feel their schedules change with too little notice. One worker alone who complains might be ignored. So the workers talk among themselves and decide to bargain as a group.

That shift, from one voice to many, is what this section is about.

Labor relations is the relationship between a business's management and its workers when the workers act as a group, including how they bargain and settle disputes.
A labor union is an organization of workers that bargains with management as a group over pay, hours, working conditions, and fair treatment.

Why do workers organize? To gain a group voice on pay, hours, working conditions, and fair treatment that one worker alone may not have. The law protects that choice for many workers.

The National Labor Relations Act is the federal law of 1935 that protects private-sector employees' right to organize and to bargain collectively.

Once a union is in place, three ideas follow.

Collective bargaining is a union and management negotiating a written contract that covers pay, hours, working conditions, and how disputes are settled.
A grievance is a formal complaint that a union contract has been broken, settled through the steps the contract sets out.
When bargaining stalls, each side has a tactic. A strike is a tactic in which workers stop working to press management during a dispute over a contract. A lockout is a tactic in which management keeps workers from working to press the union during a dispute over a contract.

Worked example — the hotel's contract. The hotel is illustrative, and the example uses no figures.

Organizing: the workers form a union to bargain over schedules and pay.
Collective bargaining: the union and management negotiate a written contract that includes how much notice a schedule change needs.
A grievance: months later, a housekeeper's shift is changed with less notice than the contract requires, so the union files a grievance, and it moves through the contract's steps.
If talks on the next contract stall: the union could strike, or management could lock the workers out.

In words: the hotel's workers traded many separate voices for one group voice, a written contract, and a set process for settling disputes.

Misconception check. Students often think collective bargaining and a strike are the same thing. That is tempting, because strikes are what the news covers. But bargaining is the negotiation itself, and its goal is a signed contract. A strike is one tactic a union may use when talks stall, as a lockout is for management. The cure is to separate the process (bargaining) from the pressure tactics (a strike or a lockout).

Memory hook: bargain first; strike and lockout are the pressure, not the process.

7. Read the rate: union membership in percentage points

How common are unions? The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the federal agency that reports labor-force, union, and wage data, publishes a figure for each year.

The union membership rate is union members as a percent of wage and salary workers, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports it for a named year.

Two figures are pinned for this course: the rate was 20.1 percent of wage and salary workers in 1983, the first year of comparable data, and 10.0 percent in 2025 (BLS). Each figure carries its year and its source, because a figure with no year is not a figure.

Comparing two percentages needs care, because there are two honest ways to describe the change.

A percentage point is one unit on a percentage scale, used to measure the gap between two percentages, such as a fall from 20.1 percent to 10.0 percent.
A percent change is a change measured against its starting value, found as the new value minus the old value, divided by the old value, times 100.

Worked example — reading the union rate. The rates are real, year-stamped BLS figures.

The gap between the rates: 20.1 percent in 1983 − 10.0 percent in 2025 = 10.1 percentage points.
The percent change: (10.0 − 20.1) ÷ 20.1 × 100 ≈ −50.2 percent.

In words: union membership fell 10.1 percentage points from 1983 to 2025, which is a fall of about half the 1983 rate.

Honesty note: these figures describe all wage and salary workers in the country, not any one industry or state. They tell you how common membership is; they do not tell you whether that change is good or bad. That is a contested question, and section 9 sets out both sides.

Misconception check. Students often write the fall as "10.1 percent." That is tempting, because 10.1 is the gap between the two numbers and both numbers are percentages. But 10.1 is a gap in percentage points; measured against the 1983 rate, the fall is about 50.2 percent. The cure is to say "percentage points" whenever you subtract one percentage from another.

Pause and try this. Choose one: (a) explain to a friend, in two sentences, the difference between "fell 10.1 percentage points" and "fell 10.1 percent"; or (b) find a headline that compares two percentages and say which kind of change it reports.

Memory hook: subtract two percents for percentage points; divide by the start for percent.

8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order

Picture a small business owner reading about federal employment law for the first time. The list of laws looks long, but the laws passed one at a time between 1935 and 1990, and learning them in order makes them easier to keep straight.

