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SAGE Journal User Guide

Article 1

 Jacobson, W. S., & Tufts, S. H. (2013). To post or not to post: Employee rights and social media. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 33(1), 84–107.

Topics in this article:

• The proliferation of the use and forms of social media in the past 5 years has been extensive, and governments are seeking to capture its power as a communication and engagement resource. Meanwhile, governments struggle to create appropriate, legal, and meaningful policies related to employee usage and behavior.
• Social media policies are analyzed with attention to the rights of employees. Content analysis of state government policies provides an overview of the current state of practice and highlights issues of public employee rights. The article includes a discussion of key issues of employee rights, lists recommendations for practice, and identifies future research needs.

Questions from the article:

1. Do you believe that an employee’s social media persona should be a separate issue from his or her workplace persona? Should an employee’s posts or interactions on social media have or not have an impact on his or her employment status?
2. What should be contained in any law that is created that is related to employees and their social media use?
3. What are some potential advantages and disadvantages for employees and organizations when employees engage in social media usage?

 

Article 2

Murrmann, S. K. (1989). Employer rights, employee privacy and aids: Legal implications to hospitality industry managers. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 13(3), 147–157.

Topics in this article:

• This study looks at the employment issues of AIDS, employer rights, employee privacy rights, and how those views relate to management's opinions on the discharge of and refusal to hire AIDS victims. The results indicate a strong understanding, on the part of one hospitality management group, of the legal constraints affecting their employment rights in the areas of collective bargaining, sex, race, and religious discrimination, as well as a strong and positive correlation between such legal constraints and acknowledgment of an employee right to privacy in all areas with the exception of AIDS disclosure.
• The results suggest a continued misunderstanding of the disease and the inclination to view the AIDS victim as a threat to coworkers and the food operation itself.

Questions from this article:

1. What other types of businesses (beyond food handling businesses) would share the same debate and resistance (as described in this article) to the hiring of employees who have acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS)?
2. What are some ways that employers, and in particular the human resource management department, address and alleviate the fears other employees and customers/clients might have regarding an employee with AIDS?
3. Have students look at the “reasonable accommodations” outlined on page 148 of the article. Do students agree with these criteria? What other factors could be added to these reasonable accommodation criteria?

 

Article 3

Ferris, F., & Hyde, A. C. (2004). Federal labor–management relations for the next century—or the last? The case of the Department of Homeland Security. Review of Public Personnel Administration, 24(3), 216–233.

Topics in this article:

• In determining the future for 175,000 excepted civil servants, the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS) human resources management (HRM) system must accommodate more than 20 different bargaining units, representing many DHS employees.
• The article assesses the political challenges and opportunities involved and advocates four strategic change areas: (a) removing delay from the labor–management weapons arsenal, (b) reengineering the dispute process, (c) depoliticizing the labor relations and impasse regulators, and (d) rediscovering relationships in federal labor–management relations.

Questions from this article:

1. What new laws would you like to see enacted in regard to labor relations and employee rights as we move forward into this century?
2. Have students discuss and critique the challenges and opportunities in four strategic areas of the DHS HRM design process as it relates to all stakeholders in the process.
3.  According to the article, how have changes in the DHS effort resulted in attempts by other agencies to change civil service rules and secede from the general schedule? Are these changes an improvement? Why or why not? What other changes could make the efforts and process more beneficial to stakeholders in the system?

 

Article 4

Garrick, J. (2014). Repurposing American labor law: Immigrant workers, worker centers, and the National Labor Relations Act. Politics & Society, 42(4), 489–512.

Topics in this article:

• In the absence of reform, many U.S. labor unions try to avoid the NLRA process altogether by organizing workers outside the confines of the law.
• A substantial body of literature documents the perils of the low-wage labor market in the contemporary United States. These include falling wages, rising insecurity, and an epidemic of underground and illegal employment in blue- and pink-collar occupations in particular. While almost all low-wage workers are at risk of abuse by unscrupulous employers, undocumented workers are particularly vulnerable, and the most comprehensive study undertaken to date thus identified a “high prevalence of workplace violations among unauthorized immigrants” in the country’s largest cities.

Questions from this article:

1. Do you agree that the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA) of 1935 has been widely portrayed as an anachronistic piece of legislation that needs to be reformed or abandoned? What changes if any could be made to reform this Act? What other laws as related to the field of human resource management need to be reformed or abandoned?
2. Do students believe that the collective bargaining process and unions are no longer relevant in today’s field of human resource management?
3. How should the NLRA relate to illegal immigrants employed in organizations in the United States (have students think of this in relation to international human rights issues)? How should the elements of the NLRA relate to employees of U.S. firms in other countries?