Everything in this section is general education about what each law says in general. It is never legal advice for a specific situation. A real question goes to the agency that administers the law, such as the Department of Labor, the National Labor Relations Board, or the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

The laws, in the order they passed:

The National Labor Relations Act (1935) protects private-sector employees' right to organize and to bargain collectively.
The Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) sets standards for the minimum wage, overtime, recordkeeping, and child labor.
The Taft-Hartley Act is the Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, which amended the National Labor Relations Act and, in its section 14(b), lets states pass right-to-work laws.
A right-to-work law is a state law that bars contracts requiring workers to pay a union as a condition of keeping their jobs.
The Equal Pay Act is the federal law of 1963 that bars paying men and women differently for substantially equal work.
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is the part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bars employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission is the federal agency, known as the EEOC, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where employers and workers read about the federal laws against employment discrimination.
The Age Discrimination in Employment Act is the federal law of 1967 that protects workers aged 40 and older from employment discrimination because of their age.
The Americans with Disabilities Act is the federal law of 1990 that bars discrimination against people with disabilities, including in employment.

Worked example — the amendment check. The years are from the course's pinned statute set.

The National Labor Relations Act passed in 1935.
The Taft-Hartley Act amended it in 1947.
The gap: 1947 − 1935 = 12 years.

In words: 1935 is the year of the Act, and 1947 is the year of the amendment that changed it 12 years later; when someone asks for the year of the National Labor Relations Act, the year to give is 1935.

Limitation: several of these laws apply only to employers of a certain size or kind, and the details differ from law to law. This course does not teach or test those thresholds; the EEOC's own pages explain which employers each law it handles covers.

Misconception check. Students often confuse a statute's year with the year a later amendment passed, and they often read Title VII as covering every employer of any size. Both are tempting, because the laws are discussed together and amendments keep their parent's name. The cure is to tie each law to its own year (1935 for the Act, 1947 for Taft-Hartley) and to send any question about coverage to the EEOC rather than guess.

Memory hook: organize, pay, amend; equal pay, Title VII, age, disability.

9. Hear both sides: unions, right-to-work laws, and the minimum wage

Picture two people at a lunch table, one who works under a union contract and one who does not. Ask them about unions, right-to-work laws, or the minimum wage, and you may hear two confident and opposite answers. Both may be reasoning carefully from different values.

This section sets out three contested questions as positions with their strongest reasons. It gives no verdict. The documented facts underneath, a statute's year, the 7.25-dollar federal floor, the BLS rates, are stated plainly and are not up for debate.

Unions

Supporters argue that workers who bargain as a group have more say over pay, hours, and working conditions than one worker alone, that a contract's grievance process gives every worker a fair hearing, and that a group can win pay and benefits that one worker could not win alone.
Critics argue that a union contract can raise labor costs and make it harder for a business to change schedules or reward one worker's performance, and that some workers would rather deal with management on their own than have a union speak for them and charge them dues.

Right-to-work laws

Supporters argue that no worker should have to pay a union as a condition of keeping a job.
Opponents argue that workers who pay nothing still share in the contract the union bargained for, which leaves fewer members paying for the work of bargaining.

The minimum wage

Supporters of a higher minimum argue that it raises pay for the lowest-paid workers.
Critics argue that a higher minimum raises labor costs, and that some employers may respond by hiring fewer people or cutting hours.

Worked example — fact or judgment? The statements are illustrative, and the example uses only the course's pinned figures.

"The federal minimum wage has been 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009." Fact: it can be checked with the Department of Labor.
"Union membership fell from 20.1 percent in 1983 to 10.0 percent in 2025 (BLS)." Fact: it can be checked with the BLS.
"Union membership fell, so unions no longer matter." Judgment: the falling rate is a fact, but whether unions matter is a contested question the rate cannot settle.
"Right-to-work laws are unfair to workers." Judgment: it is one side's position, and the other side argues the opposite.

In words: facts can be checked against a source and year; judgments can be argued but not checked, and a fair discussion labels which is which.

Misconception check. Students often think a fact settles a contested question, so that the falling union rate "proves" unions are good or bad. That is tempting, because a real number feels like the end of an argument. But the rate says how common membership is, not whether it is desirable; people on both sides accept the same figure. The cure is to state the fact plainly and then give each side's reasons at full strength.

Pause and try this. Choose one: (a) pick one of the three questions and write the strongest reason for the side you find less convincing; or (b) pick one of the three questions and list one fact and one judgment that people use when they argue about it.

Memory hook: state the fact; give both sides; leave the verdict.

Key terms

human resource management — The work of planning for, finding, hiring, training, evaluating, and paying the people a business needs. (first used: 1. Plan the job: human resource planning and job analysis)
human resource planning — Working out which people a business will need, with which skills, and when, so it can hire and train them before the work arrives. (first used: 1. Plan the job: human resource planning and job analysis)
job analysis — Studying what a job involves, its tasks, its duties, and what it takes to do them well, so the business can describe the job and the person it needs. (first used: 1. Plan the job: human resource planning and job analysis)
job description — A written list of the tasks and duties of a job, drawn from a job analysis. (first used: 1. Plan the job: human resource planning and job analysis)
job specification — A written list of the skills, qualities, and qualifications a person needs to do a job, drawn from a job analysis. (first used: 1. Plan the job: human resource planning and job analysis)
recruitment — The work of drawing qualified people into a pool of applicants for an opening, such as by posting the job, asking for referrals, or attending a job fair. (first used: 2. Fill the pool, then choose: recruitment versus selection)
selection — The separate step of choosing whom to hire from the pool of applicants, using tools such as applications, interviews, skills tests, and reference checks. (first used: 2. Fill the pool, then choose: recruitment versus selection)
training — Teaching a person the skills their current job needs, such as how to run the equipment or handle a payment. (first used: 3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation)
development — Preparing a person for a future role with more responsibility, such as readying a worker to lead a team. (first used: 3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation)
performance evaluation — Comparing a person's work with standards set in advance and giving feedback on how to keep doing well or improve. (first used: 3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation)
compensation — Everything a person receives for their work, made up of pay and benefits. (first used: 3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation)
pay — The money a person earns for work, either wages by the hour or a salary by the year. (first used: 3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation)
benefits — Rewards for work beyond pay, such as paid time off or health insurance. (first used: 3. Grow, check, and pay: training, evaluation, and compensation)
hiring plan — A plan for a new position that sets its hours, its weeks, and its wage, and works out what the position will cost the business in a year. (first used: 4. Price the hire: the cart's hiring plan and the minimum wage)
Fair Labor Standards Act — The federal law of 1938 that sets standards for the minimum wage, overtime, recordkeeping, and child labor; the Department of Labor administers it. (first used: 4. Price the hire: the cart's hiring plan and the minimum wage)
minimum wage — The lowest hourly wage the law allows an employer to pay for covered work; the federal minimum has been 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009, and many states set higher ones. (first used: 4. Price the hire: the cart's hiring plan and the minimum wage)
labor relations — The relationship between a business's management and its workers when the workers act as a group, including how they bargain and settle disputes. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
labor union — An organization of workers that bargains with management as a group over pay, hours, working conditions, and fair treatment. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
National Labor Relations Act — The federal law of 1935 that protects private-sector employees' right to organize and to bargain collectively. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
collective bargaining — A union and management negotiating a written contract that covers pay, hours, working conditions, and how disputes are settled. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
grievance — A formal complaint that a union contract has been broken, settled through the steps the contract sets out. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
strike — A tactic in which workers stop working to press management during a dispute over a contract. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
lockout — A tactic in which management keeps workers from working to press the union during a dispute over a contract. (first used: 6. Bargain as a group: labor relations and unions)
union membership rate — Union members as a percent of wage and salary workers, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports it for a named year. (first used: 7. Read the rate: union membership in percentage points)
percentage point — One unit on a percentage scale, used to measure the gap between two percentages, such as a fall from 20.1 percent to 10.0 percent. (first used: 7. Read the rate: union membership in percentage points)
percent change — A change measured against its starting value, found as the new value minus the old value, divided by the old value, times 100. (first used: 7. Read the rate: union membership in percentage points)
Taft-Hartley Act — The Labor Management Relations Act of 1947, which amended the National Labor Relations Act and, in its section 14(b), lets states pass right-to-work laws. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)
right-to-work law — A state law that bars contracts requiring workers to pay a union as a condition of keeping their jobs. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)
Equal Pay Act — The federal law of 1963 that bars paying men and women differently for substantially equal work. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)
Title VII of the Civil Rights Act — The part of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that bars employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)
Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — The federal agency, known as the EEOC, created by the Civil Rights Act of 1964, where employers and workers read about the federal laws against employment discrimination. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)
Age Discrimination in Employment Act — The federal law of 1967 that protects workers aged 40 and older from employment discrimination because of their age. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)
Americans with Disabilities Act — The federal law of 1990 that bars discrimination against people with disabilities, including in employment. (first used: 8. Name the laws: the federal employment statutes in order)

Summary

Human resource management plans for, finds, hires, trains, evaluates, and pays a business's people.
A job analysis yields a job description (the tasks) and a job specification (the person).
Recruitment fills the pool of applicants; selection chooses from it.
Training builds skills for the current job; development prepares a person for a future role.
A fair performance evaluation compares work with standards the person knew in advance.
Compensation is pay plus benefits.
The cart's helper works 20 × 50 = 1,000 hours and costs 1,000 × 16 = 16,000 dollars a year, already inside the 12,000-drink break-even.
The federal minimum wage is 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009 under the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938); many states set higher ones.
The law sets the floor on pay; ethics asks what is fair above it.
Unions bargain collectively over a contract; grievances settle contract disputes; a strike and a lockout are each side's tactics.
Union membership fell from 20.1 percent in 1983 to 10.0 percent in 2025 (BLS), a fall of 10.1 percentage points, not 10.1 percent.
The statutes in order: 1935, 1938, 1947, 1963, 1964, 1967, 1990; questions about coverage go to the agency, such as the EEOC.
Unions, right-to-work laws, and the minimum wage are contested: give each side's reasons and no verdict.

Check your understanding

Work these before looking at the answers — they are ungraded, and the answers (with reasoning) are at the bottom of the page.

An illustrative bike shop plans to hire a part-time mechanic for 15 hours a week, 48 weeks a year, at 18 dollars an hour. Find the hours a year and the yearly wages. Then find how far the wage sits above the 7.25-dollar federal minimum per hour, and what the same hours would cost at the federal minimum alone.
An illustrative grocery co-op takes four steps to fill a cashier opening: (a) it pins the opening to its community board; (b) it asks each finalist to count a till of mixed bills; (c) it asks current staff for referrals; (d) it calls two references for its top choice. Sort each step into recruitment or selection.
At an illustrative call center, the share of staff who finished a customer-care course rose from 40 percent last year to 50 percent this year. Write the change in percentage points and as a percent change, and say which phrasing a careful writer would use for each.
For each situation, name the federal law it relates to and the year it passed, as general education: (a) workers at a private warehouse want to form a union; (b) a worker asks what the federal minimum wage is; (c) a 58-year-old applicant is told the business wants "younger energy"; (d) two workers do substantially equal work, and the man is paid more than the woman. Then say where a real question about any of them should go.

Answers (worked reasoning — read after attempting)

Hours a year: 15 × 48 = 720 hours. Yearly wages: 720 × 18 = 12,960 dollars. Gap above the floor: 18 − 7.25 = 10.75 dollars an hour. At the federal minimum alone: 720 × 7.25 = 5,220 dollars a year. The shop's wage is its own choice above the federal floor; a state's minimum could be higher than 7.25 dollars, so the federal figure is a floor, not the only rule.
(a) Recruitment: pinning the opening draws applicants into the pool. (b) Selection: the till count is a skills test that helps choose. (c) Recruitment: referrals add applicants. (d) Selection: reference checks help confirm a choice. The trap this item catches is reading every hiring step as "hiring"; only (b) and (d) choose among applicants.
Gap between the shares: 50 − 40 = 10 percentage points. Percent change: (50 − 40) ÷ 40 × 100 = 25 percent. A careful writer says the share "rose 10 percentage points" or "rose 25 percent," and never "rose 10 percent," which mixes the two.
(a) The National Labor Relations Act (1935), which protects private-sector employees' right to organize and to bargain collectively. (b) The Fair Labor Standards Act (1938); the federal minimum has been 7.25 dollars an hour since 2009. (c) The Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967), which protects workers aged 40 and older. (d) The Equal Pay Act (1963). This is general education only; a real question goes to the agency that administers the law, such as the EEOC, the Department of Labor, or the National Labor Relations Board, because whether a law covers a particular employer is not something this course decides.

Next up in this module: the Readings & Resources page, the lecture tutorial, the practice set, and the quiz — and next week the classic motivation theories ask what keeps the people you hired engaged once they are on the job.

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